Most people use drugs, and most civilizations have developed rituals around drug use. Whether it is drinks after work, or the daily morning tea break, such drug use is an integral and valued part of social interaction.
- Viniculture is discussed in an Egyptian papyrus scroll dated to 2500 B.C, and the Bible is full of references to wine: “For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty; and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags” (Book of Proverbs, 23:21)
- Opiates: thought to have originated in Asia Minor, and moved thence to Asia, the Far East, and India, probably in the first millennium BC. There are references to opium on Sumerian cuneiform tablets dated to 3300 B.C. (opium was called hul gil, or ‘plant of joy’). In 1898, heroin was introduced in Germany, under its own brand name, as a cough suppressant (aimed at infants).
- Alcohol: made by the process of fermentation. Shards of pottery were found at the site of an old Sumerian trading post in western Iran that have been dated to c 4000 B.C. Historians also believe that up to 40% of Sumer’s barley crop went towards making beer.
- Cocaine: In the Meso-American cultures of South America, Indians were chewing coca leaves to aid them in working at high altitude from earliest recorded times. Actual commercial production of cocaine began in 1862 in Germany, at which time it was seen as a miracle drug. In 1884, Sigmund Freud wrote that “the use of coca in moderation is more likely to promote health than impair it.”
- Tobacco: There is evidence that the Mayans, from Central America, had learnt to cultivate the tobacco leaf by 600 A.D. Sir Walter Raleigh introduced it to the UK in 1565. By the 1870s, British factories were producing machine-rolled cigarettes.
Coffee: discovered in the 6th century, in Ethiopia, and spread from there to the Arab world and then Europe. - Hallucinogens: LSD was first synthesized in 1943. However, the hallucinogenic properties of ergot (a fungus that grows on grain) have been known for millennia, and there is evidence that psilocybin (Magic Mushrooms) was used in shamanistic rituals in the Stone Age.
Amphetamines: not synthesised until 1887, but used by Chinese physicians since c 3000 B.C. in a naturally occurring compound called Ma-huang