In Philippa Gregorys novel Wideacre (1987), the main character Beatrice Lacey nearly becomes addicted to laudanum when her eventual husband Dr. John MacAndrew prescribes it to her after her mothers death. In the adaptation Interview with the Vampire (1994), which was based on the 1976 novel with the same name, Claudia uses laudanum to try and dispose of Lestat: Under the pretext of making peace, she offers him some drunk noble-blood twins to feed on, when she actually had them overdosed with the said drug. In the film Tombstone (1993), Mattie Earp (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson), Wyatt Earps wife is addicted to laudanum. At the beginning of the film at the train station after her husband introduces her to his brothers and sisters-in-law she states, "Well, Wyatt, I couldnt find a single store that had laudanum anywhere." Her sister-in-law Louisa Earp (Lisa Collins) later said " Matter, Honey? Did you say you needed some laudanum? [...] I have some right here," hands Mattie a bottle and says, "Just be careful, now. Its full of hop," to which Mattie replies, "Oh, dont worry. I just get headaches sometimes." Later in the bedroom she and Wyatt shares, Mattie drinking out of a bottle, shows the effects of laudanum, hiding the bottle as Wyatt enters the bedroom asking, "Is that the opium Lou gave you? Its a new bottle, isnt it?
Earlier in the novel, in Chapter 3, it is specified that she uses laudanum.... if Molly should take a drop too much laudanum some day, and make a widower of you. Wilkie Collins novel The Moonstone (1868) features laudanum "as an essential ingredient of the plot." Collins based his description of the drugs effects on his own experiences with it. A laudanum-addicted character also appeared in Wilkie Collins novel Armadale (1864–66). Laudanum appears in Charles Baudelaires prose poem The Double Room, published in his collection Le Spleen de Paris in 1869. Laudanum is portrayed as the surgical drug of choice for fifteenth-century physicians in Lawrence Schoonovers novel The Burnished Blade (1948), the plot of which deals in part with the smuggling of expensive raw opium into France from the Empire of Trebizond. In William Faulkners novel Requiem for a Nun (1951), Compson, Doctor Peabody, and Ratcliffe give whiskey tainted with laudanum to a group of rowdy lynchers and a militia band that had joined together. Upon their falling asleep, they were gathered up and locked in jail while still unconscious. Stephen Maturin, one of the main characters in Patrick OBrians Aubrey–Maturin series of novels (1969–2004) about the Napoleonic wars, is a sometime laudanum addict. Laudanum is prescribed in Glendon Swarthouts novel The Shootist (1975) to the character J.B. Books, played by John Wayne in Don Siegels movie adaptation (1976).