The world before drugs

I don't believe that it was always like this, drugs everywhere, I believe there was a time when drugs weren't discovered. At what time did drugs become discovered? And what was the vice of the time before drugs? Alcohol?

• Drugs have been with us as long as there have been people with mouths. Even bacteria like to get fucked up. Elephants, dogs, birds, they all like to get fucked up.

• While drugs have been around forever, they were not common until the late 60s. Drinking and Smoking were as bad as it got for teens before then. If you had to pick a specific time, then ..1967, The Summer of Love was it. by 1970, drugs were everywhere. Different drugs have come in and out of fashion but "drug culture" hasn't waned since then. And yes, Rock Music is 100% responsible. Here's a little "Mamas & the Papas" from 1966 (parents would sing along and have no idea)

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DsM-c-gghLZc

  Go%20Ask%20Alice

• My grandfather's brother was a junkie sometime around the early 19th century. He was a Jewish boy living on the Lower East Side, very, very uncommon for such a boy to become a junkie. He was also a very tough street fighter that the neighborhood was afraid of. He broke every stereotype.

• I would say opium and hootch of any moonshine variety have been very, very popular for many years. And so have most psilocybins. Millennia.

• I always marked it between the class of 1963 and 1964. Coincided with the Beatles' appearance on Ed Sullivan. The world changed in an instant.

• R2 over half of what you assert is completely made up. Just because you "feel" something to be true doesn't make it so. People like you are bizarre.

• Even the cast of The Lawrence Welk Show were turning on!

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dt8tdmaEhMHE

• The Beatles weren't initially druggy, r5. You got the first hint of drugs with Revolver in 1966. Then all bets were off with Sgt. Pepper's in 1967

• Before the 60's, Pot was considered something only Mexicans or Blacks did and Opium was something only the Chinese did. The drug of choice for white America was booze.

• All this substance talk makes me want a spliff.

• [quote]At what time did drugs become discovered? And what was the vice of the time before drugs? Alcohol? The Ancient Sumerians, who are the oldest known civilization, cultivated opium poppies for medicinal, ritual, and recreational use. They called the plant "Hul Gil" -- "the joy plant." The cultivation of poppies was passed down to other Mesopotamian civilizations and spread throughout the Mideast, Africa and Central Asia. Thus, there was never a time in human history when drugs weren't around.

• [quote]My grandfather's brother was a junkie sometime around the early 19th century. How old are you? Early 19th Century? Really?

• This is ridiculous. Cocaine was popular from the turn of the century, particularly among silent film stars, vaudevillians, and flappers. Heroin and opium are even older. The so-called Beat Generation embraced drugs a decade before the Beatles existed. Where do people get their history from?

• Drugs have been around since mankind has been around.

• Didn't people of central/south america chew cocoa leaves to work longer?

• Natural plants, insects, trees... Drugs have been around forever.

  Ancient%20Khat%20Chewers

• [quote]Before the 60's, Pot was considered something only Mexicans or Blacks did and Opium was something only the Chinese did. Total bullshit. The beatniks of the '50s tried pretty much everything: pot, speed, heroin, etc. Colonialists in SE Asia had been using opium for centuries, and it had migrated to parts of the U.S., particularly San Francisco, by the early 1900s. OP, you are way off in your assertions that "drugs are everywhere" and they were somehow "invented" around the same time. Peyote use dates back 10,000 years - literally (to the Archaic period in North America). People have been smoking pot for over 2,500 years. Opium has both of them beat, dating back 12,000 years; it was also commonly traded at the peak of the Egyptian and Greek Empires. If you're referring to laboratory-created substances, cocaine was first synthesized in 1855 (though people had been chewing coca leaves for centuries beforehand), heroin was invented in 1874, and meth was first synthesized in 1893. All that said, less than 5% of the American public regularly uses any sort of illegal drug.

• Coca. And yes they still do.

  Anonymous

• [R17] is right, there is no sense to the fear people have of substance or substance abuse. If you aren't doing it, mind your business; if you are, that's your problem and mind your business.

  Anonymous

• I don't think there ever was a world without drugs. From the very earliest historical accounts, men were growing grapes and making wine. My aboriginal American ancestors were using tobacco and peyote and no telling what other natural intoxicants. As soon as they started refining and selling opiates, people started killing themselves with addiction. And the addiction to cocaine goes all the way back to when people learned to chew the coca leaves.

• Born in 1952. My grandfather was born in 1895. This was his older brother.

• It's likely our shared primate antecessor (the proto-primate tree shrew) also got high, as many other animals do/did too.

  http://www.cracked.com/article_17032_7-species-that-get-high-more-than-we-do.html

• R12, 60 and yes, that is quite old, lol.

  OoopS! R21=R3

• [quote]Pipes uncovered in the garden of Shakespeare’s home in 2001 showed evidence of cannabis and cocaine.

  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/06/23/scientists-want-to-dig-up-shakespeare-to-find-out-if-he-smoked-weed/

  OP%20needs%20a%20drug%20edumacation%21

• [R8] musically I'd say the first reference to drugs was "Day Tripper" and listen to "Girl" on "Rubber Soul" again. John is totally taking hits during the chorus (aww, girl *inhales* girl...)

• Check out the latest Lapham's Quarterly for an a great historical take on Human's need to get high, drunk, etc. Pot goes way way back. Beer does too (invented by women, no less.) Opium too. OP is subscribing to a false nostalgia. But perhaps what you're really nostalgic for isn't a life before drugs but a life before the policing of drugs.

• Bayer market heroin and it was available over the counter from 1898 to 1914 as a non-addictive substitute for morphine. From 1914 to 1924 it was available on prescription, and then it was banned. It would be interesting to know if Bayer knew it was addictive and marketed it anyway just st he tobacco companies knew tobacco was addictive and denied to the public. Morphine was isolated from opium in 1804, Merck first sold it over the counter in 1827 from its one room store. Now it is an international giant in pharmaceuticals. Drug pushers at the top of the chain made money then and they make it now. "Long Day's Journey Into Night," Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece, came out in 1914. O'Neil, an alcoholic had a morphine addicted mother and the mother in the play has a morphine habit. Fairly common occurrence for people to pick up a habit from their doctors' prescription. Cocaine was isolated in 1859 and of course coca leaves have been in use since pre-historical times. n 1886, the popularity of the drug got a further boost when John Pemberton included coca leaves as an ingredient in his new soft drink, Coca-Cola. The euphoric and energizing effects on the consumer helped to skyrocket the popularity of Coca-Cola by the turn of the century. "From the 1850s to the early 1900s, cocaine and opium-laced elixirs (magical or medicinal potions), tonics and wines were broadly used by people of all social classes. Notable figures who promoted the “miraculous” effects of cocaine tonics and elixirs included inventor Thomas Edison and actress Sarah Bernhardt. The drug became popular in the silent film industry and the pro-cocaine messages coming out of Hollywood at that time influenced millions. Cocaine use in society increased and the dangers of the drug gradually became more evident. Public pressure forced the Coca-Cola company to remove the cocaine from the soft drink in 1903." See link. Opium and coca leaves were used in the British Navy as a medical supply as early as 1800.

  http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/cocaine/a-short-history.html

• Is this just another example of Baby Boomer narcissism, which tends to erase all history preceding and following Boomer culture? BBs think they invented youth, music, rebellion, and now apparently, mood-altering substances. Gimme a break.

• You can thank Ronald AND Nancy Reagan for the idiocy of the OP and R2.

• In Atlanta, where I grew up, drugs were pretty rare until 1973. Then all of a sudden they began to pop up everywhere.

• I am such a retard I thought op refered to medications I was bout to lecture him on the history of penicillin

• Many pagan religions incorporated drug use as a way to achieve a heightened sense of "communication" with their respective gods. The Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Native Americans, Asians ALL used drugs to worship. It was only until the puritanical Abrahamic (Judaism/Christianity/Islam) religions came about that restraint, repression and humility were introduced.

• Opium, marijuana and alcohol are ancient Hallucinogenics are very old too tho they were primarily used in religions Cocaine, absinthe and amphetamines are more modern, but still very old I think the only thing that has changed is the number of people getting high and the extent that drug use is no longer very hidden. It use to be a very secret thing, addiction was a family's dirty little secret, recreational drug use was kept secret and was usually a young persons way of acting out, sowing wild oats before a person fully matured, now it's pretty main stream and almost an accepted part of society.

• I doubt it, R28. We Boomers have been around long enough to have a bit of historical perspective. One of my favorite albums back in the 1970's was "Marijuana Jazz Songs of the 30's and 40's" featuring such classics as "Wacky Dust", "If You're a Viper", "Minnie the Moocher" and "Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine". We knew about the "elixirs" of the 19th century and the good old days when Coca Cola contained cocaine.

• [quote]The drug of choice for white America was booze That'z rrright! Practically n'one wash under the influenze of drugsh in Hollywood bfore then!

  Judy, Marylin, James and Monty

• Traces of cocaine and tobacco were found in the mummy of RFamses the Great. This is surprising, not because drugs were found in the mummy, but those particular drugs are indiginous to the Americas. The Egyptians used the blue lotus for its hallucinogenic and euphoric effects. As stated above, many ancient civilizations knew about the properties of opium, and its use has been common up today. Why, in the Chinese Emperors'courts, would-be eunichs were given an opium pipe to smoke before their balls were cut off. Sooooo....drug use has been around for a minute, OP.

  Laud Danum

• R36: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Just because some scientist somewhere asserts something doesn't make it true -- see cold fusion. Those findings have been questioned. There doesn't seem to be independent analysis and published results in peer-reviewed journals. False positives are quite likely unless those mummies were tested in very controlled circumstances with zero possibility of contamination from those who handled it. Testing devices are now so good that they can find traces of cocaine of 80% of dollar bills. Which hypothesis has been come completely confirmed -- that somebody who handled them had come into contact with tobacco and cocaine, or the entire known history of ancient trade has to be discarded because of one or two unconfirmed assertions?

  http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2375/whats-up-with-the-cocaine-mummies

• People always had the knowledge about drugs like opium, coca, peyote, cannabis and others. It was part of everyday life for indigenous people.

  anonymous

• The history of Alcohol in America is pretty fascinating. Prohibition didn't just come about because a bunch of uptight biddies wanted to bitch about something, there was a real problem with intoxication on a daily basis with a large percentage of the population. The lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner were fitted to the melody of an 18th Century British tavern song. In 1830 church bells announced to whole town the when it was time to stop and take a drink. By the 1890s the use of alcohol was prevalent -and expected- to happen at regular intervals throughout the day.

• OP? Are you retarded? Opium, cannabis, peyote and magic mushrooms all occur naturally. There are prehistoric cave drawings depicting use of these drugs. Beer and wine have been produced and consumed for several millennia at least. The ancient Egyptians were brewing beer 5,000 years ago.

• Yes, we switched from hunting and gathering to being farmers mainly because we all wanted to get fucked up on alcohol.

• [quote]I don't believe that it was always like this, drugs everywhere, I believe there was a time when drugs weren't discovered. opinion has been around for millennia

• Something like that.

• Perhaps the OP meant a time before drugs were common in high schools?

• Nothing in his post I indicates that, R44. He actually refers to "the world before drugs". Perhaps he's just a blabbering idiot.

• In my family lore, my great great great grandfather and my great great great grandfather (his son, both famous) were highly addicted to cocaine. This would be from around 1830-1880.

• [quote]"Long Day's Journey Into Night," Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece, came out in 1914. O'Neil, an alcoholic had a morphine addicted mother and the mother in the play has a morphine habit. Fairly common occurrence for people to pick up a habit from their doctors' prescription. LDJIN was written in 1942 and first produced and published in 1956, after O'Neill's death. The events depicted take place in 1914.

  Dramma Kah-ween

• [quote] Perhaps the OP meant a time before drugs were common in high schools? What a strange comment. What part of OP's statement remotely refers to high schools?

• I'm my own great great great grandpa, R46?

• [quote]The history of Alcohol in America is pretty fascinating. Prohibition didn't just come about because a bunch of uptight biddies wanted to bitch about something, there was a real problem with intoxication on a daily basis with a large percentage of the population. When a large percentage of the available water is tainted, the safest solution is to drink liquids that have been distilled or brewed.

• Indeed r50. Forgot to add that tidbit.

• My great-uncle spent a large part of the 1930s smoking marijuana. He always talked very openly about it and said it was a great time. We all knew about it and I never heard anyone in the family speak of it in any negative sense. When Robert Mitchum was busted for possession in 1948 and made his famous remarks about it, my uncle agreed with him completely.

• Drugs have been around forever, naturally. OP is referring to meth which was invented by the Japanese, right? Crack was invented by a man from the Dominican Republic. He figured out a way to infuse it faster with baking soda and then we all died a little bit. MDMA was invented by the Germans, I think. Correct me here if I'm mistaken. Weed and coke have been around since dawn. Mushrooms too. People in the middle ages drank Mead and ale because the water wasn't safe to drink.

• [quote] In my family lore, my great great great grandfather and my great great great grandfather (his son, both famous) were highly addicted to cocaine. This would be from around 1830-1880. Charles Darwin et fils?

• [quote]What part of OP's statement remotely refers to high schools? Moreover, drug use in high schools has dropped *substantially* over the past decade -- everything from booze and cigs to pot to the heavy stuff.

• Drug references in rock and roll go back at least as far as 1965, when the Who released "My Generation." That stuttering singing style mimicked kids who were using amphetamines.

• People were always avid for anything that makes them high.If we stick around long enough to become intergalactic and explore the universe Sci-Fi style,can you imagine what kind of drugs are there in space to discover?

• Drugs have become "every where" only rather recently. Mood altering prescription drugs are handed out like candy. People are put on drugs at a young age today... during childhood. And there is no shame in this, it is normal and accepted. Drugs are not a niche thing as they were in the past... they are now for the masses.

• Laudanum was what your great-great-great granny was getting fucked up on.

• Opiates were used to treat physical ailments during a time when there was not much else out there. This was a time when people were dying of things like dysentary. They were also used to control pain. There was not much else. Of course they were abused. But you really can't compare the reasons for those drugs, with the drugs we have today.

• R58, what R6 said to R2

• [quote]My grandfather was born in 1895. This was his older brother. He would have to be at least 95 years older to have been a junkie in the EARLY 19th century!