History of Drugs
drugs in film - drugs in history - drugs in literature - drugs in music
Timeline
The below, by Don Steiny Software, is based on the Appendix of *Ceremonial Chemistry* by Thomas Szasz, published by Doubleday/Anchor, Garden City, New York, 1975. The author included his references, added several items of interest and deleted some things not relevant. All unattributed items (no footnote) are from the book. --sourced from http://www.lectlaw.com/files/drg09.htm [Feb 2005]
Books
- A Brief History of Drugs: From the Stone Age to the Stoned Age - Antonio Escohotado [Amazon.com]
This wonderful new volume is a very readable and informative condensation of and expansion on Escohotado own previous publication, the lengthy three-volume 'Historia General de las Drogas'. Here, in a text finely balanced with history and science, he traces humanity's affair with drugs and intoxicants beginning with the third millenium B.C., and leading up to the modern hi-tech psycheledics. He traces some of the most popular drugs like caffeine and hemp back to their surprisingly early origins. Taking into account the involvement of drugs in early religious festivities, he offers an analysis how they've made an easy move from there to a more secular, pleasure-seeking culture, accompanied by the parallel villification of drugs by religion, the institution that played a leading role in their introduction to society. This concise book will make readers aware of the extent of the spread of drugs through history, and of the hopelessness of all attempts to make them disappear from future history as well. bibliomantic for amazon.comTime periods covered: 1 Remote Antiquity 2 The Greek World 3 The Roman World 4 The End of Paganism 5 Islam and Inebriation 6 Drugs, Lust, and Satan 7 The Resurgence of Medicine 8 The Discovery of America 9 The End of the Old Regime and the Opium Wars 10 The Nineteenth Century 11 The Antiliberal Reaction 12 The Beginnings of the Crusade 13 New Drugs 14 A Pharmacratic Peace 15 The Psychedelic Rebellion 16 Return of the Repressed 17 The Era of Substitutes 18 Some Aspects of the Problem