Resistance is Futile: Addiction and Class in France’s Opium Dens 1880-1914

This paper explores the class dynamics of opium addiction at the turn of the twentieth century. As the physiological need for opium undermined the smoker’s capacity to resist the drug, attempts to treat opium addiction tended to be more successful when they relied on an outside force or a dramatic change of environment. The high cost of medical treatments for addiction left poor smokers with few options beyond involuntary incarceration to struggle against opium’s overpowering influence. However, wealthy smokers pursued medical treatments for addiction which were similarly designed to subvert the smoker’s free will and subordinate it to the will of the doctor overseeing his care. Bourgeois men often vaunted their own robust free will as a marker of social distinction. However, the case of opium addiction reveals how tenuous individual free will actually was in the face of physiological withdrawal and how difficult opium was to resist.