In the Beginning, There Were Drugs

Despite popular belief, the oldest profession was really pharmacognosy, the study of sources of drugs. According to the Book of Genesis, there were mind-altering drugs even before there was sex. By Genesis 3, Adam and Eve, with only the slightest nudge from the serpent, head straight for the tree of knowledge: the mind-expander. By Genesis 9:20–25, Noah has discovered the effects of alcohol. By 30:14–16, the wives in Jacob's dysfunctional family are bartering mandrake roots for sex (mandrake historically having many uses, including as a conception aid, aphrodisiac, sedative, narcotic, and as an oral purgative).

The Bible isn't the only early record that mentions drug use. In Book IX of Homer's Odyssey, as Odysseus and his crew are trying to find their way home across the Mediterranean after the Trojan War, they come to the Island of the Lotos (sometimes Lotus) Eaters. The crewmembers eat a bit of lotos, described as a sweet fruit, and lose all interest in returning home. Not one to tolerate substance abuse, Odysseus reports how he handled the situation: "… though they wept bitterly I forced them back to the ships and made them fast under the benches."

After leaving the Island of the Lotos Eaters, Odysseus travels to the Island of the Cyclops, where the one-eyed monster traps and begins to consume his crew. Odysseus offers the Cyclops some of the wine he had taken from the ship. The results? "As he spoke he reeled, and fell sprawling face upwards on the ground." Odysseus, taking advantage of the situation, blinds the Cyclops and escapes with his remaining crew.

Which Really Came First – Alcohol or Drugs?

Recorded history shows that drugs came before alcohol. The first non-Biblical written record of drug use may be from the Sumerians, who, around 5000 BCE cultivated opium. Alcohol (from breweries, not vineyards) isn't mentioned in written records until around 3500 BCE in Egypt. And it seems that alcohol was being used for about 1,500 years before any problems began to appear. Around 2000 BCE an Egyptian priest recorded the first warnings against drunkenness: "I, thy superior, forbid thee to go to the taverns. Thou art degraded like beasts."

Purveyors of Vice

As trade routes with the New World opened in the early 16th century, the trade in drugs really expanded. Columbus, after his first voyage, brought tobacco, cocoa, and coca to Europe. During this period a variety of stimulants were offered to the eager European consumer: coffee was shipped in from Arabia and Turkey, the kola nut from Africa, and tea from China.

Coffee became a widespread vice in the 17th century. In France, Louis XIV granted coffee monopolies with the hope of raising prices high enough to discourage coffee drinking. In Turkey, there were also attempts to control coffee drinking, even though the government was growing rich on the import duties. In English cities, coffeehouses were springing up, which made tavern-owners fear that the imported beverage would ruin their trade in locally produced beer.

Even as these new drugs took hold in popularity, alcohol was making something of a comeback, in part because of the development of distilleries and in part because of the introduction (c. 1650) of gin from Holland. Distilling allowed the production of beverages with higher concentrations of alcohol than traditional wines and beers, while the use of juniper berries as a basis for an alcoholic drink (gin) led to lower prices, making drunkenness more affordable to the common man.

But consumption of alcohol grew so rapidly that governments tried to control its use though taxation. In 1736, England passed the Gin Act, which was designed to make gin unaffordable to all but the very wealthy. In the US, a tax on alcohol led to the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794.

Marijuana was introduced to Europe when Napoleon's forces returned from Egypt at the end of the 1700s, but aside from a few Frenchmen, it didn't, at the time, develop a popular following.

Signs of a Social Problem?

The increased usage of alcohol and drugs in the western world caused concerns about stimulant abuse and its social side effects. Benjamin Rush (c. 1745–1813), the leading American physician of his time, estimated that alcoholism accounted for 4,000 deaths each year and called for a tax so high that it would effectively stop the sale of alcohol.

Aside from alcohol, which remained a major social problem on both sides of the Atlantic, recreational drugs were not treated as a social problem until well into the 20th century. On the contrary, in the early 1800s, opium (known as laudanum) and its derivatives were widely used for many purposes, particularly by persons of letters. Coleridge's use of laudanum is well known; Shelley drank laudanum to treat headaches; Keats used it as a painkiller; and Byron took Kendal Black Drop, a mixture of opium and alcohol, as a tranquilizer; Jane Austen's mother is said to have recommended laudanum for travel sickness.

And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle begins his novel The Sign of Four with, "Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff."

So it is a Problem …

In the early 20th century, tea and coffee had long passed into the social mainstream, and alcohol and morphine were acceptable as long as they were limited to social occasions. Nonetheless, though they were not always respected, laws aimed at ridding society of drug abuse were passed.

In Canada, during the 1920s, laws were made to prohibit the trade in opium – although there has been speculation that these laws were less motivated by a desire to stop the opium traffic than to penalize the Chinese, who were the largest users of opium. After the US passed the 18th Amendment to the Constitution (commonly known as Prohibition), limiting the distribution of whiskey, it was estimated that physicians were making about $40 million a year (about $617 million in 2003 dollars) by writing prescriptions for alcohol.

In 1929, based on questionable science, the US put tight regulations on marijuana. Even though the science was disproved in 1944, the regulations stayed, although now the argument is that marijuana is a "gateway drug," in that its use leads to use of more dangerous drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

Expanding the Pharmacopia

There are other drugs of course. The Australian Aborigines used several nicotine containing plants, and understood both how to potentiate the effects of nicotine and how to adjust the dose to make the alkaloid either a stimulant or depressant. Betel nuts, or areca nuts, which are native to Southeast Asia, are chewed to release their alkaloid arecoline and are the most widely used stimulant in the world. In the southwestern US, Mexico, and much of Central America, hallucinogenic cacti are used for recreational purposes and in religious rituals. (The most common is the peyote cactus, which, along with other species, contains mescaline.) It has been suggested that the only humans who don't have a history of recreational drug use are the Inuit, and that is less a matter of self-restraint than a lack of local vegetation that might contain some stimulant, sedative, or hallucinogen.

In keeping with the human desire to find a drug that will be pleasant, but not addictive, researchers have developed a long list of failures. Diacetylmorphine, commonly called heroin, was synthesized in the 19th century as a non-addictive alternative to morphine. It was not regulated in the US until 1931, and in the 1970s it was recognized as a major cause of drug abuse. Attempts to manufacture non-addictive opium analogues included meperidine (Demerol), propoxyphene (Darvon), and pentazocine (Talwin), all of which turned out to have potential for abuse. The best attempt at a safe alternative to barbiturates was methaqualone, which achieved notoriety under the brand name Quaalude. The perfect, safe high has been maddeningly elusive.

Hooked on Drugs?

In spite of all efforts, humankind and drugs seem to be linked. Once, caffeine was considered a dangerous stimulant and coffeehouses were hardly different from speakeasies or opium dens. Now, coffee and tea are classed as everyday foods. Tobacco was once a near universal vice, but with multiple studies detailing its dangers, its use is now in steady decline, at least in North America. Meanwhile, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, reports that opium production (first cultivated, you recall, in 5000 BCE), at least in Afghanistan, has been increasing at a rate of about 7-8% a year.

Is there an answer to the drug problem? Probably not. From Eden's apple to the bliss-bringing soma in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, to the drugs on drugstore shelves, no one has created a drug without undesirable effects and consequences. In Brave New World, Huxley offers an alternative solution:

Hug me till you drug me, honey; Kiss me till I'm in a coma; Hug me, honey, snuggly bunny; Love's as good as soma.

Maybe it's worth trying.

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