IMPROPER USE 297 



treme caution and their prolonged use for chronic con- 

 ditions avoided. Otherwise, the headache, nervous de- 

 pression and exhaustion, indigestion, constipation and 

 weakness of heart and blood-vessels which follow their 

 continued use, may easily become so serious that the 

 original trouble seems trivial by comparison. This is 

 especially true when by their continued and prolonged 

 use the body has so adapted itself to their influence that 

 it demands them. The body is then pledged, as it were, 

 to its own destruction. It is being ruined by their use, 

 and yet so intense is the craving for them that to give 

 them up means intolerable mental and physical distress. 

 Improper use. In view of the danger lurking in the 

 use of the stronger narcotics, it may be said that for a 

 person to give such a narcotic to himself in any form 

 is in itself improper. The first step in this direction 

 seems most innocent. The person feels that a few doses 

 can make no difference and that in any case he himself 

 will be strong enough to resist their effects. In this, 

 he is very apt to overestimate his own strength and 

 underestimate that of the drug. Each dose is building 

 up within his body an appetite, a craving for the next 

 dose, and in some moment of pain and depression he may 

 be reasonably sure that he will take that dose. As time 

 goes on, the moments of pain and depression become 

 more frequent and the doses necessary to overcome them 

 become larger. The more frequent and larger doses cre- 

 ate more terrible fits of depression, a more irresistible 

 craving for the drug, a weakened resistance to its use. 

 The man has now become the victim of the drug. With- 

 out it his life is unbearable because of the weakness, pain 

 and depression, which are, in turn, largely the result of 

 its use. The man can no longer live without it, yet its 

 use means his mental, moral and physical ruin. 



