Sex, Drugs and Chocolate: The Science of Pleasure. Paul Martin

more new drugs appeared on the scene in the twentieth century, including LSD and a host of other hallucinogens. LSD, otherwise known as lysergic acid diethylamide, was first made in 1938 by a Swiss chemist who was searching for new medicines. Its brain-popping psychedelic effects only became apparent a few years later. During the 1950s and 1960s, extensive research was conducted into the possible therapeutic uses of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs. Psychiatrists prescribed LSD to tens of thousands of patients to help them overcome a range of mental health problems. One of these patients was the Hollywood star Cary Grant, who later said that LSD had helped him deal with the trauma of his marriage break-up. Evidence from several hundred medical studies published during this period suggests that, for some patients at least, hallucinogenic drugs could assist in the treatment of some forms of addiction, psychosomatic illness, anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

      One of the pioneers in this field was the psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond, who coined the term psychedelic (as in ‘consciousness-expanding’). Osmond thought that powerful hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD might enable addicts to view their situation in a totally new way, creating a strong motivation to transform their behaviour and quit their drug or alcohol habit. In the 1950s, Osmond and colleagues had some success in using single doses of LSD to treat alcoholics. In one of their studies, two-thirds of the alcoholic patients stopped drinking for at least eighteen months following a single dose of LSD – an outcome that compared favourably with more conventional treatments for alcoholism.

      LSD became illegal in the late 1960s. Before long, research into its potential therapeutic applications ground to a halt, as scientists found it increasingly difficult to obtain permission or funding to work on the drug. Pharmaceutical companies were not attracted by such research, because LSD and other hallucinogens were unprotected by patents. Moreover, the drugs were administered only once or a few times, not taken daily over long periods, which meant they had limited potential to make money.

      More recently, research into the therapeutic potential of hallucinogenic drugs has been showing some signs of revival. One of the few studies to be published since the 1960s looked at the use of hallucinogens for treating cluster headaches. Individuals with this debilitating condition suffer from strings of excruciatingly painful headaches, driving some of them to commit suicide. Anecdotal evidence suggested that some sufferers obtained relief, lasting up to several months, from a single small dose of LSD or psilocybin. The doses were insufficient to cause full-blown hallucinations. When researchers from Harvard Medical School interviewed a large sample of people who had sought relief in this way, the results were startling: 85 per cent of those who had taken psilocybin reported that it stopped their headache attacks and 80 per cent of LSD-users found that the remission periods between attacks became longer. LSD and psilocybin appeared to be more effective at staving off further attacks than conventional migraine medicines.

The seven sisters of sleep

      A unique historical perspective on humanity’s use of recreational drugs can be found in The Seven Sisters of Sleep, a remarkable book written in 1860 by an English scientist named Mordecai Cubitt Cooke. Lewis Carroll is thought to have used it as a source for the psychedelic episodes in Alice in Wonderland.

      Cooke presents a scholarly survey of the seven principal narcotics of the world. These were, in descending order of popularity at the time, tobacco, opium, cannabis, betel nut, coca, thorn apple and fly agaric. (Note the absence of alcohol.) According to the best information then available, the estimated numbers of people 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