Recipes for opium

Bilderdijk regularly used opium. As a result, he entered post-war literary history as a drug addict. Boudewijn Büch, for instance, called the poet an 'opium eater'. His often-eccentric ideas and behavior could thus be explained as symptoms of his addiction. Bilderdijk's poems, which sometimes seem hallucinatory and written in a daze, fitted in nicely with the image of the poet as a junkie.

That image has now been dispensed. Bilderdijk was well versed in medicine and wrote prescriptions for himself, his family and others for all kinds of illnesses. In his day, opium was a common medicine prescribed as a sleep aid, as a painkiller, and as a remedy for ailments such as colds or diarrhea. The doses that Bilderdijk prescribed were not exceptionally high. There were considerable periods between the prescriptions, and he did not use the drug more and more frequently.

Bilderdijk was therefore not an addict, but a self-healer. In addition, opium is not a stimulant, but a narcotic. If Bilderdijk had really been heavily addicted, he would not have written poetry; he would have slept.