Things were different back in my day.

[The Earth Method]

I was watching tv with my grandad, we ususally do that when i visit him and grandma, and the whole hype on ice thing came on tv and he said this priceless line.


"Things were different in my day people didnt need drugs to have a good time"

It wasnt a good idea for me to shit stir the poor old bastard (hes had many strokes) so in my head i said this.

"Yeah gone are the days of cocaine toothache drops and amphetamine nasal spray what is happening to our society!"


i found it funny neway lol.

 

[Urbanhog]

My finnish grandmother often comments how much she missed these "special cough syurps" :D

 

[phase_dancer]

The Earth Method, in many ways your grandfather is absolutely correct, it being quite a different world depending upon how far back you go. Around the 50's, teenagers of that period and before in Australia and New Zealand didn't need recreational drugs, other than of course the traditional leg opener; alcohol.

Why? Cause they simply either didn't know about them, or had only ever heard scary things about them. Most people had never met anyone who'd smoked a joint. These were drugs' magically empowering years of mystery and curiosity raising, setting the stage for the beatniks of the time and later the hippy movement, followed by a wobbly period in the seventies, due to the virus like last ditch propaganda effort by the US. But the eighties saw drug related culture return with a vengence, where it has remained, growing steadily ever since 8(

Although there was no-doubt those who did know about drugs during the fifties, most were simply unaware. Socialising was just that, not introspectional; zoning out or digging at the innermost depths of your psyche. Such things were regarded as being the work of mad people. And madness, or being perceived as mad, was to be avoided at all costs. In those days, it was generally believed that no-one was ever quite the same again after a spell in a mental hospital.

People also danced together in those days, maybe the closest thing to sex many ever got. The world was much simpler then.

My mum was 30 in 1958, and she recalls the only drug related stories she ever heard were those concerning the US sailors, who were all the go with NZ country girls, at least her bunch. Mum said the drug was opium then, and the sailors were the ones who had it. She never tried it, too down for her by the sounds of things.

My dad who died in 92 at age 65 often came up with a story or 2 about the Aussie sheilas he knew in the fifties. They loved their benzedrine (d,l amphetamine) and stayed awake all night. The old man said he never took speed, but he certainly seemed to like the chicks who did, at least in the sack anyway


My old grandfather Jack died at age 76, when I was 12. He was the one who spurred my interest in all things constructible. He was a beacon of knowledge for me and knew so much my parents didn't (or weren't willing to admit). I knew Jack loved his tobacco and whisky, so a couple of years ago I asked my youngest uncle, then 61 himself, if old jack ever tried marijuana. My uncle grinned and said "no, but he sure knew about it" Apparently he'd come up to the house with a weed and asked his son if he thought this was the indian hemp they had banned. Being aware of his anti-establishment views from as young as I remember - a grown up challenging authority and questioning things done for "the good of us all"? -he was different all right - I betcha he would have thought, if they banned it, it had to be good for something. He'd been a farmer all his life, and anything that came from the land was worth something. And he always had lots of ropes...

I've often wondered what grandad would have been like if he'd smoked weed. He was such a great old guy, and like my father, now that they are gone, I wished I'd got to ask things I never did and dig up more interesting tales.

I did get to smoke dope with my dad, and my mum, who's still kicking and sharp as at 76. Mum smoked it while it was fashionable (after years of giving us shit for it ) but when the Nancy Reagan period came along, it became very unfashionable and she was embarrassed to let her friends know she'd even tried it. I fixed that by telling them she'd tried it and that they were so old and out of touch, they'd probably die not knowing about that one either. One chap, a scientist, didn't like that at all, and from what I heard, he and a couple of the other old codgers eventually gave it a go

 

[pillsnapa]

I talk about drugs with my mum...but still aren't comfortable chatting with my dad...though I know he smoked a bit in his day, as he grew outside my room once.

 

[juice_soldier]

Hah, i talk with my oldies about the old school drugs. infact, they fuelled me with stories of Pink elephants and the like..

Then lately i was talking about the downers of old like Methaqualone.. The old man cracked a grin when we spoke about the ol 'ludes'.

 

[Splatt]

^ lol he told me of stories of being smacked out in the corner of a club eyes rolling back....

except back then it wasnt MDMA doing that

 

[ayjay]

The "need" aspect of the original post is interesting - you still don't need drugs to have a good time - but you can have them if you want. Back in the "olden days" there was just less choice. Pandora's box is well and truly open now - we're never going back to the good ole days

 

[cam.i.am]

thats right we are never going back to the good old days, funny thing is, soon enough these will be the good old days.
I have had chats with my old man and some others of how it used to be, weed, lsd, heroin!. Heroin being the big one, it was everywhere and a huge problem, a real life killer, but now its pretty much non existant.
Even in my short lifetime (i'm 25) things have changed a huge amount. not so long ago (about when bluelight was first gettin going) the drug scene was kinda all rolled into one, everyone trying allsorts mdma and all the alternatives, shrooms, trips, speed, and to a much lesser extent meth/rock.
pretty soon the speed supplies dwindled as the rock grew in popularity, there were so many people into it that had gone from social use to every day abusers (myself included) now i think it can be likened to heroin as the new life destroyer. yeah?
on the up side i think people now realise how bad it can be and social users are alot more carefull and manage to stay that way which is great.
i guess it'll die down soon enough and some new thing will emerge as an epidemic. any way i'm really ramblin on and do not know where this is even goin>>>>>>>>>>

 

[bustabraincell]

back in the day, for me, , it was grog, then gunga, then acid (and we messed with cactus, datura, rollies(rohypnal) pinkies (pippanol?) and the odd spot of ope, and random other diverted scrippies, and whatever else came along... I am pleased to say, when I get asked about the benefits of getting older, my answer is generally, yea, the drugs keep getting better!

 

[Splatt]

lol do u know RamonSTER?

 

[madmick19]

The "need" aspect of the original post is interesting - you still don't need drugs to have a good time - but you can have them if you want. Back in the "olden days" there was just less choice. Pandora's box is well and truly open now - we're never going back to the good ole days

i think that the difference now is that we have set such high benchmarks for things to be different that it keeps people going further and further to do something different.

problem is that the most subtle change of consciousness is the most beautiful thing but gets skipped passed to obliteration of self commonly referred to as "smashed"

 

[peaked]

Things were different in the past, in terms of the technological advancements made over the years that ultimately has made life easier. But is a persons desire to use drugs a relatively new phenomena? I think the only difference today is that people have a greater awareness of and access to a larger variety of drugs.

After all - weed, opium, mushrooms, peyote cactus and coca leaf have records of human use dating back many hundreds (if not thousands) of years. These have also been some of the primary drugs used in the past 50 years or so. Admittedly it's not entirely the same, advancements in chemistry have allowed the active ingredients to be extracted (or entirely new substances made) such as morphine/heroin instead of opium, or cocaine instead of coca leaf.

But has access to a product with a higher concentration promoted people to abuse drugs? I tend to disagree with this as well. For instance, alcohol has been around for many thousands of years, but generally of a very low percentage alcohol. The highest concentration of alcohol that can be yielded through natural fermentation is around 20% in a fortified wine. It wasn't until the still was invented (relatively recently) that high strength alcohol could be produced. Now, we don't need to go back in time to know that people abuse(d) alcohol, even if its in a low concentration like a beer. On the subject of alcohol, it's probably also worth mentioning that people breaking the law to get a "high" isn't an entirely new concept either, demonstrated by alcohol prohibition in the 20's.

I think that, at least to begin with, hundreds of years ago, as we've become less of a homogeneous society and more of a multicultural one, this has given us an initial awareness of a wider variety of drugs other than alcohol and tobacco (after all, many other drugs have great significance in certain cultures) and we've realized that many natural substances exist that exhibit recreational properties when consumed . That's not to say that the drug "problem" is a result of multiculturalism, because if anything, those belonging to a culture which has a tradition of using a certain drug are probably more likely to use it responsibly than those from a culture that looks down on it. The outlawing of mushrooms in the Netherlands would be a good, albeit more recent example of this - the locals never got into trouble using the substance but many tourists did, ultimately leading to it being outlawed.

That said, here in Australia we accept use of the drug alcohol, and that's hardly lead people to use it responsibly. I guess the way in which a culture is taught to use the substance is also a major factor - I doubt, for example, that those in the Netherlands would be taught to enjoy a few shrooms with friends after a long days work (on an almost daily basis anyhow) like we here in Australia are taught to enjoy a few drinks with friends after work. Admittedly, the effects of mushrooms are vastly different to alcohol. I imagine it would probably be quite acceptable (in the Netherlands) to smoke some cannabis regularly with friends after a long days work, but at the same time they don't (at least to a foreigners glance) appear to have the same sort of problems from cannabis as we do from alcohol. Ultimately I guess what that comes down to is the fact that every drug is different and will be used in a different manner.

Excluding drugs like weed, opium or alcohol that have been used to hundreds of years, there's also the chemical substances that are available (and not found in nature). I guess this would be the main aspect of how the drug market has drastically changed in more recent times. Amphetamine/Methamphetamine, Heroin, Cocaine, MDMA, LSD, ketamine and GHB all have mainstream availability nowdays, whereas a couple hundred years ago they simply weren't invented and thus people couldn't use them. Admittedly, though many of them have only started to see mainstream use in the past few decades, the vast majority were first synthesized a very long time before they found mainstream popularity. For example, MDMA was first synthesized in the late 19th century as an appetite suppressant, though it wasn't until the 70's that its true potential was discovered. Heroin wasn't used until 23 years after it was originally discovered in 1874. For twelve years the pharmaceutical company "Bayer" sold heroin as a non-addictive morphine substitute, until later finding out that Heroin was converted into morphine in the liver. It seems that for many of the current, widely available synthesized drugs, they weren't originally manufactured to be recreational drugs but rather something else, but they failed at being "something else" and were forgotten about for a number of years until people discovered its potential recreationally. I wonder what undiscovered recreational drugs might exist today, synthesized by large pharmaceutical companies but neglected and considered a failure because it didn't exhibit the properties they desired.

What I find more interesting, is not on reflecting how far drugs have advanced in the past, but rather imagining how much they will advance in the future. Throughout most of history we've only had access to drugs which are found in nature, or are produced easily with natural products (alcohol for instance). In more recent times, a handful of synthesized drugs have gained popularity. In more recent times still, the amount of synthesized drugs we've got access to has greatly increased. For example, it wasn't really until around 2000 and onward that Research Chemicals have had such a widespread availability. The procedure to make these substances requires a lot more skill than say, Methamphetamine, and the amount of people interested in them was much smaller than for say, meth, so they were a great rarity and only available to those that knew a skilled chemist (i.e. very few). This all changed as vendors realised they could find a large audience through the internet, and distribute research chemicals to patrons, generally exploiting the (at the time) unknown nature of the substance to law enforcement. As a particular research chemical gains popularity, it also gains the attention of authorities and their awareness will generally prohibit it from being as easily available. Which leads the producers to experiment with another research chemical that doesn't have the attention of the authorities yet.