NAMES IN THE NEWS : Author Doubts Drug Use by Poe

A researcher says Edgar Allan Poe’s reputation as a drug fiend is undeserved. Christopher Eckard, a ranger and researcher at the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia, has gone through the writer’s letters and other documents and has found no mention of the opium and morphine habits usually attributed to Poe.

“The bottom line is that there is no hard evidence to back up any of Poe’s reputation,” said Eckard, author of the study “Did Poe Just Say No?” Daniel Hoffman, an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania, questions Eckard’s conclusion.

“The absence of such mention (in Poe’s letters) is not in itself conclusive,” he said. “Although one should resist the temptation to identify Poe with the abusers in his stories, he was interested in altered states of consciousness. He knew enough about drug-induced trances to know its effect on people.”