DRUGS, Marijuana, Cocaine, Xanax , Adderall, Ecstasy, Heroin, LSD, PCP, Magic Mushrooms, Alcohol

Before the 1860's cocaine was only available in leaf form. The cocaine content of coca leaf is under 1%. After cocaine was isolated from coca leaf, it was available legally in concentrations that were nearly 100% pure.

The active ingredient from the coca leaf was first isolated by Albert Niemann. In 1860 he gave the compound the name cocaine.

Cocaine was first used recreationally in the 1860s. People were using cocaine as a recreational drug almost as soon as it was synthesized. A few years after its synthesis, cocaine appeared in cigarettes, ointments, nasal sprays, and preparations sold as tonics.

These legal tonics had coke mixed with other substances, including morphine, codeine, and opium. They were sold in a liquid form, and cured "whatever ailed you". The powder itself was used recreationally almost as soon as it was isolated.

The most popular of cocaine laced products was Mariani Wine (Vin Mariani). It was a wine and cocaine mixture that was launched in 1863. Nearly all popular personalities of the day used and endorsed it. These Vin Maria lovers included: Queen Victoria, The Pope, Thomas Edison, and others.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sign Of Four" was written about 30 years after the synthesis of cocaine. In the book Sherlock Holmes (an intravenous cocaine and morphine user) gives reasons for his cocaine and morphine use "...I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation..."

The negative effects of cocaine addiction were soon noticed and between 1887 and 1914 forty six states had passed laws aimed at controlling it.

The press began to associate cocaine powder use with societies outcast in the 1890s. Criminals, prostitutes, pimps, gamblers, and racial minorities were usually the target.

Then in 1914 the U.S. federal government classified cocaine as a narcotic (which it is not) and outlawed it. After passing the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, the only way a person could get cocaine was with a prescription, or illegally.

In the 1920s cocaine use declined, and that decline was to become more so in the 1930s, when amphetamine (speed) became popular among drug users.



Amphetamine
Amphetamine was appealing to the cocaine user because the high it produced was much like cocaine's. It did not deliver quite the same peak, but its effects lasted longer.

More significantly, it was cheap, readily available and legal. With the appearance of legally obtainable amphetamine (readily available by the late 1930s), cocaine use declined considerably. Its use remained low until all amphetamines, including meth became illegal in the 1960s.

This made amphetamine more difficult to obtain, so dealers and users switched back to the neglected cocaine, and the first flurries of the current blizzard arrived. Cocaine is not a drug that burst onto the scene sometime in the 1960s. It was used as a recreational drug, a century before. Read More......

Toothache Cures and Patent Medicines
Cocaine was first synthesized in pure form by Albert Niemann. In 1860, he extracted pure cocaine powder from the leaves of Erythroxylum coca (more commonly known as the coca plant). Soon after it was isolated, cocaine was used to try to cure almost all the illnesses and maladies that were known to man.

It wasn't long after the isolation of pure cocaine until people became aware of the addictive potential of the drug. Today, use in medicine had been tempered by experience. Medical use has been largely restricted to producing local anesthesia. Even in this area, the dangers of cocaine led to the early development of safer drugs.

One of its first non medical uses was military. In 1883 Theodor Aschenbrandt administered cocaine to members of the Bavarian army. It was found that the drug enhanced their endurance on manoeuvre. His positive findings were published in a German medical journal, which brought the effects of this wonder drug to a wider medical audience, including Sigmund Freud (see below).

In the USA, cocaine was sold over-the-counter until 1916. It was widely used in tonics, toothache cures, patent medicines, and chocolate cocaine tablets. Prospective buyers were advised (in the words of pharmaceutical firm Parke-Davis) that cocaine "could make the coward brave, the silent eloquent, and render the sufferer insensitive to pain".

When combined with alcohol, it yielded a further potently reinforcing compound, now known to be cocaethylene. Thus cocaine was a popular ingredient in wines, notably Vin Mariani. Coca wine received endorsement from prime-ministers, royalty and even the Pope.

One medical use that was found early in the history of cocaine, and which the drug is still used for today (rarely), is that of a good surface anesthetic. Beginning in the late 1880s surgical procedures using local anesthetics (numbing a specific area to pain) were starting to be used instead of general anesthesia (rendering a person unconscious).

This was due to experiments that were conducted by William Halstead, using cocaine. William Halstead was one of the four founders of The Johns Hopkins Medical School. He is often referred to as the Father of American Surgery.

Unfortunately William experimented on himself by injecting cocaine, to see if surgery could be performed using cocaine as a local anesthetic. After experimenting for a time, he became addicted.

The addiction grew so bad it put his career on the line. He stopped shooting cocaine and began taking morphine instead. A habit that probably lasted the rest of his life.

Cocaine Toothache Drops Ad, 1885


Coca-Cola was invented in 1885 and first sold to consumers in 1886. At that time, it was sold as a patent medicine. It was promoted as a temperance drink offering the virtues of coca without the vices of alcohol. The new beverage was invigorating and popular.

Until the early 1900's, one of the ingredients was cocaine. Today, coca-cola still uses coca leaves for flavoring. The company imports several tons of coca leaves from South America each year. However, the leaves are used only for flavoring, since the cocaine has been removed.

A coca leaf typically contains between 0.1 and 0.9 percent cocaine. If chewed in such form, it rarely presents the user with any social or medical problems. When the leaves are soaked and mashed, however, cocaine is extracted as a coca-paste. The paste is 60 to 80 per cent pure. It is usually exported in the form of the salt, cocaine hydrochloride.

This is the powdered cocaine most common, until recently, in the West. Drug testing for cocaine aims to detect the presence of its major metabolite, the inactive benzoylecgonine. Benzoylecgonine can be detected for up to five days in casual users. In chronic users, urinary detection is possible for as long as three weeks.

Sigmund Freud the father of psychoanalysis, in the early 1880s began to experiment with cocaine. At a time when he was undergoing a low period in his life, he reported that cocaine lifted his spirit, and took his mind off his professional and financial difficulties. He sent cocaine to his fiancee, telling her it would make her strong and give her cheeks a red color.

Freud was to play a significant role in the development of the Western cocaine industry. I take very small doses of it regularly and against depression and against indigestion, and with the most brilliant success, he observed. Drug giants Merck and Parke Davies both paid Freud to endorse their rival brands. He wrote several enthusiastic papers on cocaine, notably Uber coca (1884).



Taken from "On Cocaine" by Sigmund Freud
A few minutes after taking cocaine, one experiences a certain exhilaration and feeling of lightness. One feels a certain furriness on the lips and palate, followed by a feeling of warmth in the same areas; if one now drinks cold water, it feels warm on the lips and cold in the throat. One other occasions the predominant feeling is a rather pleasant coolness in the mouth and throat.

During this first trial I experienced a short period of toxic effects, which did not recur in subsequent experiments. Breathing became slower and deeper and I felt tired and sleepy; I yawned frequently and felt somewhat dull. After a few minutes the actual cocaine euphoria began, introduced by repeated cooling eructation. Immediately after taking the cocaine I noticed a slight slackening of the pulse and later a moderate increase.

I have observed the same physical signs of the effect of cocaine in others, mostly people my own age. The most constant symptom proved to be the repeated cooling eructation. This is often accompanied by a rumbling which must originate from high up in the intestine; two of the people I observed, who said they were able to recognize movements in their stomachs, declared emphatically that they had repeatedly detected such movements.

Often, at the outset of the cocaine effect, the subjects alleged that they experienced an intense feeling of heat in the head. I noticed this in myself as well in the course of some later experiments, but on other occasions it was absent. In only two cases did coca give rise to dizziness. On the whole the toxic effects of coca are of short duration, and much less intense than those produced by effective doses of quinine or salicylate of soda; they seem to become even weaker after repeated use of cocaine. Read More......

Old History of Cocaine

In traditional Indian cultures, Mama Coca was considered a benevolent deity. She was regarded as a sacred goddess who could bless humans with her power.

Before the coca harvest, the harvester would sleep with a woman to ensure Mama Coca would be in a favorable mood. Typically, a decoction of coca and saliva was rubbed onto the male organ to prolong erotic ecstasy.

Traditionally, the leaves have been chewed for social, mystical, medicinal and religious purposes. Coca has even been used to provide a measure of time and distance. Native travelers sometimes described a journey in terms of the number of mouthfuls of coca typically chewed in making the trip.

South American Indians have used cocaine as it occurs in the leaves of Erythroxylum coca (also called Erythroxylon coca) for at least 5000 years. In its native habitat, the coca plant is resistant to drought and disease. It needs no irrigation. Coca can be harvested several times a year. Traditionally, chewing the sacred leaf promotes contact with the spirit world.

Chewing or smoking coca leaves invigorates the user, allowing him to absorb the plant's magical powers and protect body and spirit alike.

The introduction of coca to England was pioneered early in nineteenth century by the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew; but the plant has yet to find a place in orthodox Western horticulture.

In pre-Columbian times, the coca leaf was reserved for Inca royalty. The natives subsequently used it for mystical, religious, social, nutritional and medicinal purposes.

They exploited its stimulant properties to ward off fatigue and hunger, enhance endurance, and to promote a benign sense of well-being.

It was initially banned by the Spanish. But the invaders discovered that without the Inca "gift of the gods", the natives could barely work the fields, or mine gold. So it came to be cultivated by the Catholic Church.

Coca leaves were distributed three or four times a day to the workers during brief rest-breaks. Returning Spanish conquistadors introduced it to Europe. Coca was touted as "an elixir of life".

In 1814, an editorial in Gentleman's Magazine urged researchers to begin experimentation so that coca could be used as "a substitute for food, so that people could live a month, now and then, without eating..."



New History of Cocaine
The active ingredient (an alkaloid) from the coca plant (erythroxylum) was first isolated by a chemist named Albert Niemann. In 1860 he gave the compound the name cocaine.

The drug induces a sense of exhilaration in the user primarily by blocking the reuptake of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the midbrain.

Soon after it was first synthesized, cocaine was available almost everywhere. Sometimes available in powder form, it was also mixed with various other products like wine and cigarettes. Doctors dispensed cocaine as an antidote to morphine addiction. Unfortunately, some patients made a habit of combining them.

Freud described cocaine as a magical drug. He wrote a song of praise in its honor and practiced extensive self-experimentation. To Sherlock Holmes, cocaine was "so transcendentally stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment".

Cocaine is now an integral part of the world economy. Its street price reflects the competitive pressures of today's global marketplace.

Coca has been grown commercially in Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Indonesia, Nigeria, Malaysia and Japan. The first cocaine cartel was formed, not in Columbia, but in Amsterdam.

Founded in 1910, the Cocaine Manufacturers Syndicate included pharmaceutical giants Merck, Sandoz and Hoffman-LaRoche. At present, however, most production occurs in clandestine laboratories in South America.

Since the 1980's, cocaine has become a significant export-earner for many poor South American countries. In the year 2000, South America exported some 1000 tons of refined cocaine.

In the 1980s, millions of drug-naive Americans were introduced to 'decocainised' coca tea imported from South America. In Peru, the legitimate cultivation of coca, and the production of all cocaine licensed for pharmaceutical export, was controlled by the government's own National Enterprise Of Coca.

In a bid to expand and diversify its product range, the National Enterprise Of Coca promoted the benefits of coca in the form of a wholesome traditional beverage.

This state-sponsored export-drive was successful: overseas demand proved brisk. From 1983, 'Inca Health Tea' sold especially well in the North American market.

Lemongrass and other flavors were added to cater to American palates. Soon mate de coca could be bought in tea-shops and grocery stores in US cities.

Mate de coca is an agreeable and invigorating mood-brightener. It is also benign, patients at the San Francisco National Addiction Research Foundation, for instance, were encouraged in the 1980s to drink as much mate de coca as they desired to help wean themselves off cocaine.

When consumed in generous quantities, the tea is good at easing drug-cravings; but this is because the average tea-bag contains 5 milligrams of cocaine.

Inca tea is now illegal in the USA.



The CIA And Cocaine
The cocaine trade continues to spawn eyebrow-raising alliances. Declassified documents now available at the CIA web site disclose that in the 1980s CIA operatives teamed up with cocaine dealers in the fight against Communism.

In 1979, the people of the small Central American country of Nicaragua overthrew the US-backed Samoza dictatorship. To the horror of US policy-makers, the Nicaraguans then elected a left-wing government.

Investigative journalist Richard Webb, in his book Dark Alliance first revealed how profits from cocaine sold in Los Angeles and Miami were used by the CIA to fund, and buy guns for the anti communist contra rebels.

Suitcases stuffed with coke-tainted US dollars were dispatched to Nicaragua to foment insurrection and civil war.

According to Internic records in 1998 the domain cocaine.com was registered in the name of the CIA. Read More......