Fearful, from the representations of my physicians, and from some of my own sensations, that the almost daily recurrence of my visions might ultimately lead to insanity, I came to the resolution of reducing my daily allowance of opium; and, confining myself, with the most rigid pertinacity, to a quantity not exceeding one third of what I had formerly taken, I became speedily sensible of a most essential change in my condition.

A state of comparative health, mental and physical with calmer sleep and a more natural exercise of the organs of vision, succeeded.

I have made many attempts at a further reduction, but have been uniformly unsuccessful, owing to the extreme and almost unendurable agony occasioned thereby.
"The peculiar creative faculty of the eye, the fearful gift of a diseased vision, still remains, but materially weakened and divested of its former terrors.

My mind has recovered in some degree its shaken and suspended faculties.

But happiness, the buoyant and elastic happiness of earlier days, has departed forever.