Historians have put forward conflicting opinions on this, as they have with pretty much everything to do with opium. I think you may be overstating the effects of opium as used in its basic form, as well... "leaving yourself" implies a completely unconscious/comatose state which wasn't really what typical users sought or found.

W. Somerset Maugham wrote about the typical Western idea of an 'opium den', with its highly exaggerated darkness, and then compared it to a visit to an actual opium den:

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On the stage it makes a very effective set. It is dimly lit. The room is low and squalid. In one corner a lamp burns mysteriously before a hideous image and incense fills the theatre with its exotic scent. A pig-tailed Chinaman wanders to and fro, aloof and saturnine, while on wretched pallets lie stupefied the victims of the drug. Now and then one of them breaks into frantic raving. There is a highly dramatic scene where some poor creature, unable to pay for the satisfaction of his craving, with prayers and curses begs the villainous proprietor for a pipe to still his anguish. I have read also in novels descriptions which made my blood run cold. And when I was taken to an opium den by a smooth-spoken Eurasian the narrow, winding stairway up which he led me prepared me sufficiently to receive the thrill I expected.

I was introduced into a neat enough room, brightly lit, divided into cubicles the raised floor of which, covered with clean matting, formed a convenient couch. In one an elderly gentleman, with a grey head and very beautiful hands, was quietly reading a newspaper, with his long pipe by his side. In another two coolies were lying, with a pipe between them, which they alternately prepared and smoked. They were young men, of a hearty appearance, and they smiled at me in a friendly way. One of them offered me a smoke. In a third four men squatted over a chess-board, and a little further on a man was dandling a baby while the baby's mother, whom I took to be the landlord's wife, a plump, pleasant-faced woman, watched him with a broad smile on her lips. It was a cheerful spot, comfortable, home-like, and cosy. It reminded me somewhat of the little intimate beer-houses of Berlin where the tired working man could go in the evening and spend a peaceful hour. Fiction is stranger than fact.

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...opium dens played a similar role to bars, pubs, and other such establishments in Europe. The relative advantages and disadvantages of opium when compared to alcohol have been written about, debated, and, lately, re-debated at length, but the 'den' itself was simply another social space where a particular substance was on offer - not some kind of psychological bathysphere.