Richard Davenport-Hines - The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Social History of Drugs

THE PURSUIT OF OBLIVION

I have to confess to an addiction. It has involved staying up too late, snorting on public transport, giggling, harrumphing in disgust, falling asleep with my clothes on and defacing printed pages. Now my supply has run out and I need to talk about it. Its this book see. Its author is peddling the real thing and he hasnt missed a trick. Like cannabis it increases the appetite and makes you laugh at unexpected things.

Iain Millar, Independent on Sunday

His book is a technical triumph: well researched, well written, well presented

Felipe Fernndez-Armesto, Independent

Absolute sobriety is not a natural or primary human state, asserts Richard Davenport-Hines at the beginning of this voluminous and comprehensive history of drug-taking. The evidence he produces is overwhelming

Economist

It is refreshing to read an analysis of drugs that is neither evangelical nor reactionary

Scotland on Sunday

Davenport-Hines has attempted an ambitious history of drug use over five centuries, and has come up with a mass of fascinating material

Will Cohu, Daily Telegraph

The fact that the American anti-drug lobbys obsession with the total prohibition of recreational drugs was allowed to influence policy in the Pacific war is just one of the amazing revelations in this seminal work. Many others make it the most important study on this subject in years, perhaps ever. It strips away the propaganda, prejudice, rumour, rhetoric and misinformation that has sullied the drugs debate until now. Here at last is a scholarly, historical study of drugs and their role in society... Everyone with any influence on government policy should read this book and wake up before its too late

Phillip Knightley, Sunday Times

For AJH

Contents

ONE
Early History

TWO
Opium during the Enlightenment

THREE
The Patent Age of New Inventions

FOUR
Nerves, Needles and Victorian Doctors

FIVE
Chemistry

SIX
Degeneration

SEVEN
The Dawn of Prohibition

EIGHT
Law-breaking

NINE
Trafficking

TEN
The Age of Anxiety

ELEVEN
The First Drugs Czar

TWELVE
British Drug Scenes

THIRTEEN
Presidential Drugs Wars

FOURTEEN
So Pass

History is the most dangerous concoction the chemistry of the mind has produced. Its properties are well known. It sets people dreaming, intoxicates them, engenders false memories, exaggerates their reflexes, keeps old wounds open, torments their leisure, inspires them with megalomania or persecution complex, and makes nations bitter, proud, insufferable and vain.

History can justify anything you like. It teaches strictly nothing, for it contains and gives examples of everything.

PAUL VALRY , Regards sur le Monde Actuel

Hidden worlds haunt our imagination. The underworld of criminals; the Underground; the demi-monde (occupied in part by the inhabitants of polite society, wearing as it were, their Hyde aspects.)

The world of the gods; Shangri La; Middle Earth; the world through the Looking-Glass.

The Mafia; the Establishment; the System; the great conspiracy of the left; the great conspiracy of the right.

Of these five apparently normal, respectable citizens, one is a ruthless murderer who disembowelled Sir Toby with the ornamental Javanese paper-knife! At once they all five become deep, interesting in their very uninterestingness.

MICHAEL FRAYN , Constructions

The need to go astray, to be destroyed is an extremely private, distant, passionate turbulent truth, and has nothing to do with what we call substance.

GEORGES BATAILLE , Le Coupable

The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.

SIR WILLIAM OSLER

Every kind of addiction is bad, no matter whether the drug be alcohol, morphine or idealism.

CARL JUNG

Mitsubishis, 007s, Doves, New Yorkers, California Sunrises, M&Ms, Dennis the Menaces, Rhubarb and Custards, Snowballs, Blue Butterflies, McDonalds, Flatliners, Shamrocks, Swans, Swallows, Turbos, Phase Fours, Refreshers, Love Hearts, Riddlers, Pink Elephants these are some of the alluring brand names of Ecstasy available on the illegal British drug market at the start of the twenty-first century. The ingredients of each type of tiny pill vary according to their colour, size and the pictograms stamped on them. The diversity of the branding demonstrates the vigour of the business and the dynamism of the market.

The international illicit drug business generates $400 billion in trade annually, according to recent United Nations estimates. That represents 8 per cent of all international trade. It is about the same percentage as tourism and the oil industry. Yet many of the chief substances of this illicit business have been used for thousands of years to treat physical pain or mental distress as well as for pleasure. This book explores how licit medicines became the commodity of the worlds greatest illicit business.

Intoxication is not unnatural or deviant. Absolute sobriety is not a natural or primary human state. Drugs are variously swallowed, smoked, injected and inhaled. Though, at times, politicians speak or journalists write of drugs as if their characteristics collectively cohere, they fall into very different categories, with discrete powers and effects.

Narcotics relieve pain, induce euphoria and create physical dependency. The most prominent are opium, morphine, heroin and codeine.

Hypnotics cause sleep and stupor; examples include chloral, sulphonal, barbiturates and benzodiazepines. They are habit-forming and can have adverse effects. These side effects are shared with tranquillisers, which are intended to reduce anxiety without causing sleep.

Stimulants cause excitement, and increase mental and physical energy, but create dependency and may cause psychotic disturbance. Cocaine and amphetamines are the pre-eminent stimulants, but others include caffeine, tobacco, betel, tea, coffee, cocoa, qat and pituri.

Inebriants are produced by chemical synthesis: alcohol, chloroform, ether, benzine, solvents and other volatile chemicals.

Hallucinogens cause complex changes in visual, auditory and other perceptions and possibly acute psychotic disturbance. The most commonly used hallucinogenic is cannabis (marijuana). Others include LSD, mescaline, certain mushrooms, henbane and belladonna.

The working of these substances only began to be understood correctly by researchers in the last three decades. The human brain transmits pulses of electrical activity along nerve fibres connecting one nerve cell, or neuron, to another. These nerve cells are the source of neural activity in the brain. The transmission of the signal from cell to cell involves neurotransmitters that is, pulses of chemical signal molecules. Neurotransmitters excite or inhibit nerve cell firing, and are recognised by specific receptors, which are specialised proteins located in the cell membranes of target cells. Minute quantities of neurotransmitter chemicals are released: serotonin, which makes people feel satisfied, dopamine which arouses pleasurable feelings, and noradrenaline are crucial neurotransmitters so far as many controversial drugs are concerned. Cocaine and amphetamines, for example, can be enjoyable because their use causes neurotransmitters to release noradrenaline and dopamine. Morphine acts on three distinct receptors called collectively the opiate receptors which have been known only since the 1970s. In the same decade a group of neurotransmitters collectively called the endorphins were found to act as opiate receptors and block both sensory and emotional pain.