Opium References in Popular Culture, the 2024 List

Posted: December 31st, 2024 | No Comments »

I’ve been spotting opium references in popular culture with interest for quite a few years now (2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012) about just how opium keeps on fascinating us. However, 2024 was a little thin compared to other years – so any other spotted references most welcome?

So, film and TV first and Patrice Leconte’s Maigret starring Gerard Depardieu – an adaptation of Maigret et la jeune morte (Maigret and the Dead Girl – 1954). Maigret discovers an underground Parisian world of fetishism in the 1950s, which involves some laudanum consumption.

Opium smoking, addiction and enjoyment was a running theme in the 1880s-set Italian TV series The Law According to Lidia Poet (Netflix), based loosely on the true story of the country’s first female lawyer but somewhat glamourised.

Novels: Dawn Farnham’s Tokyo Time is set in occupied WW2 Singapore where opium is in short supply but morphine is urgently needed to help the wounded. And an honourable mention to Sandra Newman’s terrific Julia, a version of Orwell’s 1984 seen from the POV of Winston Smith’s lover Julia – and in Julia’s Airstrip One opium is a much sought after panalgesic to escape the intrusions of the Party and Big Brother.

Burma Sahib, Paul Theroux’s novelisation of Orwell’s time as a colonial policeman in Burma was a bit of a drag as a novel (I thought – most reviewers thought highly of it I have to admit)… naturally some dope was smoked!

Non fiction: James Crossland’s Rogue Agent: From Secret Plot to Psychological Warfare – The Untold Story of Robert Bruce Lockhart has morhpine addicts in the Bolshevik Revolution while more than one morphine addict pops up in Uwe Wittstock’s February 1933 about the Berlin writers persecuted by Hitler as he came to power. But who can blame them!!

On Stage – a shout out to the London production of O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night with Brian Cox and Patricia Clarkson that upped the morphine addict angle….

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