Thomas de Quincey authored "Confessions" of an "Eater" of this substance.
In one book, the author rebuts the claim that this thing causes "torpor and stagnation" by describing his Saturday night outings to hear Grassini at the opera. In a book partly titled for this stuff, the narrator offers a lethal amount of it to a Malay sailor who appears at his mountain cottage, a visit that later causes him to imagine he is being chased by a crocodile. After using this product, the narrator witnesses a near collision with a young couple in a carriage in the (*) essay "The English Mail Coach." Another author referred to this substance as an "anodyne" he consumed before sleeping in a preface which blames the poem's incompleteness on a "Person from Porlock." Thomas de Quincey authored "Confessions" of an "Eater" of this substance. For 10 points, what drug allegedly caused the vision that inspired Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan?"
In one book, the author rebuts the claim that this thing causes "torpor and stagnation" by describing his Saturday night outings to hear Grassini at the opera.
opium [or laudanum]