Imaginative, Poetic, and Unbridled

Deliriously allegorical

Photo by Stéphan Valentin on Unsplash

With full knowledge of the fine line between self-invented and self-indulgent… do you know Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Britain’s greatest female poet, began an illicit and decades-long affair with opium when she was fifteen years old?

Believed to have been initially administered laudanum, medicinally, to treat the pain resulting from a spinal injury, and then morphine to treat what may have been tuberculosis, her progression to opium likely didn’t warrant attention because romantic-period writers extolled its use and effect on their creativity.

Although it's speculated that her addiction was not well known amongst her contemporaries, she was known to lie about her tolerance which was documented at forty laudanum drops per day, enough to kill a horse.

Active during a period when neither America nor Britain had laws against any drugs, it is supposed that a significant percentage of her works were opium-inspired and describe its seduction and tranquilizi…