Anodyne, opiate, narcotic and nepenthe mean something used to dull or deaden one’s senses or one’s sensibility and are often used adjectivally.
Anodyne is frequently used as the opposite of stimulant.
- had . . . made anodyne translations from Homer and Sophocles in “rhymic” and sleepy prose
—Santayana
It usually suggests something that allays excitement or mitigates mental distress often by inducing forgetfulness or oblivion.
- this kind of religion cannot be anything better than an anodyne; but an anodyne is unfortunately just what many people want from their religion
—Inge - mutiny among the crews of Columbus was too much of a menace for the comforting daily sight of drifting vegetation not to be a very real mental anodyne
—Beebe
Opiate usually is applied to something that induces a dream state and a delusion of happiness; it also commonly suggests indifference to actual evils and a false sense of security or well-being with consequent stilling of all disturbing thoughts.
- price-fixing is a most dangerous economic opiate
—T. W. Arnold - no military swagger of my mind, can smother from myself the wrong I’ve done him,—without design, indeed,—yet it is so,—and opiate for the conscience have I none
—Keats
Narcotic implies a putting to sleep or into a stupor; in figurative use, it suggests merely a pleasant drowsiness which overcomes one and has a lulling effect on mind and body.
- many lovers of the arts find in music, poetry, painting, and the novel escapes, as narcotic as they are delightful, from the pressures and exigencies in which we are involved
—Edman - the promise that religion offers of a larger reward is less likely to serve as a moral stimulant than as a moral narcotic
—Garvin
Nepenthe, the designation of a legendary drug or potion of the ancient Greeks, said to allay pain and sorrow, is used in modern English with the implication of something sweet and pleasurable substituted for something painful.
- after the fiery stimulants, compounded of brimstone and bigotry, offered by the polemic theologians, the gentle sedative of Montaigne’s conversation comes like a draft of nepenthe
—Preserved Smith
It is also freely used to denote the state of placid peace resulting from the use of a nepenthe.
- only . . . in idle chatter and consoling gossip and scandal, and in the more unendurable cases in drink, can they find nepenthe
—Nathan