I Was on Morphine for a Week and Wrote Nothing

Extract from the opium diary I never wrote

It’s five p.m. and I’m coming back from work. I’ve been cutting and chopping logs all day, and my lower back is on fire.

I need a beer.

No, I need something stronger. Maybe those pink painkillers my wife takes for her shoulder — Noxy-something-or-other— as I can feel my old back problem flaring up again.

It first happened in 2000 while teaching in Dartmouth (UK). I was carrying a box of reports down some stairs and slipped a disc. It was the most pathetic injury ever. The box wasn’t heavy at all, half-filled with reports on the Algerian students I’d been teaching technical English to for the past six months.

On any other day, I could probably have carried it on my head. But I was tired. I was finding the work incredibly boring, plus I was drinking and smoking a lot due to financial and relationship problems.

In my first class that morning, I could feel the dull thud in my lower back. An injury I’d had since school, the result of jumping out of a first-floor window into a Rhododendron bush for a dare.

After lunch, I felt a searing pain in my lower back. It felt like I’d been hooked, and fell forward down the stairs to the bottom. Luckily, the school was an old country house that was enrobed in carpets from floor to ceiling. When I hit the bottom, it was like falling onto a crash mat in a gymnasium.

My entire back had gone into spasms and had me writhing in agony on the floor while one of my students, Fouad, looked at me like I was a clockwork toy gone wrong.

“Fouad, trouve Ana!” I said in French. “Dépêche-toi! Allez, dégage!”

Two minutes later, Ana, my boss, arrived and phoned the ambulance.

It was a slipped disc, the doctors told me later in the hospital. Probably caused by an old injury (I told them about the Rhododendron incident), which had probably flared up.

I had a week off work and recovered remarkably well due to a good physiotherapist who taught me how not to slouch. So good, in fact, that apart from a couple of incidents over the years, I’ve never had a repeat of that attack in Dartmouth.

Until last week.

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I now work as a groundsman in Normandy, which is fairly physical, but as I’m physically stronger now than when I was 26, I find it no more taxing than sitting at a desk all day.

I’ve been overdoing it, though, for the last few months, and I should have known better. Especially as the weather has gone from warm autumn to winter in the space of days. Always a sign my back can go.

And it did, which was why I was on my kitchen floor writhing in agony once again.

After a trip to the hospital, I was back home drinking coffee and tucking into the pain au chocolat my wife bought from the bakery on the way from picking me up. Perfect for washing down my meds with.

When I had the problem in Dartmouth, they sent me home with a pack of paracetamol. This time, they sent me home with four boxes of morphine, and I realised why opiate addiction is such a problem.

I’ve taken a lot of drugs in my time, but none are as good as morphine. Everything is great ALL THE TIME.

But here’s the thing: I had no inclination to write. My mind felt dead, like every inch of creativity had been stripped out of me.

Normally, when I’m laid up with a cold or ailment, I do some writing or play my guitar. Occasionally, I may even do some painting, which is always fun even though I’m not very good at it.

But not this time.

This time, I did nothing. Just sat in my chair, strung out on morphine, listening to the radio.

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It’s only now, two days after I stopped taking the morphine (my choice), that I feel inclined to write this.

Two days ago, if someone had asked me to write, I would have waved my hand in the air and said. “Nah, man, I’m OK.”

In my early twenties, I spent a lot of time on weed or psychedelics, and it was the most creative time of my life. Even when I graduated to cocaine and speed, there was always some creativity in me.

With morphine, I felt nothing.

I found this bizarre seeing as a huge proportion of musicians, artists, and writers have used opiates for years. In fact, it’s harder to list the ones who haven’t than have.

But maybe their use was a response to their fame. Most don’t start out as users; it builds. They start ‘On the road’ as the pressures of fame and money grow.

If you follow the careers of many musicians, you can see the lows and highs of their musical output measured against the amount of drugs they were taking.

Keith Richards’ heroin addiction in the 1970s saw a decline in the Stones’ music, likewise with Led Zeppelin and The Who, plus countless others. It doesn’t mean their work was bad, just not as good as it used to be or could have been.

Then again, they could have just run out of ideas.

It happens.

I haven’t experienced opiate addiction, but I can see its appeal to switch off the mind. Which these days, is quite tempting, I admit.

The only problem is, when you start switching off your mind, you start switching off all the things you like doing best, like writing or painting, or jogging. Suddenly, they all seem like a chore.

And when that happens, you’re in trouble.

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