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Would you follow the guidance and wisdom of someone who was addicted to drugs or a drug?

Read this article today: The Opium Addiction of Marcus Aurelius and I have to say this particular instance doesn’t bother me too much.

It bothers me a little because I can’t help but wonder how much of Meditations was written during times where he was under the influence.

And how much of stoicism may actually be a high person’s reaction to the absurdity of our existence.

If you read the article you’ll find he took a daily dose of theriac as a preventative antidote to poison which nearly every ruler at the time feared.

But theriac contained opium and Marcus Aurelius’s doctor wrote that he often observed the emperor staying up all night under its influence.

The doctor, Galen, also observed Marcus’s attempts to stop using it and tried to help wean him off of it at from time to time.

But Marcus was unable to fully stop taking it and during a campaign on the Danube he was apparently downing heavier dosages of it to combat the weather and strain of winter warfare.

A Roman historian writing at the time named Dio Cassius also witnessed Marcus’s addiction firsthand saying:

He could not stand the cold or even address the assembled troops and ate
very little and only at night. During the day he took nothing but some of
the drug called theriac which he used, not because he was afraid [of poi-
son], but in order to ease his stomach and his chest. They say that this
habit made it possible for him to endure this and other things.

The article ends by suggesting that many great men and women leaders and philosophers struggled with drug addiction or various physical issues and that we shouldn’t judge them for doing what they had to do to deal with the heaviness of the human condition.

Which I agree with.

However, as I’m flipping through Meditations right now I can’t help but think of opium influencing some of his reflections.