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But I had never really given it much thought until I did this story. When I was traveling in the Southeast Asia mountains, the villagers would often invite me to smoke opium with them. It wasn’t the first time I had smoked opium. This photograph of a Chinese man smoking opium with his cat in San Francisco became a best-selling souvenir postcard. While I was hired to translate and set up interviews, he asked me to smoke the drug so he could observe and write the details into his story. Karl, who had at one time been addicted to heroin when he was living in New York City, wanted to do the story, but he didn’t want to get anywhere near the opium, obviously. This one little town was a must-stop on the backpackers’ circuit. Through some weird quirk of history, this sort of opium smoking was eradicated every place else, but Laos still had the traditional public opium den that anybody could walk into, recline, and have an attendant prepare opium for them to smoke.Īctually, Karl’s story was more about the backpackers who were coming to Southeast Asia and causing a resurgence of opium smoking, especially in Vang Vieng, just north of the capital, Vientiane. He wanted to do a story about the remnants of opium smoking in Laos, which, at the time, was the only country in the world where you could see opium smoking in the traditional Chinese manner-that is, with a pipe that’s designed to vaporize the drug and a lamp as a source of heat and all the crazy, little tools and accoutrements. Martin: In 2001, I was working as a fixer and translator for a good friend of mine, Karl Taro Greenfeld, a journalist for the Asian edition of Time. That’s why I hung out in opium dens and experimented with the drug.” “I had all these little tools and wasn’t sure what they were. The opium bed is at the back of the room. Collectors Weekly: What drew you to antique opium paraphernalia?Ī luxurious and ornately decorated opium smoking room, possibly inside one of the “flower boat” that could be hired for a night of opium smoking on the Pearl River. This summer, Random House published his latest book, Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction, in which Martin details how his obsessive collectors’ bug led to his opium addiction. Before long, he and a friend had created their own private opium den in rural Southeast Asia, but when another of Martin’s smoking buddies, a top Asian ceramics expert, died in 2008, possibly from withdrawal symptoms, Martin knew he had to quit before it was too late for him, too. As he came across various pipes and tools, he sought out the last of the Laotian opium dens to learn how these accoutrements were used and, yes, to try them himself. Martin’s research wasn’t limited to mining Victorian medical books or hunting down authentic pieces on eBay.

Above: This Vietnamese smoker’s layout included a hardwood tray with mother-of-pearl inlay and miniature, spittoon-shaped pots on which to rest pipe-bowls. Top: Anti-opium propaganda poster from China, circa 1930. After years of intense research, he produced the first opium-smoking antiques guide, The Art of Opium Antiques, in 2007. Because opium smoking had been so thoroughly eradicated around the globe in the early 20th century, Martin realized very little had been written about these objects.

There, he also discovered the beauty of antique opium pipes, bowls, and lamps, as well as opium trays and the hundreds of little implements that went with the ritual. Eventually the Navy veteran found his way to Bangkok, Thailand, where he worked as a journalist and travel writer, covering Southeast Asia. Recently, Steven Martin-no relation to the actor-came by the Collectors Weekly office and told me all about his harrowing journey from collecting to substance abuse. He started out collecting innocuous things at first, it was seashells and stones, then it was currency and Asian antiques like textiles.

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But leave it to an obsessive antiques collector to figure out how to get to addicted to a 19th-century drug. The Victorian-era form of the drug, known as chandu, is rare, and the people who know how to use it aren’t exactly forthcoming. You really have to work hard to get hooked on smoking opium.