apomorphine

Why did you stop taking drugs? 

BURROUGHS:

I was living in Tangier in 1957, and I had spent a month in a tiny room in the Casbah staring at the toe of my foot. The room had filled up with empty Eukodol cartons; I suddenly realized I was not doing anything. I was dying. I was just apt to be finished. So I flew to London and turned myself over to Dr. John Yerbury Dent for treatment. I've heard of his success with apomorphine treatment. Apomorphine is simply morphine boiled in hydrochloric acid; it's nonaddictive. What the apomorphine did was to regulate my metabolism. It's a metabolic regulator. It cured me physiologically. I'd already taken the cure once at Lexington, and although I was off drugs when I got out, there was a physiological residue. Apomorphine eliminated that. I've been trying to get people in this country interested in it, but without much luck. The vast majority - social workers, doctors - have the cop's mentality toward addiction. A probation officer in California wrote me recently to inquire about the apomorphine treatment. I'll answer him at length. I always answer letters like that. 

INTERVIEWER:

Have you had any relapses? 

BURROUGHS:

Yes, a couple. Short. Both were straightened out with apomorphine, and now heroin is no temptation for me. I'm just not interested. I've seen a lot of it around. I know people who are addicts. I don't have to use any willpower. Dr. Dent always said there is no such thing as willpower. You've got to reach a state of mind in which you don't want it or need it.

The miracle was accomplished with the aid of a remarkable physician, Dr. John Yerbury Dent, and a new compound called apomorphine. Apomorphine is made by boiling morphine with hydrochloric acid and it allegedly acts on the back brain to regulate the metabolism. "I can state definitely," Burroughs has written in the British Journal of Addiction, "that I was never metabolically cured until I took the apomorphine cure." Over the years before Dr. Dent died, Burroughs sent numerous other addicts to him, with, reportedly, equally favorable results. But the American medical profession still maintains an uninterest in the whole subject. "They are afraid of apomorphine here," Burroughs says. "It's a semantic hang-up: The association with morphine scares them." Burroughs is convinced that apomorphine is the best tool' yet invented to handle all forms of anxiety and addiction, and is tirelessly propagandizing for further research to be done with it. One psychiatrist in New York has been persuaded by Burroughs to try it on alcoholics and reports good results; the Federal hospital for narcotic addicts at Lexington still remains coldly indifferent.

always wondered about this.
it has gotten little to no attention, scant anecdotal info, and it is, very rarely, used as an emetic.

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💬 4 comments

4 Comments

wolfmoon· 07 Aug 2026

Interesting! So who is still addicted and wants to give it a shot?

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sereneforest81· 25 Aug 2026

It was widely suggested at the time that the "apomorphine treatment" - Dent never considered it a cure - was not advocated by the pharmaceuticals because they had no patent.....and wouldn't recommend a treatment that actually worked! Methadone is ok for these self interested groups because it transfers addiction to one that's available on prescription. Kerching!! Ludicrously, Apomorphine became discredited as impossible to use, dangerous, associated with Nazism, etc. etc. Nowadays, however, you can get a sublingual form which is an alternative for Viagra.

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woodsyseal· 29 Aug 2026

alt for viagra?! how the fuck that? anyway, i spoke with someone who tried it, said the result from na IV shot was a projectile InstaPuke. burroughs was probably full of shit, as he often is, as often as he nails it. and he did die on methadone, as i recall.

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sereneforest81· 11 Sept 2026

Well, the emetic side effect is dose dependent.......too much and you will certainly vomit. Not enough research has gone into this treatment. We know that many that become drug dependent are dopamine deficient. It is tempting to suggest therefore that a dopamine agonist (like apomorphine) could make up the shortfall and aid recovery as well as withdrawal. Too much attention was given to the emetic properties of apomorphine leading many to assume its efficacy was purely down to aversion. This is simply not true.

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