Drug of Choice: Opium Poet, literary critic and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge was introduced to laudanum (a form of opium) to treat his poor physical health that stemmed from childhood illnesses and bouts of anxiety and depression. Taking the drug would lead Coleridge, one of the founding Romantic writers, to develop a lifelong addiction to opium which would eventually kill him. He is best known for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, and Biographia Literaria, and some of the latter collection of prose was inspired by experiences he had during overdoses of opium. Coleridge also composed Kubla Khan after taking laudanum in 1797. He sat down to write after waking from a stupor in which he had dreamed of the grand pleasure-domes of a Chinese emperor. In a letter to his friend Joseph Cottle in which he discussed his addiction, Coleridge said 'I was seduced into the ACCURSED Habit ignorantly I had been almost bed ridden for many months with swelling in my knees in a medical journal I happily met with an account of a cure performed in a similar case by rubbing in of Laudanum, at the same time taking a given dose internally it acted like a charm, like a miracle! At length, the unusual stimulus subsided the complaint returned the supposed remedy was recurred to but I cannot go thro the dreary history Suffice to say, that effects were produced, which acted on me by Terror & Cowardice of PAIN and sudden death'. The poet died in Highgate, London, as a result of heart failure compounded by an unknown lung disorder, believed to have been linked to his use of opium.
