Reader Anna found this interesting article about caffeine and drugs.
In February 1936, in order to pep herself up for a party, she took several of the grain-and-a-half caffeine citrate tablets. "Shortly afterward she became silly, elated, and euphoric. As hours passed she consumed more and more of the tablets until before the party started she had taken the contents of the box-forty tablets, sixty grains," equivalent to 1,800 milligrams of pure caffeine. "She became confused, disoriented, excited, restless and violent, shouted and screamed and began to throw things about her room." Despite her deep religious feelings, "she became exceedingly profane.
There is a widespread tendency to see strong and illegal drugs as "drugs", and legal and common drugs as "not drugs". Yet caffeine and alcohol are about as dangerous in large dozes as other drugs (a lethal doze of alcohol is less than twice that of a strong drunken effect). Education and relaxed control would be much more constructive than hysteria and heavy-handed control of selected (by lord knows what criteria) drugs.
Two sites with lots of info on a wide range of drugs: Druglibrary.org and Erowid (user experiences, first-hand).
If you're bipolar there is an increased sensitivity to the drugs, so the effect can be serious at only normal doses. A cup of quality coffee makes the world amusing for the next couple of hours.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how marijuana, though less dangerous by far than alcohol, is illegal but alcohol isn't. Well, we know why - they tried that and it didn't work. Yet no one sees the parallels in the current "war on drugs."
ReplyDelete"Well, we know why" ... here in the UK, the government coffers are swollen to a massive degree from the tax imposed on alcohol sales: outlaw alcohol (or tobacco!) and the national budget is up the proverbial creek.
ReplyDeleteI'm not totally surprised that they've not yet found a way to reconcile their differences, declare marijuana legal, but 'controlled' i.e. available (legally) ONLY from approved sources ... and tax the hell out of it!
Just my input here ... neither does or would have any effect on my life ... but being taxed to the eyeballs on way too many things really sticks in my throat, moreso as I get a little older and wiser.
" but 'controlled' i.e. available (legally) ONLY from approved sources ... and tax the hell out of it!"
ReplyDeleteYes, why not.
I wonder if it's just a question of majority rule? More people like alcohol than fear it. And just more people fear pot than like it.
And just more people fear pot than like it.
ReplyDeleteThat's what the government would like people to believe. Not that use is as widespread as alcohol but people of all walks of life use it. Like Philocalist it wouldn't affect me if they legalized it, as I don't use it, but I also don't see why it shouldn't be legal for those who do use it.
people cling to this stuff like they cling to religion and giving their money to the wealthy and worshiping celebrates etc, the joys of democracy
ReplyDeleteThat was a pretty incoherent, rambling, insane comment...
ReplyDeleteyes it was, what I was saying, among other things, is the publics fear of the idea that other people may be using drugs is not based on any rational logic
ReplyDeleteWell, it's based on their trust in the media and in the laws, that should be trustable, that's what we should normally believe...
ReplyDeleteTo get to the belief that something that much repeated is not true, you have to go far down the rabbithole...
Hey, Eolake, I didn't see you posted this! It is definitely time I get a profile to have notifications about comments etc... or have a blog to connect and post this kind of stuff!
ReplyDeleteI read the whole Edward M. Brecher book, totally fell in love with him (he is already dead, sadly) it is so well documented, and sometimes hilarious, so well written! I just wanted to read a few chapters, but finally read it all.
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Dr. William Woodward, a specialist in legal medicine and a lawyer as well as a physician, testified as a representative of the board of trustees of the American Medical Association in opposition to the proposed marijuana legislation at the 1937 Congressional hearings. He pointed out that the case against marijuana rested merely on newspaper stories and was not proven, and he opposed the law as likely to be a nuisance to the medical profession. (footnote 25)
Also testifying against the law were the distributors of birdseed, who complained that canaries would not sing as well, or might stop singing altogether, if marijuana seeds were eliminated from their diet. (footnote 26)
Congress recognized the legitimacy of the opposition from the birdseed manufacturers, and the bill was amended before enactment to exclude sterilized marijuana seed. (27) But the American Medical Association's opposition was ignored, and the law was passed without other amendment.
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Another quote
ReplyDeleteNothing quite like this, it was commonly believed, had ever happened before–– but that belief was mistaken. The "youth drug scene" of the 1960s was a continuation, under a new name and with minor changes in external style, of a continuing social process. Even in external appearance, the hippies of the 1960s–– and the Beatniks of a decade earlier–– markedly resembled the "Bohemians" who made their first appearance in Paris in the 1840s, founding a movement that spread to the United States. Male Bohemians, like male hippies, let their hair grow long; they and their female counterparts dressed in a manner deemed uncouth by the bourgeoisie. Bohemians lived in poverty in attics resembling today's hippie "pads." They held unconventional philosophies and flaunted unorthodox sexual mores.
The Timothy Leary of the Bohemian movement was Henri Murger (1822-1861), a Parisian whose Scenes de la vie de Boheme (1848) established and popularized the Bohemian life-style; but Murger's greatest influence, and the peak popularity of Bohemianism, came after 1898 when Puccini's opera La Boheme, based on Murger's Scenes, achieved worldwide renown.
Like today's hippies, the turn-of-the-century Bohemians were conspicuously drug-oriented. One of the drugs that the Bohemians (like their elders) used was alcohol. Murger himself became an alcoholic at an early age, and died in a sanitarium at the age of thirty-nine. In addition to alcohol, the Bohemians used coffee. They drank vast quantities of this stimulant, were preoccupied with coffee, and suffered coffee as well as alcohol hangovers. Respectable citizens of that era were as horrified by the Bohemian coffee cult as today's respectable citizens are horrified by marijuana smoking. Eminent scientists, it will be recalled, echoed this horror; for it was at the height of the Bohemian coffee cult that the public was being warned: "The sufferer [from coffee addiction] is tremulous and loses his self-command; he is subject to fits of agitation and depression. He loses color and has a haggard appearance. . . . As with other such agents, a renewed dose of the poison gives temporary relief, but at the cost of future misery." 1
Me, I've gone back to coffee and absinthe, like in that lifetime (the impressionists).
ReplyDeleteInteresting that an opera popularized the bohemian. You can hardly get further polarized.
My mother fancied herself a bohemian and admired them. Probably she'd never have heard about them without the opera.
William Gibson some years back lamented that he had a hard time coming up with a new type of bohemian for his next book. Granted, I love bohemians, but when doesn't he just set himself a challenge and write about the *least* bohemian character he could think of? All characters have a story.