The Pembroke Regional Hospital in Pembroke, Ontario is distinctly part of the Ottawa Valley, the former timber run down the Ottawa River most notably from Renfrew County where the lumber barons are reputed to have achieved immense wealth.

The Pembroke Regional Hospital (PRH) is a 203-bed acute care community hospital serving Renfrew County, offering emergency, surgical, mental health, rehab and outpatient services.

As I might have anticipated were I to have considered the matter more fully, the character of the people in the hospital is very Ottawa Valley as well. Which is to say, the people are universally kind, outgoing and generous. Though this resounds as pure drama it is nonetheless a substantial but native truth. It’s not the sort of distinction normally applauded large institutions, nor generally asserted of urban models, where, instead of hearing “How are you today?”, one is more apt to hear, “The name?” Considering what are frequently urgent or compelling reasons for attendance at any hospital, plus the uninvited negotiation of parking, registration, reading and following multiple signs, arrows and directions on the walls, the kind words of the hospital staff are a welcome and stabilizing balm.

Whether it is or is not a collateral of this social beneficence, every one of my many visits to PRH has been convenient, pleasant and professional to a fault. I unreservedly devote the approbation to yet another of the joys of country living for which I am also repeatedly grateful. Because the hospital is aligned with the University of Ottawa one seldom escapes the involvement of young people fulfilling the requisite hands-on training, whether nursing, medical practice or radiological technology. The juxtaposition of youth and old age always works best when contemporaneous; each sees the other as unwittingly enviable (though always for the wrong reasons I’m afraid – but that is a matter for another day).

Having frequented a number of hospitals (the Almonte General, the Carleton Place General, the Ottawa Civic, the Ottawa General, the Riverside Hospital and Halifax Hospital in Daytona Beach, Florida) I can attest that drugs are a common theme. Essentially drugs cover up almost any malady. Naturally the use and mesmerizing effects do not linger; but, the capacity speaks to the institutional ability to bypass misery at least temporarily.  I have frequently quipped that, whatever my expected demise, I am open to morphine (“an analgesic and narcotic drug obtained from opium and used medicinally to relieve pain”).

Morphine is an opiate found naturally in opium, a dark brown resin produced by drying the latex of opium poppies (Papaver somniferum). It is mainly used as an analgesic (pain medication). There are multiple methods used to administer morphine: oral; sublingual; via inhalation; injection into a muscle, injection under the skin, or injection into the spinal cord area; transdermal; intravenously; or via rectal suppository. It acts directly on the central nervous system (CNS) to induce analgesia and alter perception and emotional response to pain. Physical and psychological dependence and tolerance may develop with repeated administration. It can be taken for both acute pain and chronic pain and is frequently used for pain from myocardial infarction, kidney stones, and during labor. Its maximum effect is reached after about 20 minutes when administered intravenously and 60 minutes when administered by mouth, while the duration of its effect is 3–7 hours.

The provocative history of opium through Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and his friend (and narrator) Dr. Watson, beginning with A Study in  Scarlet (1887), is mostly an abbreviation of current standards then as popular as cigarettes, pipes and cigars.

• In the Victorian era, cocaine and opium were legal and widely available, often used in various “patent medicines”. Conan Doyle’s medical background meant he was well acquainted with the substances and their effects, but he viewed recreational use as a “pathological and morbid process”.
• There is no evidence in biographies or personal accounts that Conan Doyle had any serious drug addictions himself. In essence, the drug use was a characteristic of the fictional detective, created by the author to add to his bohemian and eccentric nature, but not a reflection of the author’s own lifestyle.

The use of narcotic drugs is no longer purely fictional.  Though I limit my abuse to Tylenol Arthritis and CBD, I confess I would be an easy candidate for capitulation were the prerogative not so limited or otherwise “unavailable”. The latter limitation speaks to my lack of adherence to certain streams of society. Though I have no proof of it, I am informed by those in the know that people whom we know in common have succumbed to the addiction or persuasion of certain drugs (such as “meth”, cocaine and heroine). From what I have seen of the results, the usage of nefarious additives is not to be embellished either fictionally or otherwise. I will however say that, if morphine is used when life is patently at an end (an occasion I have witnessed), then there is no question of its expediency.

It is perhaps a small compliment to society that for hundreds of years we have reportedly failed to escape the theme of deception from drugs of one description or another, including of course alcohol and wine. It is a subject always condensed by an application of limitation and apology. Those who prefer to surmount the psychological barriers to indulgence by argument or disregard are naturally entitled to do so. They (unlike myself) may even be capable of performing the prodigality with neither remorse nor punishment. My curiosity remains especially if there is capacity for acquittance, either behaviourally or entrepreneurially (such as those instances promoted by some writers who suggested their writing improved with the drugs).

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Romantic poet composed the famous poem Kubla Khan after falling into an “opium-induced” dream state. He described the poem as a fragment of a much longer work that came to him in this altered state, lending an air of drug-induced inspiration to the Romantic movement.

My own conclusion has always been that it is the native talent of the author – not his or her drug induced state of mind – that made the difference. This, I believe, is the accepted decision. Just as the drunk always sounds more plausible to himself than to others, so too is the alleged mystical benefit of drugs pure rubbish.