ok, prepare for more rambling.
it wont be like that again. let me put it in perspective.
medicine is a very new science, at least medicine as we know it today. by this is mean a science with a good understanding of the cause and effect of disease, and an inkling of ways to prevent/cure it.
it took 6000 years of civilisation before we figured out that germs existed and washing our hands before surgery was a good idea.
it is only been 60 years that we've had anti-biotics that could actually fight against disease. up until then medicine was basically the relief of symptoms.
someone is sick and in pain. what happens, if in the case of cancer now, or a simple infection in the 18th century, you can't directly cure their problem? you do your best to relieve their pain and hope that their body's immune system, which is infinitly more capable than any doctor, will cure itself.
until opum was widely used there was no effective relief of extreme pain. there was some use of herbal things like willow bark, from which aspirin was kinda derived, but none of these really cut it when, say, your leg was broken or your stomach metastasizing.
but when western medicine discovered opium, which by the way had been used in the east for years, they embraced it wholeheartedly.
and who can blame em? guy comes into a 19th century doctors office complaining of constant stomach pain. you give him opium and suddenly he feels a whole lot better. miracle cures! of course it took medical science a while to realise the existence, and mechanisms of "addiction".
the guy, if he was lucky, would take the opium just long enuf for his body to kick the bug that was troubling him, then put it aside until he needed it again maybe. or perhaps he took it a little longer, and found that if he didnt take it he felt a lot worse, so he just kept taking it. and taking it.
but although the problems of addicition were worrying, medicine wasn't going to stop the use of one of the few drugs that actually seemed to help.
opium actually has a great many medical uses other than the relief of pain. it is one of the most effective treatments for dysentry and diahrhaa. before wide use of opium most children who came down with dysentry shat themselves to death. just the tiniest bit of opium would stop this from happening.
cocaine came along as an alternative to opium. it was undoubtably very potent, and doctors of the time felt that it could be used in place of opiates as it wasn't addictive,i mean c'mon, only opium is addicitive right?
sigmund freud loved the stuff. his early writings on the subject have some of the missionary zeal sometimes seen in MAPS papers... ahem... that was a bit mean i admit... but his later writings revealed the truth thatwe all know now; that it is a highly addicitve and dangerous drug.
morphine, a refined extract of opium, was developed in an attempt to create a less addictive opiate. once again it was touted as a miracle cure, and once more it took the medical establishment many years to admit to it's failings.
same with heroin.
but, at the time of each of these discoveries, it was the best thing going. take morphine as an example.
war has always been a horrible thing, but the civil war in america was one of the bloodiest, with the modernisation of weaponry just starting kick in. it was the war where the machine gun made its debut. also used for perhaps the first time was morphine. this came as a blessing for those soldiers who, like soldiers through out history, have had arms and legs amputated in battlefield hospitals. there was actuallysomething that would erase or at least dull the pain of horrific injuries.
but everything has a price. more soldiers came back from the war who would otherwise have died from their injuries, but a great many of them came back with a new war wound, addicition.
it isn't often discussed in history class but tens of thousands of civil war veterans came home addicited to opiates. and hundreds of thousands of men would be addicited in the two world wars, and all the wars since.
japan has a strong culture of amphetamine use, which came directly from the widespread use of it by troops during world war two.
and remember that not all the injuries being treated by these drugs were physical. many soldiers self administered drugs to help them escape the horror of the wars. vietnam is most notorious for this, but it has always happened, back to ancient times if you include alcohol.
er i've wandered greatly. i had a point i swear.... basically i hope that we are at the point, or nearing it, where science ca actually cure and treat disease etc at the cause, and we can do more than just ease the symptoms. genetics and nanotech are going to blow the whole thing open...
but as for recreational drugs? they'll always be here, and i'm beginning to thikwe need them now more than ever... but thats a whole 'nother rant
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"i think i'll stick to drugs to get me thru the long, dark night of late-capitalism..."
Irvine Welsh
** smile **
