Quotes & Sayings About Morphine

I, the unfortunate Doctor Polyakov, who became addicted to morphine in February of this year, warn anyone who may suffer the same fate not to attempt to replace morphine with cocaine. Cocaine is a most foul and insidious poison. Yesterday Anna barely managed to revive me with camphor injections and today I am half dead. — Mikhail Bulgakov

Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only value in passing the time as comfortable as possible? What should a story seek to emulate, Augustus? A ringing alarm? A call to arms? A morphine drip? Of course, like all interrogation of the universe, this line of inquiry inevitably reduces us to asking what it means to be human and whether - to borrow a phrase from the angst-encumbered sixteeen-year-olds you no doubt revile - there is a point to it all. — John Green

A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for everyone. — D.H. Lawrence

oxys, roxys, morphine and Dilaudid — Anonymous

Morphine hits the backs of the legs first, then the back of the neck, a spreading wave of relaxation slackening the muscles away from the bones so that you seem to float without outlines, like lying in warm salt water. As this relaxing wave spread through my tissues, I experienced a strong feeling of fear. I had the feeling that some horrible image was just beyond the field of vision, moving as I turned my head, so that I never quite saw it. I felt nauseous; I lay down and closed my eyes. A series of pictures passed, like watching a movie: A huge, neon-lighted cocktail bar that got larger and larger until streets, traffic, and street repairs were included in it; a waitress carrying a skull on a tray; stars in a clear sky. The physical impact of the fear of death; the shutting off of breath; the stopping of blood. — William S. Burroughs

My death will be caused by morphine, which I have deliberately taken with suicidal intent. — Alex Campbell

Although Carroll is now something of an iconic figure for psychedelic drug users, there is only the tiniest shred of evidence that he ever took laudanum, morphine, cocaine, magic mushrooms or indeed that he sampled any mind-altering drugs at all. — Jenny Woolf

As Stepanov turned to go, Alexander said, "Sir ... " He was so weak he almost couldn't get the words out. He didn't care how cold the wall was, he could not stand on his own anymore. He pressed his body against the icy concrete and then sank down to the floor. "Did you see her?" He lifted his gaze to Stepanov, who nodded. "How was she?" "Don't ask, Alexander." "Was she - " "Don't ask." "Tell me." "Do you remember when you brought my son back to me?" Stepanov asked, trying to keep his voice from breaking. "Because of you I had comfort. I was able to see him before he died, I was able to bury him." "All right, no more," said Alexander. "Who was going to give that comfort to your wife?" Alexander put his face into his hands. Stepanov left. Alexander sat motionlessly on the floor. He didn't need morphine, he didn't need drugs, he didn't need phenobarbital. He needed a bullet in his fucking chest. — Paullina Simons

I was becoming more cunning than an animal in hiding my supply of morphine. A squirrel saving nuts is limited by its undeveloped imagination ... but I was not so handicapped. A squirrel, for example, is debarred from sending money to some greedy doctor or druggist and making arrangements to have a bit of powder sent each day by mail. — Evalyn Walsh McLean

Pain can be alleviated by morphine but the pain of social ostracism cannot be taken away. — Derek Jarman

I took a shot of morphine, liked it, and eventually became addicted. It takes quite a while. It took me three months the first time. This nonsense of people becoming addicted with one shot is medically unsound. — William S. Burroughs

For Harley, reading was the equivalent of chocolate, sleep, and morphine all rolled into one. Like all cats, she was quite the hedonist. — Suzanne Wright

The word is a bouncing ball The ruler throws from his balcony. The word has been a shot of morphine. Rulers calm their people with speeches. — Nizar Qabbani

I was curious, given the swimming pools of booze I've guzzled over the years - not to mention all of the cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol ... there's really no plausible medical reason why I should still be alive. Maybe my DNA could say why. — Ozzy Osbourne

Just before dawn, when the pain became unbearable, he took one of the morphine tablets and fell off into a loud, booming sleep, in which the great sun expanded until it filled the entire universe, the stars themselves jolted by each of its beats. — J.G. Ballard

I was not even aware of getting dressed, which was no simple matter: trousers and shirt, felt boots, over my shirt a leather jerkin, then an overcoat topped by a sheepskin, fur hat, and my bag containing caffeine, camphor, morphine, adrenalin, clamps, sterile dressings, hypodermic, probe, a Browning automatic, cigarettes, matches, watch, stethoscope. — Mikhail Bulgakov

Everyone who has ever been in pain knows that morphine and magic are the same. — Deborah Harkness

It's emotional Morphine," he said finally. "Just go with it." And — Tarryn Fisher

He had never wandered this far from the morphine, never sensed such a weakening hold over breath and muscle. And mind. — Patrick W. O'Bryon

There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting ... But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true. — Richard Dawkins

When I came to this country in 1958, to be a dying patient in a medical hospital was a nightmare. You were put in the last room, furthest away from the nurses' station. You were full of pain, but they wouldn't give you morphine. Nobody told you that you were full of cancer and that it was understandable that you had pain and needed medication. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

There was our old life, in the apartment, in which we had time to finish most of the tasks we started and took long showers and remembered to water our plants. And there was our new life, in the hospital a mile away, in which Shauna needed morphine and two babies needed to eat every three hours around the clock ... I remember thinking, we're going to have to figure out how to combine our old life with our new life ... Over a year later, we still have days of mind-crushing fatigue, midnights when I think I'm pouring milk into a bottle but am actually pouring it all over the counter. Yesterday I spent five minutes trying to remember my parents' zip code. But now there are mornings like this one, when we wake up and realize we've slept through the entire night, and we stroll through the gardens as if we are normal again, as if we are finally learning the syllables of this strange, new language. — Anthony Doerr

Morphine is like a religious zealot on a mission; it searches for body parts to convert, offering milk-and-honeyed dreams to flow sluggishly through your veins. — Andrew Davidson

They will say I smoked cigarettes and marijuana, cursed hoarse as a crow in all my languages, and loved morphine and Demerol and tequila and pulque, women and men. I will shrug my illusion of shoulders and answer that I am a water woman, not a vessel, not something you can sail or charter. I am instead the tributary, the river, the fluid source, and the sea itself. I am all her rainy implications. And what do you, with your rusted compass, know of love? — Kate Braverman

When I came to Washington, I was troubled to observe so many similarities between the behaviors of drug-addicted patients and my political colleagues. In Washington power is like morphine. — Tom Coburn

I don't feel anything. Not even fear. Can you tell me what to feel, Isaac?" His throat spasmed, then he licked his lips. "It's emotional Morphine," he said finally. "Just go with it." And that was it. That's all we said for that night. — Tarryn Fisher

People with family histories of alcoholism tend to have lower levels of endorphins- the endogenous morphine that is responsible for many of our pleasure responses- than do people genetically disinclined to alcoholism. Alcohol will slightly raise the endorphin level of people without the genetic basis for alcoholism; it will dramatically raise the endorphin level of people with that genetic basis. Specialists spend a lot of time formulating exotic hypotheses to account for substance abuse. Most experts point out, strong motivations for avoiding drugs; but there are also strong motivations for taking them. People who claim not to understand why anyone would get addicted to drugs are usually people who haven't tried them or who are genetically fairly invulnerable to them. — Andrew Solomon

(On his addiction to opiods): I'll die young, but it's like kissing God. — Lenny Bruce

You're not gonna kill that doctor I just saw, are you?" Carmine asked, the heavy dose of morphine in his system clouding his thoughts. "I know you killed that other one, so I was just wondering."
Corrado said nothing, and Carmine wasn't sure whether that was good or bad.
"I don't think you should," he said. "He's just a doctor."
"Carmine?"
"Yeah?"
"Shut up."
Carmine decided then he should probably shut up. — J.M. Darhower

I must give due praise to the man who first extracted morphine from poppyheads. He was a true benefactor of mankind. The pain stopped seven minutes after the injection. Interesting: the pain passed over me in ceaseless waves, so that I had to gasp for breath, as though a red-hot crowbar were being thrust into my stomach and rotated. Four minutes after the injection I was able to distinguish the wave-like nature of the pain. — Mikhail Bulgakov

When conventional medicine fails, when we must confront pain and death, of course we are open to other prospects for hope.
And, after all, some illnesses are psychogenic. Many can be at least ameliorated by a positive cast of mind. Placebos are dummy drugs, often sugar pills. Drug companies routinely compare the effectiveness of their drugs against placebos given to patients with the same disease who had no way to tell the difference between the drug and the placebo. Placebos can be astonishingly effective, especially for colds, anxiety, depression, pain, and symptoms that are plausibly generated by the mind. Conceivably, endorphins -the small brain proteins with morphine-like effects - can be elicited by belief. A placebo works only if the patient believes it's an effective medicine. Within strict limits, hope, it seems, can be transformed into biochemistry. — Carl Sagan

She keeps talking, and I keep listening, writing down every word she says, even as some hungry part of my mind flies off into a corner, huddles with this new information - a morphine addict, some kind of opiate, for a period - and begins to chew on it, taste its marrow, decide how it might be digested. Decide if it's true. — Ben H. Winters

You know when you send a text message to someone and you don't get a response right away, you feel depressed? You send a text message to someone you really like and you get a response right away you feel happy? You feel happy, the body, it creates the chemical dopamine, the dopamine, it goes through your blood and you become addicted to that dopamine rush, and you associate that dopamine rush with the happy feeling of receiving the text, and that's why you got people sending 3,000 fucking text messages a day, right, we're not even paying attention to what we're saying anymore it's just like a, like a morphine drip, right, it's like a dopamine drip! HAPPY BUTTONS! HAPPY BUTTONS! HAPPY BUTTONS! TIME TO PLAY WITH THE HAPPY BUTTONS! — Tom Green

Indulgent Reader, up till now I have concealed it, but I must confess at last. I have one besetting weakness, a weakness that amounts to a vice. I am ashamed of it. Often I have tried to wean myself of it; often cursed the heredity that imposed it on me. Opium? Morphine? Cocaine? Nothing so fashionable. Absinth? Brandy? Gin? Nothing so normal. Alas! let me whisper it in your ear: I am a Chewing Gum Fiend! — Robert W. Service

He'd told her it was just a scratch and got cross when she hadn't offered morphine. — Nick Hornby

When we come in, Trey is sitting up in the bed, him arm is a sling and a shadow of stubble on his face. "It's about time," he says. He's got the look of a stoner on his face, and I he's got a morphine drip going. Guess mom and Dad don't think HE'LL get addicted. Eye roll. — Lisa McMann

Nyx sold her womb somewhere between Punjai and Faleen, on the edge of the desert.
Drunk, but no longer bleeding, she pushed into a smoky cantina just after dark and ordered a pinch of morphine and a whiskey chaser. She bet all of her money on a boxer named Jaks, and lost it two rounds later when Jaks hit the floor like an antique harem girl. — Kameron Hurley

when children were hospitalized for treatment of severe burns, the development of PTSD could be predicted by how safe they felt with their mothers.31 The security of their attachment to their mothers predicted the amount of morphine that was required to control their pain - the more secure the attachment, the less painkiller was needed. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Researchers are learning that a change in mind-set has the power to alter neurochemistry. Belief and expectation - the key elements of hope - can block pain by releasing the brain's endorphins and enkephalins, mimicking the effects of morphine. — Jerome Groopman

My mother begged doctors to end her life. She was beyond the physical ability to swallow enough of the weak morphine pills she had around her. When she knew she was dying I promised to make sure she could go at a time of her choosing, but it was impossible. I couldn't help. — Polly Toynbee

Introduced Doc to the miracle of morphine. From that very first shot it was as if he'd discovered the one vital ingredient that God had left out when He'd sent Doc kicking and screaming into the cold, cruel world. — Steve Earle

I hight don Quixote, I live on peyote,
marijuana, morphine and cocaine.
I never know sadness, but only a madness
that burns at the heart and the brain.
I see each charwoman, ecstatic, inhuman,
angelic, demonic, divine.
Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon
that brims with ambrosial wine. — Jack Parsons

Suicide is a particularly awful way to die: the mental suffering leading up to it is usually prolonged, intense and unpalliated. There is no morphine equivalent to ease the acute pain, and death, not uncommonly, is violent and grisly. The suffering of a suicidal is private and inexpressible, leaving family members, friends and colleagues to deal with an almost unfathomable kind of loss, as well as guilt. Suicide carries in its aftermath a level of confusion and devastation that is, for the most part, beyond description. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Part of me was slightly pissed off that this kiss with him hadn't happened sooner. As in years ago sooner. Because this one little kiss - it literally rocked my world. He was morphine and I was an instant addict. — Sarah Darlington

It starts raining harder, I've got a long way to go walking and pushing that sore leg right along in the gathering rain, no chance no intention whatever of hailing a cab, the whiskey and the Morphine have made me unruffled by the sickness of the poison in my heart. — Jack Kerouac

The lowest animal forms had no nervous systems, still less a cerebrum; yet no one would venture to deny them the capacity for responding to stimuli. One could suspend life; not merely particular sense-organs, not only nervous reactions, but life itself. One could temporarily suspend the irritability to sensation of every form of living matter in the plant as well as in the animal kingdom; one could narcotize ova and spermatozoa with chloroform, chloral hydrate, or morphine. Consciousness, then, was simply a function of matter organized into life; a function that in higher manifestations turned upon its avatar and became an effort to explore and explain the phenomenon it displayed - a hopeful-hopeless project of life to achieve self-knowledge, nature in recoil - and vainly, in the event, since she cannot be resolved in knowledge, nor life, when all is said, listen to itself. — Thomas Mann

The morphine may numb my body, but it sure as hell isn't numbing my mind. — Jessica Wilde

Callahan got up and wrote "extend life prevent suffering" on a white board. Underneath he wrote: "Goals: hasten death (no); prevent suffering (yes)." Turning to me, he said that it was ethically justifiable to start a drug like morphine that could speed up death, as long as preventing suffering was the primary intention and hastening death was an inescapable side effect. This doctrine of "double effect" says that actions in the pursuit of a good end (symptom relief) are morally acceptable even if they result in a negative outcome (death), as long as the negative outcome is unintended and the good outcome is not a direct consequence of the negative one. — Sandeep Jauhar

Having sex is three times more effective as a pain reflector than a morphine dose. — Jill Shalvis

A hammock is like a steady drip of morphine, without the danger of renal failure. — Dale Gribble

[On her morphine addiction:] I was meant to 'taper off.' At times I felt such pains as must afflict a creature while a bigger beast eats and claws at its middle. God-awful things were hiding underneath my bed, and it was no use telling me they were not there - I knew they were, and felt their dreadful ever-changing shapes. — Evalyn Walsh McLean

On the floors above Delivery, in flowerless rooms, women lay recovering from hysterectomies and mastectomies. Teenage girls with burst ovarian cysts nodded out on morphine. It was all around me from the beginning, the weight of female suffering, with its biblical justification and vanishing acts. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Cancer seems a high price to pay for an innocuous-looking habit. You get into smoking and you are robbed of the last 25 years of your life. Some cocky souls will say, 'Ah yes, but they are the worst 25 years.' Nobody feels like that in a cancer ward. There are no cocky souls in a cancer ward. But there's a lot of pain, not just of the excruciating physical kind that they shoot you full of morphine to smother. There are a lot of tears. All round. It is hard to say goodbye to the people you love. And it's scary. Cancer wards have a way of knocking the cockiness out of you. And for what? Another cigarette? — Tony Parsons

When my mother asked him for more morphine, she asked for it in a way that I have never heard anyone ask for anything. A mad dog. He did not look at her when she asked him this, but at his wristwatch. He held the same expression on his face regardless of the answer. Sometimes he gave it to her without a word, and sometimes he told her no in a voice as soft as his penis in his pants. — Cheryl Strayed

You must talk to me, Caravaggio. Or am I just a book? Something to be read, some creature to be tempted out of a loch and shot full of morphine, full of corridors, lies, loose vegetation, pockets of stones. — Michael Ondaatje

I hope he died of intestinal cancer in a part of the world where morphine is as of yet undiscovered. — Stephen King

Writing is the emotional morphine. — Mariam Maarouf

There is in woman something of the unconscious function of drugs which are cunning without knowing it, like morphine. — Marcel Proust

Acetylene
Scythe spinning slowly over your hospital bed,
Catching lashes of light with each turn,
You're slowly disappearing, lost from my sight,
As AIDs consumes you, stem to stern.

Jaw slackened, mouth open in comical pose,
Like Einstein's poster with the lolling tongue.
Gravitas gone, morphine has softened your throes,
Your opera's more Falstaff than Gotterdammerung.

I shave you, trim your overgrown nails,
I read your favorite poet, Stephen Crane.
'A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene,'
You nod off, hearing only the rain. — Beryl Dov

I realized that I could have done more for him if I had been in his house. I would have pushed morphine--large doses. Morphine disconnects the head from the body, makes the isthmus of a neck vanish and diminishes the awareness of suffering. It is like a magic trick: the head on the pillow, at peace, while the chest toils away. — Abraham Verghese

A sincere and warmly-expressed apology can produce the same effects as morphine on a suffering soul. — Richelle E. Goodrich

There is something fascinating about what moral suffering can do to someone who is in no obvious way a weak or feeble person. It's more insidious even than what physical illness can do, because there is no morphine drip or spinal block or radical surgery to alleviate it. Once you're in its grip, it's as though it will have to kill you for you to be free of it. Its raw realism is like nothing else. — Philip Roth

Happiness is like the first blissful intoxication of morphine.It doesn't last very long. — Susan Kay

On the other hand, he was compassionate because he knew pain, real pain, and real suffering too. Yet even in those bouts when it looked for sure as if he would die, he was never given morphine, not even as his screams of pain rattled the palace windows. That poor child had traveled to the bottom of life and back again, and naturally that had had a profound effect on him. — Robert Alexander

Here," Trey says, fumbling for his cell phone on the bedside table. "You should call me.
Ben turns and looks at him, a small smile still playing around his lips. "Oh, should I? What's your number?"
Trey tells him, and Ben enters it into is phone, and then he takes Trey's and enters his number. "Okay," Ben says a little cautiously, "well, we'd love to have you come for a meeting. Are you seriously considering U of C? Even after what happened?"
"Oh yeah. I totally am. "What's your name again?"
Ben laughs and tells him.
I frown. Trey knows U of C is a private school. Mucho big bucks. But hey ... there's always the power of morphine to make you forget about the minor details of your life, like living above a restaurant that struggles monthly to pay bills, and considering returning to the place where some lunatic outsider came in and fucking shot you because you're gay. — Lisa McMann

Tatiana hooked an IV to Alexander's vein herself and fed him morphine and fed him plasma. And when that wasn't enough, she gave Alexander her blood. And when that wasn't enough, and it looked as if nothing was going to be enough, she trickled blood from her arteries into his veins.
Drop by drop.
And as she sat by him, she whispered. All I want is for my spirit to be heard through your pain. I sit here with you, pouring my love into you, drop by drop, hoping you'll hear me, hoping you'll lift your head to me and smile again. — Paullina Simons

He was falling between glacial walls, he didn't know how anyone could fall so far away from everyone else in the world. So far to fall, so cold all the way, so steep and dark between those morphine-coloured walls ... — Nelson Algren

Reached up to push the button that released liquid morphine into his veins. — Orna Ross

The course of this world is pervasive, keeping the captives quiet with the morphine of temporary pleasure at the expense of their eternal souls. — Gloria Furman

She was bedridden falling a fall which broke her hip. X-rays showed that she had cancer of the colon which had already spreed. To my surprise I found her cheerful and free of pain, perhaps because of the small doses of morphine she was being given. She was surrounded by neighbours and friends who congregated at her bedside day and night. In this cosy, noisy, gregarious world of the "all-chinese" sickbed, so different from the stark, sterile solitude of the American hospital room, her life had assumed the astounding quality of a continuous farewell party. — Adeline Yen Mah

When you're in love, your brain secretes endorphins into your blood. Organic morphine leaks out of a gland in your skull, feels like a low-grade opium rush. Some people confuse the two, the head rush and the love. You think you're in love with a person, but you're in love with a syringe. — Craig Clevenger

I couldn't understand why Frank would want to spend time with this crowd. They were bored, naughty children with highballs and morphine and sex for their toys. People were toys, too. — Paula McLain

Pity, like morphine, does the sick good only at first. It is a means of helping them to feel better, but if you don't get the dose right and know where to stop it becomes a murderous poison. — Stefan Zweig

She's no lady. Her songs are all unbelievably unhappy or lewd. It's called Blues. She sings about sore feet, sexual relations, baked goods, killing your lover, being broke, men called Daddy, women who dress like men, working, praying for rain. Jail and trains. Whiskey and morphine. She tells stories between verses and everyone in the place shouts out how true it all is. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Do you feel your best when your strung out on your morphine and meth? — Alice Cooper

Tell me how would be..
You don't want to eat much from now on, you'll be thirst. And.. sometimes have fever. You want to sleep a lot. You have a little or no energy.
Will it hurt?
No. The morphine would make sure you don't feel any pain. And then give you some beautiful dreams.
Do you think i'll be scared?
i think you got the worst luck in the world, and if i would be in your shoes, i will be scared. But i also believe the how of you handle this last few days would be exactly like them should be done.
i hate you when you say days..
Come soon you'll start to drifting on consciousness. Sometimes you wont be respond, but you know people are they, you hear them talk.
And eventually, Tess, you just drift away.. — Jenny Downham

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism. — C. G. Jung

He pointed to the board where the word 'alliteration' had been written in handwriting far better than mine, which on good days looks like it came from the hand of a blind doctor writing his own morphine scripts in an earthquake. — Robert Wilder

Opiates are compounds derived from opium and include morphine, codeine, and a variety of related alkaloids. The term opioid is broader and includes all compounds (alkaloids or peptides) that have affinity for opioid receptors. — Alex S. Evers

To read 'Happy Talk' is to crash a party as vivid and surreal as Felini's 8. It's the business of show business, the American dream, told by a chorus of Americans locked just outside of that dream, outside of the United States, relegated to expatriate status on the shores of Haiti. Melo paints a version of Haiti that's an interior landscape perhaps even more than an externalized place. This Haiti is a plan, a memory, a morphine-drip fueled dream out to bond its inhabitants forever. — Monica Drake

Cannabis, just like morphine, has its usage in medicine. It's unpardonable that authorities forbid sick people access to this medicament and in majesty of law permit to sell cigarettes. — Jerzy Vetulani

Fentanyl is incredibly potent, approximately 80-100 times stronger than morphine and much more than heroin. Also known by the brand names Sublimaze, Duragesic, Actiq and others, fentanyl is commonly used to treat breakthrough pain in conjunction with surgical procedures. — Taite Adams

The hallucinogens produce visionary states, sort of, but morphine and its derivatives decrease awareness of inner processes, thoughts and feelings. They are pain killers; pure and simple. They are absolutely contraindicated for creative work, and I include in the lot alcohol, morphine, barbiturates, tranquilizers the whole spectrum of sedative drugs. — William S. Burroughs

I feel that opiates - I include opium and all its derivatives, such as morphine, heroin, pantopon, etc. - are quite useless for any sort of creative work, useful though they may be for routine work. Much of the hard physical work in the Far East is done by opium addicts. — William S. Burroughs

Gibbons wondered vaguely if he was becoming a morphine addict. He had certainly dosed himself into a stupid on account of the hideous pain resulting from the nurse's insistence that he get up and sit in a chair. He rather thought that being a drug addict would interfere with his career as a police detective, but that didn't seem to matter as much as it had a little while ago. — Cassandra Chan