(opinion article)

It still remains a mystery to me on what basis books are selected for the school curriculum. In our time, ‘Morphine’ was definitely not in it, but in vain. It seems to me that it would be useful for young people to read about such pseudo-pleasures without embellishment, in all, so to speak, details. Maybe someone’s brains will fall into place. And they will think before they try any rubbish. It’s easy to get used to the bad, the harder to get used to the good. It’s unbearably hard to walk past the shelves of chocolates and chips when you’re a chocoholic or a Sun Chip guy.. And if I want to sleep a little longer, and not stomp on the damn workout… why yes or not?

Yes, yes, everything useful and right is given through force, often as a burden and through clenched teeth. But any nastiness and harmfulness clings like a burdock, and it’s hard to erase it from life afterwards. ‘Morphine’ is the memories of the doctor Bomgard about 1917. Most of the story, Beaumgard reads the diary of his late friend, physician Polyakov, who became a morphine addict. To relieve the acute pain in the abdomen, Polyakov asks the midwife who works with him, Anna, to inject him with a dose of morphine. After the injection, feeling relief from the physical and mental (Polyakova left the girl) torment, the doctor continues to inject himself with morphine, promising himself that this time will definitely be the last.

A short but impressive story about how, day after day, a person is slowly but surely killing himself. And yes, he is so realistic and detailed, because Bulgakov was a morphine addict. And in the story, the writer gives the most detailed, as in a medical reference book, description of the first stage of the drug’s action on the human body. The writer began to use morphine in 1924 to relieve painful symptoms of kidney disease.

Traces of morphine were found on the pages of the manuscript of the novel ‘The Master and Margarita’ three quarters of a century after Bulgakov’s death.

Based on ‘Morphine’ and “Notes of a Young Doctor”, the film “Morphine” was shot (film director Alexei Balabanov) in 2008.

What do you think causes a person to turn to drugs?

If one of your relatives, friends, began to use drugs, what would you do?

Do you think it is worth protecting young people from such details? Or tell the truth and the consequences as it is?