Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1897-11-01
MANY INTOXICANTS.
MIR. JOHNSON, WHO TRAVELS, FREE
 " DISCUSSES THE SUBJECT.

He Occasionally Indulges In Hasheesh
 Himself = How an opinm Habitae Was
 cnred-Ethsric as . Substitute For Ale
 ooholic Exhiiaration.
 Johnson travels for'' New York state wine and brandy producing firm and is a veritable mine of information concerning wines and spirits, alcohol percentages, bouquets, methods and processes of refining and aging wines, and besides is a eonnoisseur of no mean quality in everything drinkahle. No one ever saw him drink more of any al coholic liquor than the half dozen drops he sips before passing q wonderfully near infallible verdict on a sample. Ney ertheless Johnson remarked one day to q friend that he took an occasional spree. "Not an alcoholic drunk, ? he explained, "but hasheesh vision. ]"
 "Hasheeah!h exclaimed the other. stWhy, Two always regarded that as more dreadful than spirits. ;
 Perhaps it is, replied Johnson. 'I don't advise any one to use it. But in parts of Europe and i'll all oriental corin- tries many persons use hasheesh as I do. The effect of the drug taken ln .fhT larger quantity is to stimulate the i'm agination. It seems to release the soul from the body's bonds. Fatigue, depres- sion, mental weariness, business cares, all harassments, in fact, are thrown off, and the mind revels in an abnormal and pleasurable superactivity. never expe- rieneed any unpleasant reaction.
 Persons of different temperaments are affected i'll different ways. I knew man who wanted to try a dose of hasheesh with me. He had q most un- pleasant time of it. He said that his mental sufferings were indescribable, fear. or rather apprehension, of some thing mysterious and more grewseme than all the ghost stories ever told rolled into one awful horror expressing him throughout the short time that he was under the spell of the hemp. He never will try it again, for which am glad, for he might get into the habit of it.
 Johnson's business takes him among pharmacists a good deal, and by way of adding to his disclaimer of being hasheesh slave he remarked that every druggist has among his customers one or more opium "fiends" who do not feel the bondage of the drug. although they arc enslaved. ':I saw clerk mak- ing 100 small powders of morphine one day, said Johnson. tand l asked him why he was putting up so many. The clerk replied that he put up that num- Der every Thursday for q certain lady on renewal of physicians prescrip- ton. The physician had authorized the renewal, and the patient had been talk ing the morphia for several years in the same quantity. The habit probably grew out of the drug having been pre- scribed originally for the relief of some obstinate pain The patient only knew that the powders kept her pain away
 e.This same drug clerk also told of the successful cure of 8 sufferer from the opium habit, another lady who re- alized her situation and longed to be free. She went to 1.-Two at her physieian's house. She had been drinking so much laudanum day. The doctor began by allowing her the equivalent in lnor- phine in capsules, taken at tue hours at which she had been accustomed te take the liquid. He kepther on a nourishing and stimulating diet and very gradual ly, without the patients knowledge, reduced the size of the doses of 1norphia.
 After time he substituted for one of the morphine capsules daily one of the same appearance, filled with cinchoni- dia, an alkaloid of Peruvian bark like quinine, but weaker. The patient did not feel tho difference. Another cineho- nidia capsule was substituted daily aft CT another week or two, and so on, until after some months the habitue was talk ing nothing but einchonidia one day, with, perhaps, two morphine doses the next. As gradually as before these were eliminated, and the patient was told one day that she had had no mor- phia for month. She was surprised and incredulous, but she at last real ized that she was cured. l don [ know that every one could be freed from the opium habit i'll that manner.
 The druggists clerk told me of fellow employee of his who had q pas sion for ether. He had found him sey- eral times asleep or dozing in heap of excelsior packing in the cellar, and at last discovered that the young man had been stealing ether. He would saturate q sponge, put it into pasteboard cone hold it over his nose, and thus an9s- thetize himself. You know that the sensation of passing under tho influence