Do you know any famous opium addicts?

Question

So far have...

Thomas De Quincey
Edgar Allen Poe
Coleridge
Jean Cocteau

Can you think of any others? Thanks!

Answer 1

Here are a few more:

1. "Admiral Horatio Nelson: the Admiral suffered from an opium addiction throughout his later years in the navy.

Clive of India: another one who suffered from opium addiction.

Czar Nicholas II: The last Russian Czar spent the last two years of his reign on a cocktail of drugs. He took cocaine (for his colds), opium and morphine for his stomach complaints and he obtained hallucinogens from a herbalist. Visitors often commented on his gaunt appearance, dull eyes and his vacant smile."

2. "Other famous people who took opium included Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius who suffered with joint pains, William Wilberforce (1759 - 1833), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Timothy Leary (d.1996), William Burroughs (b. 1916) to name but a few."

3. "Jack Black's memoir You Can't Win chronicles one man's experience both as an onlooker in the opium dens of San Francisco, and later as a "hop fiend" himself.
Jack Black was a late 19th century/early 20th century hobo, living out the dying age of the Wild West. He wrote You Can't Win, a memoir or sketched autobiography describing his days on the road and life as an honorable outlaw."

Not an "addict" but:

4. "Ben Franklin
This founding father was known to occasionally use opium recreationally."

And you already have this one:

"Some incredible drawings by the French poet/writer/artist/filmmakerJean Cocteau (1889-1963) can be found in his 1930 book, Opium: the Diary of a Cure. Cocteau went through a number of years of opium addiction, andthis book is about one of his periods of treatment.
His is clearly obsessed with the opium pipe. Lying
down was one of the traditional opium smoking
postures, because smoking tended to make you
sleepy and lethargic (http://www.jeancocteau.net/).

5. "John Keats, poet, opium addict"

6. Lenny Bruce:

"There will be quotes from some famous opium/heroin users, though it's hard to improve on Lenny Bruce's quip — "I'll die young, but it's like kissing God" — which is slated for inclusion."

Answer 2

Frederick Abberline. He investigated the Jack the Ripper murders.

Oh, crap, I'm sorry. I didn't know you were just looking for writers. Unfortunately, I don't know of any writers outside of Edgar Allen Poe who was addicted to opium.

Answer 3

Sherlock Holmes was an opium addict...but he's fictional.

Answer 4

Lord Byron, poet
Mary Shelly writer of Frankenstine
Percy Shelly poet

Answer 5

Charles Baudelaire

Answer 6

Lewis Carrol (supposedly he was all jacked up when he wrote Alice in Wonderland)

Lord Byron

Hayao Miyazaki

Answer 7

Hermann Goering (morphine, treatment for wound in WWI).

Answer 8

I'm famous and addicted to codeine and morphine.