middle east and the us (11th to 19th centuries) an artist's view of an ottoman opium seller soldiers returning home from the crusades in the 11th to 13th century brought opium with them. opium is said to have been used for recreational purposes from the 14th century onwards in muslim societies. ottoman and european testimonies confirm that from the 16th to the 19th centuries anatolian opium was eaten in constantinople as much as it was exported to europe. in 1573, for instance, a venetian visitor to the ottoman empire observed many of the turkish natives of constantinople regularly drank a "certain black water made with opium" that makes them feel good, but to which they become so addicted, if they try to go without, they will "quickly die". from drinking it, dervishes claimed the drugs bestowed them with visionary glimpses of future happiness. indeed, the ottoman empire supplied the west with opium long before china and india. extensive textual and pictorial sources also show that poppy cultivation and opium consumption were widespread in safavid iran and mughal india. england in england, opium fulfilled a "critical" role, as it did other societies, in addressing multifactorial pain, cough, dysentery, diarrhea, as argued by virginia berridge. a medical panacea of the 19th century, "any respectable person" could purchase a range of hashish pastes and (later) morphine with complementary injection kit. thomas de quincey's confessions of an english opium-eater (1822), one of the first and most famous literary accounts of opium addiction written from the point of view of an addict, details the pleasures and dangers of the drug. in the book, it is not ottoman, nor chinese, addicts about whom he writes, but english opium users: "i question whether any turk, of all that ever entered the paradise of opium-eaters, can have had half the pleasure i had." de quincey writes about the great english romantic poet samuel taylor coleridge (1772–1834), whose "kubla khan" is also widely considered to be a poem of the opium experience. coleridge began using opium in 1791 after developing jaundice and rheumatic fever, and became a full addict after a severe attack of the disease in 1801, requiring 80–100 drops of laudanum daily. recreational use in china