FURTHERMORE

Confessions of a modern morphine addict

PETRONELLA WYATT

Ihave been taking morphine. Not, I has- ten to explain, for 'recreational' purposes. When my recent attack of shingles was at its most aggressive and unrelenting, the doctor prescribed me a certain painkiller. This pill, apparently, is the strongest pallia- tive outside the black market. This is because it contains a fair amount of morphine.

My chemist inquired, rather dubiously, when I presented the prescription, 'Is this kosher?' One had the impression that he suspected me of being a drugs fiend who, from desperation, had resorted to forgery. On finally being prevailed upon to give me the pills he warned, 'Be careful you don't become addicted. It has happened before, think of all those 19th-century writers.'

The pills were little round tablets which one placed under the tongue. After a few seconds, they dissolved in the cavities of the mouth, like a vapour escaping from a cave. I took to popping them lust before I went to sleep. Their immediate effect was both pleas- ant and soporific. There was a feeling of sus- pension. One floated above the physical body like a spirit; all concord and harmony.

Usually I sleep hard and awake remem- bering nothing. But after taking the pills for six or seven nights, I began to have curious dreams which ranged from the sublime to the terrible; nebulous outlines of rolling landscape and still, crystalline waters, fol- lowed by appalling and baroque scenes of death and torture. What was equally strik- ing about these visions was their apparent reality. I awoke unable to distinguish between what happened during my waking hours and the incidents which occurred in my dreams at night.

Anyway, the chemist was right, morphine is addictive. I continued to take the tablets even after the pain had gone. I had never before experienced such a feeling of released and unfettered creativity. My imagination had travelled into cyber-space. I had become a genius; an intellectual giant gazing down in benevolent pity at all the pygmies beneath. I gaily told my family they were fools. I cared nothing when, quite understandably, they lost their tempers. Then, a few nights ago, I decided to try an experiment. If Coleridge could write an epic poem on opium, why shouldn't I compose something similar on morphine? A sort of contemporary `Kubla Khan', perhaps set in the Houses of Parliament or maybe even in Brussels — something along the lines of, say, `Kubla Kohl'? Accordingly, I carefully followed the Coleridge procedure, or what I knew of it. Coleridge, we are told, awoke in the mid- dle of an opium dream to write his verse (before he was interrupted by the man from Porlock). To ensure that I too would awaken from my narcotic slumber, I set my alarm clock for three o'clock in the morning. Then I took the morphine pill and fell asleep.

Twentieth-century technology did its work; the alarm went off right on schedule. On my bedside table were a pen and a piece of paper, ready to receive my immor- tal stanzas. There was only one snag: for the first time in over one week I could not recall having dreamt about anything at all. Coleridge wrote of incense-bearing trees and ancestral voices prophesying war. I could not so much as summon up a shrub, let alone an incense tree. The only voices I could hear prophesying war were those of some neighbours who had come home late and were arguing about which of them was to put the cat out. I suppose this was war, but it wasn't really on the heroic scale for which I had hoped.

After an hour or so I gave up. I went back to bed and fell asleep. When I awoke later that morning, there was a noise like rhinoceroses dancing the finale of the Sleeping Beauty in my head. My eyes had swelled to huge, spongiform balls. The wheels of my brain were rotating at half their normal speed. When I had regained partial movement in my arms and legs, I caught sight of the box of morphine pills. It appeared to be mocking me. I snatched it up and rushed with it to the loo, where I flushed the box and its contents away.

Since then, I have been going through a sort of cold turkey. I occasionally feel chilly and shivery, my hands shake a little these, it was explained, are the symptoms of withdrawal from the morphine. Whatev- er they are, they are singularly unpleasant.

So all this, I suppose, is a sort of cau- tionary tale. Narcotics don't make one a genius. Alas, one has to be a genius to begin with.

There was a cartoon last week in one of the newspapers of Mr Bill Cash, the Euro- sceptic Tory MP. Mr Cash appeared to have slept on a camp-bed in the Commons to ensure a slot for his ten-minute rule Bill on a referendum on Britain's future in Europe.

The funny thing about Mr Cash — or Mr Crash, as he has been called by unkinder souls than I — is that he looks rather like Mr Peter Shore, Labour's former shadow foreign secretary. That is, he would do were he a bit shorter.

But this is to digress. The point is, Mr Cash and Mr Shore have something in common — Europe. When it comes to Europe, Mr Shore is a sceptical ideologue like Mr Cash. And why not? Labour has always been full of ideologues. These days, however, it is the Tory Party that would seem to be full of them.

Ideology is, of course, the reason Labour kept losing elections. Government health warning: ideology can damage your politics. Mr Blair grasped this early. Ever since he became leader, we have read that he is making Labour more 'adult'. Mr Blair hoped that when Labour grew up it would be more like the Tories.

But while Labour becomes more like the Tories, the Tories seem to be more like Labour. Confusing, eh? Tory MPs would appear to be increasingly doctrinaire — not just over Europe but with regard to Left/Right divisions within their own party.

This is bad news for the Tories in the long term. Toryism is a belief in self-preser- vation rather than in doctrine. Sir William Browne famously remarked, 'Tories own no argument but force.' In the final instance, rival parties such as the Whigs and the Liberals made the mistake of own- ing no force but argument. Labour, of course, was founded on the ideology of social and economic justice. That just ain't sexy. The Tories retained power by appeal- ing to Middle England's base instincts: greed and fear. Or, as the Tories put it, `choice' and 'tradition'.

Thus Conservatives are expected to appear ruthlessly pragmatic. Ideology is regarded as unConservative, something that afflicts blasted foreigners — even when it is directed against blasted foreign- ers. (In the case of Thatcher, ideology was temporarily acceptable because it often seemed subordinated to her common sense.) It is a question of stereotypes. The English resent a silent Frenchman, just as the French distrust a loquacious English- man. A Tory Party full of ideologues leaves one feeling deeply suspicious.