Forces of Habit Drugs and the Making of the Modern World Book
For Our Social Causes Friday
3 Major Talking Points: 1 Intro To Problems of Distribution 2 Morale Around Hallucinogens 3 Coping With Life
Segment One: An introduction to the problems of distribution - It's already been discussed Key Psychoactive Substances: wine, spitirs, tobacco, tea, coffee, chocolate, opium, morphine, cannabis, coca, cocaine-all global products
-Worldwide traded cash crops coca special case - remains global transatlantic commodity
-Dozens of substances with psychoactive properties never achieved worldwide production and use - Question is Why?
-European Distribution Engine main reason-Neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote positively about Kava, beverage wide use through Oceania but contained mostly to Pacific Islands. - Betel Quid Chewing with stimulants similar to tobacco also limited mostly in East Africa, Eastern Asia and Western Pacific
-Psychoactive Substances first had to mesh with Eruope's standards of medicine, recreational or trade goods.
-Four Centuries after Columbus, cash crops transported via: Merchants, colonizers, seaman from Portuagal, Spain, Holland, England, France. Pg54
-Favortism to some stemmed in part to Initial Aversion- Some unfavorable reactions in some users
-Undesierable Cosmetic effect - Vanity underrated factor of human history - contributing factor to suppression on some psychoactive substances -1499 first European to record observations Pg. 55 stated "...ugliest and most bestial people he had ever seen." - Kava drinkers develop hard scaly skin. - Betel stains teeth black. Lime in quid removes calcium from teeth creating stubs-gum imflamed causing teeth loss
-Logistical Drawbacks: coca delayed with pershiability problems
-Close to amphetamine, qat delayed to shipped issues due to quick loss of potency
-Adequate shelf life to make them global commodities
Segment Two: Morale Around Hallucinogens
-Nonmaterial factos attributed to Europe's judgement due to Christian background -Suspicious of "Chemical Shorcuts" and altered states especially associated with Amerindians
-Pg 56 "Culturally programmed to seek out substances that would help them slip into ecstatic trances." -Amerindians discovered some 100 halluncinogenic plants: peyote, mescal beans, morning glory seeds, etc
-Despite being in "Psychedelic Eden" according to ethnobotanist Peter Furst, the hallucinogenic plants seen as instruments of the devil and obstacles to conversion. Pg 56 "Clear Supernatural effects" - Christ missing from India Rituals resulting in supression and not exported.
-Tobacco accepted despite critic James I calling it "idolatrous" - Some missionaries became addicted- "No colonist could escape exposure to tobacco." Pg 57
-Europeans approved tobacco because it didn't necessarily entail hallucinations while Peyote always did
-Pg 57 "The (Christian, civilized, rationalizing) Europeans...uninterested in shaky blastoffs to the Spirit World." -Aversion is still evident in lands where Christian missionaries remain active.
Segment Three: Coping With Life - "Bread of Dreams"
-Piero Camporesi one influential scholar believed their halluncinogenic experience not religious-describes early modern world as "hellish" with perpetual hunger and disease-mass suffering from protein and vitamin defeciency. -Pg 58:" deliria of fevers, the festering of wounds, ulcers... Harmful effects of ignoble breads [It was] a halluncination scenario..."
-Camporesi's theory that bread has been poisoned-Paradoxically absence of bread could induce hallucinations due to starvation prohibiting production of enzymes hindering normal brain function.
-Whether starved or contaminated Pg 58 "a huge stratum of the poorest part of the population...lived in a...universe of completely unreal extrasensory perceptions."
-Pg 58 Ergot fungus capable of producing hallucinations, death, debility- likely one source of unintended intoxication
-Fungus flourished on rye crops around winter and wet spring til 1660s Europeans substituted wheat, potatoes, maize and ergotism subsided
-Spread of distilling detoxified ergoty grain and helped reduce poisoning
-Pg 59 "Real value of Camporesi's work is that it underlines the dire utility of psychoactive substances helping peasants and workers cope with lives lived on the verge of the unliveable."
-Pg 59 "Coping drugs that did not entail hallucinations would have been of geater value to the gentry who controlled peasant labor."
-Rapid growth of distilling and tobacco took place during the "General crisis of the 17th Century." Those born 1590 and lived through: inflation, unemployment, pestilence, frigid weather, crop failures, riots, massacres, warfare. "Plainly put, these were people who could use a drink or smoke."
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