The purple rhetoric of this period contributed to the stereotypes regarding addicts and sponsored legislative measures designed to regulate the use of narcotics. Moreover, miracle cures begin to appear in the popular confessions, transforming the Romantic. The opium eater himself becomes an object of pity and loathing. They uniformly deplore De Quincey's defense of opium. The popular confessions of the latter half of the 19th century, on the other hand, conceive of opium addiction as a serious disease.

The representative addicts-De Quincey, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, and Baudelaire-suggest the inherent nobility of purpose behind the taking of opium or hashish, no matter how they might disagree upon the moral implications of the adventure. The early confessions propose addiction as not so much a social problem as a distinct human possibility. Only by following the historical development of the addict does the dynamic between the literary facts and the popular myths become comprehensible. Consequently, the story of addiction has displayed tremendous variety: the Romantic addict at the mercy of his own subjectivity, the genteel urban victim of the late 19th century, the outlaw, the mystic, the avant-garde artist, the black satirist of the 20th century. The drug confession, however, extends the search for absolution to blatant self-advertisement, apocalyptic social commentary, and the sober collection of scientific data. Inevitably perhaps, the literature of addiction has taken the form of the autobiographical confession. Nevertheless, the historical continuity (or presence) of the literature of addiction has been largely overlooked. Ever since De Quincey's 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater' announced the reality of opium addiction in 1821, the literature representing addiction has excited the reading public.

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