The nineteenth century was a time before prohibition and drugs which are banned today have been put into the hands of local growers, smugglers and dealers. Nowadays, all illegal drugs are demonized to the extent that a national debate is denied because of the fear of a political backlash.
With psychotropic drugs the issue of their legality or illegality is left mostly undiscussed. What do they actually do? They enter the brain and change the way we think, sometimes radically and sometimes subtly, like coffee, the most widely consumed psychoactive drug in the world.
With legal drugs - tobacco, tea and alcohol - there is no problem in the context of possession. There is a range of prescriptive drugs - tranquilizers, anti-depressants and anti-psychotics - which are legal when prescribed by a doctor. But the illegal drugs are the ones that are deemed by the law-makers to be beyond the pale - prepared mushrooms, opium, heroin, LSD and MDMA.
I remember more than forty-years ago reading De Quincey's book Confessions of an English Opium Eater, I think it was called, and there seemed to be a naturalness about his experiences. He first consumed the drug because of neuralgia.
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| De Qincey |
Nowadays, the governments in most "modern" countries have discredited drugs which are illegal, assigning scientists to denounce the substances and who come back with advice to legalise as the only sensible way to control imbibing only to have the government ministers denouncing the scientists because they have not come to a conclusion which supports their anti-drug policies.
The nineteenth century law-makers were much more rational and it was Queen Victoria who was prescribed tincture of cannabis. She must have been amused, of course.
Now Uruguay has legalised cannabis, representing a move towards decriminalising the drug.
Sensibly speaking, it is hard, surely, to criminalise the taking of a plant growing in fields and at the side of the road. How can this be controlled?
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| A bush at the side of the road in Kathmandu |
And it must be admitted that some drugs do have a pleasant effect despite the fact that there are individuals who have a bent towards an addiction to coffee, tobacco, gambling and alcohol, the last of which is a anti-convulsant, a sedative that produces hypnotic effects. Nicotine and caffeine promote cognition; and of course, opium controls pain.
During the 60s people became infatuated with drugs, especially the psychedelic variety; and there were drugs that were used around this time that were used to treat schizophrenia and other mental disorders.
How were these drugs discovered, the natural ones contained in the tobacco and cannabis plant for example? My theory is that in prehistoric times, when evolution was still in its primary stages, people observed animals, how they foraged, and the effects the food had on them.
It is quite possible that other drugs were discovered accidentally with people simply trying them out or taking them by accident. It is said that in some way, drugs, like cocaine and tobacco, mimic our own brain receptors - the neuro transmitters. How these plants trick our receptors might find a parallel in the natural world: the chameleon's camouflage; the tiger's stripes: a stick insect in the branches of a tree; a flower's way of attracting insects for cross pollination in the colours and scent.
Now designer drugs are keeping one step ahead of the law and nobody really knows how they work, only that they do. And there must be many plants that contain substances which could be beneficial in the certain types of mental illnesses.
Maybe, to hark back to pre-prohibition days and let people take natural substances is the answer. After all, what we do to our own bodies is ultimately our own responsibility.
Whose life is it anyway!
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| In Pashupatinath, Lord of the Beasts |
