Sally Marlow

Human beings have used opium for thousands of years, but in the last two centuries the drug has been joined by close relatives like morphine, heroin and fentanyl to relieve pain and alter people’s mental states. Along the way whole communities have been ravaged. In 2025 the need to understand opioids and addiction is more relevant than ever, set against the opioid crisis – around 60 million people worldwide use opioids and opioid overdose is a leading cause of death. 

Science can give us some answers as to why this group of drugs holds so many people in its grip, but they are only partial.  This project asks whether history and the arts can plug some of the gaps. In 1821 in “Confessions of an English Opium Eater,” Thomas De Quincey described his opium fixes as “portable ecstasies," and in these two short words, he captured something about the lure of opium and the class of drugs it has spawned, known collectively as opioids. The similarities between these drugs are instantly recognisable under the microscope, but the parallels go beyond their atomic structure. Opioids are an unusual and especially addictive class of drug, relieving pain but also causing euphoria, relaxation and even stupor. These drugs are much more than physical pills and potions – they become part of users’ identities, with their own paraphernalia, cultures and subcultures.  

The interdisciplinary book project Portable Ecstasies is a social, cultural, historic and scientific exploration of opioids and those who use them. Aimed at the popular market, it ranges across 200 years of opium, laudanum and morphine, through heroin and methadone, to fentanyl, tramadol and oxycontin, examining the intricacies of these drugs and those who use them.

Thomas De Quincey is central to the story of opioids, and the New York Public Library (NYPL) has personal correspondence and notes crucial to understanding his opium use. The NYPL archives also house letters and papers from many of the Romantics including Shelley, who discusses opium and laudanum, and Charlotte Bronte, whose 1853 novel Villette has an opium-induced dream sequence. The project also looks at the Beat Generation, and the NYPL holds the Jack Kerouac papers, the William S Burroughs collection and an Allen Ginsberg interview file. These rare collections of documents require in person appointments, and Professor Sally Marlow will visit the NYPL for four weeks in May 2026, working closely with the library archivists who have worked with her to identify which archives she should explore.  

Original documents have a life and a story which can not be found in digital copies online. Searching through indexes and manuscript boxes is part of the process and the narrative when bringing stories and people alive, and examining the NYPL archives detailed above will find information not in the public domain. 

The unique insights this research will bring will not only inform the historical parts of the book, but will also shed new light on our relationship with opioids today, with benefits going beyond satisfying intellectual curiosity to having contemporary real-world applicability.