disposition toward sleep was now limited to the early evening. Double
dinners, together with the disuse of tobacco, began at this time to
induce a fullness of habit in spite of bodily pain. In addition to
this, the liver was seriously affected--which seems to be a
concomitant of the rapid disuse of opium--and a tendency to heavy
drowsiness resulted, as usually happens when this organ is
disordered. As early as six or seven o'clock an unnatural heaviness
would oppress the senses, shutting out the material world, but not
serving wholly to extinguish the consciousness of pain, and which
commonly lasted for an hour or two. For no longer period could sleep
be induced upon any terms. During these wretched weeks the moments
seemed to prolong themselves into hours, and the hours into almost
endless durations of time. The monotonous sound of the ticking clock
often became unendurable. The calmness of its endlessly-repeated beats
was in jarring discord with my own tumultuous sensations. At times it
seemed to utter articulate sounds. "Ret-ri-bu-tion" I recollect as
being a not uncommon burden of its song. As the racked body, and the
mind, possibly beginning to be diseased, became intolerant of the
odious sound, the motion of the clock was sometimes stopped, but the
silence which succeeded was even worse to the disordered imagination
than the voices which had preceded it. With the eyes closed in harmony
with the deadly stillness, all created nature seemed annihilated,
except my single, suffering self, lying in the midst of a boundless
void. If the eyes were opened, the visible world would return, but
peopled with sights and sounds that made the misty vastness less
intolerable. There appeared to be nothing in these sensations at all
approaching the phenomena exhibited in delirium tremens. On the
contrary, the mind was always and perfectly aware, except for the
instant, of the unreal nature of these deceptions and illusions.