around the world using these drugs ranged from 400 million for opium to fewer than 10 million for fly agaric. We will take a separate look at tobacco – arguably the most rubbish drug of all – in chapter 11. Meanwhile, here are some of Cooke’s observations, starting with fly agaric.
The fly agaric toadstool, Amanita muscaria, was the recreational drug of choice for the nineteenth-century inhabitants of Siberia and Kamchatka. In those icy wastelands there was no prospect of cultivating poppies, tobacco, coca or any of the other conventional sources of chemical pleasure. Consequently, wrote Cooke, ‘the poor native would have been compelled to have glided into his grave without a glimpse of Paradise beforehand, if nature had not promptly supplied an indigenous narcotic in the form of an unpretending-looking fungus or toadstool.’
Elsewhere in the world, the fly agaric toadstool was – and still is – regarded as highly poisonous. Its name reflects its use as a fly poison. However, by dint of drying the fungi and saturating them with salt, before cooking them, the people of Siberia and Kamchatka could eat them with impunity and enjoy the mind-bending effects. They would roll up the toadstool and swallow it like a big pill. A single gulp would provide a ‘cheap and remarkably pleasant’ day’s worth of intoxication. Fly agaric was to the Siberians what opium and cannabis were to pleasure-seekers in sunnier climes. The fungus has another useful property that made it even more attractive to its cash-strapped users. Its psychoactive ingredients survive being excreted from the body and can be recycled by drinking the consumer’s urine. How the Siberian fun-seekers discovered this useful recycling procedure is unknown. Anyway, they made good use of this boon, as Cooke relates:
A man having been intoxicated on one day, and slept himself sober by the next, will, by drinking this liquor, to the extent of about a cupful, become as intoxicated thereby as he was before. Confirmed drunkards in Siberia preserve their excretionary fluid as a precious liquor, to be used in case a scarcity of the fungus should occur. This intoxicating property may be again communicated to every person who partakes of the disgusting draught, and thus, also, with the third, and fourth, and even the fifth distillation. By this means, with a few boluses to commence with, a party may shut themselves in their room, and indulge in a week’s debauch at a very economical rate.
The leading recreational drug in much of the rest of the world at this time was opium. The poppy from which opium is extracted was a major crop in India, Persia, Egypt and Asia Minor. Opium was produced throughout the Islamic nation of Persia. The finest-quality Persian opium was said to come from Isfahan and Shiraz, which was also famous for its wine. Opium was consumed in many different ways, according to local customs. In India, it was dissolved in water or rolled into pills. The Sikhs were forbidden by their religion to smoke tobacco. They found a ready substitute in opium, which was consumed throughout the Punjab. In China, opium was eaten or smoked, while in Java and Sumatra it was mixed with sugar and the ripe fruit of the plantain.
In Britain, where an estimated 35 tons of opium were consumed in 1858, the drug was easily obtained from local pharmacists in the form of pills, or dissolved in alcohol to form tinctures or cordials. The many opium-based products included laudanum, which was about one-twelfth opium by weight, Scottish paregoric elixir, English paregoric elixir (which was a quarter the strength of the Scottish version), Black Drop and Battley’s Sedative Liquor. These products were bought for ‘medicinal purposes’ but were consumed mostly for their pleasing psychoactive effects. They were also widely used for keeping infants and young children quiet.
Opium wrecked many people’s lives. However, some individuals took it for years with apparent impunity. Cooke cites several such cases, including an old lady in Leith who died at the age of eighty having taken half an ounce (14 grams) of laudanum every day for nearly forty years. An ‘eminent literary character’ who died in his sixties had regularly consumed large amounts of laudanum since the age of fifteen; his daily allowance had been more than a litre of liquid comprising three parts laudanum to one part alcohol.
The Fen country of eastern England was a veritable hotspot of opium abuse. Cooke discovered from official documents that in the Cambridgeshire market town of Wisbech more opium was sold and consumed per head of population than in any other part of Britain. The Fenlanders’ taste for opium is depicted in Alton Locke, an 1849 novel by Charles Kingsley. In it, a yeoman tells the hero that any locals who do not drink spirits take their pennyworth of ‘elevation’ instead – especially the women. ‘Elevation’ is opium. The yeoman explains that if you go into the druggist’s shop in Cambridge on market day you will see dozens of little boxes lined up on the counter. Every passing Fenland wife will call in to collect one of these boxes, which contains her week’s supply of opium. The drug makes the women ‘cruel thin’, says the yeoman, but it keeps them quiet and cures their ague.
Cannabis was used recreationally in many parts of the world during the nineteenth century, including Muslim countries. It was smoked, dissolved in drinks or eaten in combination with other substances. Hashish, the term then used in the Middle East for any cannabis-derived drug, was consumed throughout Syria and in parts of Turkey.4 Cooke describes an unusual method used by the Bechuana people of southern Africa for smoking theirs. They would make two small holes in the ground, about a foot apart, place a stick between these holes and mould clay over it, then withdraw the stick to leave a channel connecting the two holes. The cannabis was placed in one hole and lit. Smokers would then take it in turn to lie with their face on the ground, inhaling deeply from the other hole. Cannabis was similarly popular in the USA, where it was often combined with betel nut to form a lump, or ‘quid’, for chewing, in the same manner as tobacco. In India, cannabis resin was collected by men wearing leather aprons. They would run through the hemp fields, brushing violently against the plants. The resin would stick to the leather, from where it was later scraped. It was said that in Nepal the collectors dispensed with the leather gear and ran naked through the cannabis plants, collecting the resin on their skin.
The two other great narcotics of the nineteenth century were the betel (or areca) nut and coca.5 The betel nut contains a mild stimulant and chewing it produces a feeling of well-being. It was the principal recreational drug in Southeast Asia. For the people of Malaya, Cooke tells us, betel was as important as meat and drink, while in the Philippines it was used as a form of currency. Habitual betel-chewing left the mouth and lips stained a deep red colour and turned the teeth black. In Siam, young women were considered more beautiful if their teeth were especially black and their gums especially red. Many Muslims chewed betel nut continuously, except during the fast of Ramadan. In old age, when their lack of teeth made it impossible for them to chew, they would take the drug in the form of a paste that dissolved easily in the mouth.
Coca, from which cocaine is extracted, was the principal narcotic in South America. It was consumed by mixing dried coca leaves with lime and chewing them. As native coca-users had discovered, the alkalinity of the lime helps to release the small amounts of cocaine in the leaves. Chewing coca leaves in this way provides the chewer with a modest and inherently limited dose of cocaine – in stark contrast to pure cocaine, which is one of the most highly addictive of all recreational drugs.
In addition to providing pleasure, coca had the big practical attraction of alleviating pain, hunger, thirst, cold and fatigue. Coca enabled its users to climb the steep passes of the Andes while carrying heavy loads. According to a South American legend, the children of the sun presented humans with the coca leaf ‘to satisfy the hungry, provide the weary and fainting with new vigour, and cause the unhappy to forget their miseries’. Alexander von Humboldt, a Prussian scientist who explored the Andes at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was struck by the amazing powers of endurance his native guides derived from chewing coca.
Coca famously formed part of the original recipe for Coca-Cola. The world’s best-known soft drink was patented in 1886 by George Pemberton, an American pharmacist. Pemberton wanted to create a beverage that was stimulating and energising. The growing power of the temperance movement deflected him
