Opium Fiend
Page 37
Roxanna had endured many lifetimes of pain, but what I had difficulty understanding was how she could have ridden out her withdrawal without revealing her secret. Once the symptoms started in earnest—by Monday or Tuesday—Roxanna would have needed superhuman strength of will not to cry out for the one thing that could take away the torment: opiates.
But Roxanna knew what she was up against—her interrogators would have made sure of that on the day they arrested her. If convicted of all the charges, she would face thirty-six to fifty-six months in prison. Going to prison at age sixty-two with a physical disability that caused her constant pain would have been daunting even for somebody as experienced in overcoming obstacles as Roxanna. She would also have lost her job at the ceramics museum and, with it, the ability to provide for her son and Thai family. But perhaps worse than all of this would be the shame of having her addiction exposed and what that could do to her name. In the West, where opium has been all but forgotten, the reaction might be curiosity or amazement at an addiction to something so quaint. In Southeast Asia, however, the word “opium” resonates extremely negatively because opium poppies are still grown in the region, and the harvest is made into heroin. With such a black mark on Roxanna’s name, she would probably have been stripped of her Thai citizenship and perhaps been unable to return to Thailand even if she were found innocent of the federal charges in the United States.
The threat of all this was perhaps enough to make Roxanna think she should hide her addiction and hope she could get through withdrawal while in detention. It is said that only eight to ten days are needed for the physical symptoms of opium withdrawal to subside. The symptoms of heroin and opium withdrawal are very similar except that the former are, from what I understand, rarely life threatening. Roxanna somehow managed to stay mum throughout the torturous ordeal, and the prison authorities were clueless. One would think medical authorities in a federal detention facility should be familiar with such symptoms. Then again, Roxanna’s profile was nothing like that of the typical junkie.
I remembered my own experience during the Halloween Massacre, the feeling that my internal organs were bloating up inside me to the point of popping—and this after a mere eleven weeks of daily smoking. Roxanna had been smoking regularly for years. Her symptoms would have been many times worse than mine. The cause of death was initially speculated to be a heart attack. I pictured the medical team performing the autopsy, opening her abdomen and finding a mass of ruptured guts. I could imagine the shock on their faces.
The postmortem stated that Roxanna died from an infection caused by a perforated gastric ulcer—also known as peritonitis. During my research for this chapter, I noticed a footnote in H. H. Kane’s Opium-Smoking in America and China that tells of two smokers in late-nineteenth-century New York City dying from a similar condition:
Since writing this chapter and within a few days two opium-smokers, one a white man, the other a Chinaman, have died. Both died from the same cause, acute suppurative peritonitis, commonly known as inflammation of the bowels. Although opium was not the direct cause of death, the gastric and intestinal irritation, irregular eating, and marked constipation produced by it was undoubtedly the real, though remote, and certainly the predisposing cause of it.
Kane sounds sure of himself, so perhaps my initial assumption that opium withdrawal killed Roxanna is wrong. In the end it doesn’t matter. She’s gone. Despite the ridiculously petty charges brought against her by the U.S. government, Roxanna will still be remembered by many as an unsurpassed expert in her field. She will be remembered as an estimable colleague and a cherished friend. For me she will always be the epitome of an old Asia hand. The world is a far, far less interesting place without Roxanna Brown.
I have never seen a copy of Roxanna’s autopsy report, but I know the date and approximate time of her death. Doing the math, I discovered that during the very time Roxanna was in her death throes, I was having my best smoking session in recent memory. While my body was weightlessly suspended as though floating in a warm sea, Roxanna was thrashing on the cold floor of a prison cell in a puddle of her own bodily fluids.
Epilogue
Opium is a charismatic lover who takes you to heaven, giving you years of warmth and affection, and then, like a schizophrenic, inexplicably and without warning begins putting you through hell. You are alarmed but, desperately wanting to recapture the happiness of the early times, you give opium another chance and then another—yet your lover becomes more and more abusive. Going back to the good old days is simply not possible. You give up and try to leave, but your lover threatens to kill you, beating you half to death just to drive the point home. Finally, and with much physical and mental anguish, you make your escape … but before long you miss your lover with a heart-searing desperation. Do you go back? Of course you do. Given the opportunity, nearly everyone does. Opium is a force.
And so my nineteenth-century addiction has a twenty-first-century conclusion: Edgy abstinence and comfortless sobriety. It is no accident that my story lacks closure. Such tidy modern notions are unknown to the former opium addict. Feelings resembling grief and nostalgia fill my waking hours, and many times Roxanna’s corpse has visited me in my dreams. She’s always eager to show me blueprints of a house that will be built with money that her son was awarded—the result of a wrongful death suit against the U.S. government. The Roxanna of my recurring dream is optimistic and doesn’t know that she is dead. Only I seem to notice that her skin is the very same pale blue that elderly ladies use to color their hair. Invariably I awaken from these dreams with an unvoiced sob burning in my throat and a desperate urge to fill my lungs with opium vapors. I am convinced that only upon my own death will this deviltry cease.
Yet despite all this, despite everything that has happened, I cannot despise opium. I have tried. It might be easier to stop longing for opium if only I could bring myself to loathe it—but I can’t. It is easier to hate myself for having lost the rare opportunity to ride the magic carpet; for having become careless and been obliged to jump off; for having allowed the magic carpet to fly away without me.
The majority of my collection is now in storage at the University of Idaho, but I’ve kept a couple of pieces that were once components of my personal layout. My old Yixing pipe bowl rests on my desk next to my computer, and now and then I pick it up and give it a sniff. Sometimes I imagine that I can hear the gentle burbling of vapors passing through its hollow interior. When the cravings get particularly keen, I tell myself that when health is lost to disease or old age, I will find a way to once again light the lamp, take up the pipe, and roll myself into sweet oblivion.
Dedicated to the memory of my sister,
Lynn Lee Martin (1967–2010)
Acknowledgments
I am greatly indebted to the friends who assisted me over the past couple of years while this book was being written. To thank everyone by name would take up several pages, and I’m tempted to forgo the customary list of names—doing so would greatly lessen the chances of my leaving somebody out. But there are some friends whose help, particularly during a recent period of ill health, was so great that I can honestly say without them this book would never have been written: Jack Barton, Maria Beugelmans, Jeff Cranmer, Patrick Deboyser, Sarawan Dever, Gregory Dicum, Yves Domzalski, Dylan Ford, Karl Taro Greenfeld, Yishane Lee, Gabriel Mandel, Narisara Murray, Matthew Pennington, Craig Stuart and Susan Kim-Stuart, and Andy Young. I also wish to thank everyone who contributed to the “Steve Fund.” You know who you are, and this is your book as much as it is mine. I hope you all find it a worthy expression of my gratitude. Lastly, I’d like to thank my editor, Susanna Porter, and my agent, William Clark, for their patience and encouragement throughout this project.
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ALSO BY STEVEN MARTIN
The Art of Opium Antiques
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STEVEN MARTIN was born and raised in San Diego. After four years in the U.S. Navy, he moved to Thailand. A freelance writer, he has written articles for the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, and the Asian edition of Time. He has also contributed to guidebooks for Lonely Planet and Rough Guides. Martin has gathered one of the world’s largest, most diverse collections of antique opium-smoking paraphernalia, and has written an illustrated book on the subject, The Art of Opium Antiques. His expertise has led to consulting work for museums and films, most recently for HBO’s period drama Boardwalk Empire.