转自我的英文博客。

Special resistance to opium!

When I was a kid in rural China (Hubei) in the 1960s, bare-foot doctors were our only saviours when we were very ill. For lesser pains, there was the traditional way. My mother would sit in a quiet corner of our house, with her eyes closed, and a bowl of water and four chopsticks in front of her, and ask softly if my dead grandma had just said hello to me. After the ritual, she would have me drink a bit of boiled water with, you guessed it, opium.

There were always dried opium hanging in our corridor. Got a flu? Opium water. Chest pain? Also opium water. Similar to the old Russian way of blood-letting.

I had never heard of anyone with opium addiction. In the 1970s, the government said that opium was bad. Ok. Since then I have never seen opium.

In 1991, from Australia, I went back to the village to see my parents. In my bumpy bus-ride, I was amazed to see poppy flowers blanket a roadside hill. They were not planted by farmers. They were just wild. But I have never seen them in my many subsequent visits. And opium abuse is unheard of in my community.

The Opium Wars occupies a special place in the Chinese minds. Is this why we have developed special resistance to opium? Who knows?

#opioids #drugaddiction