Originally published at: How did ancient Chinese people get high? | Boing Boing
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Opium wasn’t widely abused as a drug until fairly recently when the British forced it on the population to complete their trade circuit. They literally waged war to create an addiction economy in China, which had the knock-on “benefit” of painting Chinese immigrants in the colonies as lazy, drug-addled criminals.
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And all my life I thought it was mountain climbing or wire-fu.
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Really? No one posted this yet? The Boomers must have gone to bed early
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I wish people would stop characterizing all drug use as inherently “drug abuse”. That, in itself, is a driver of harm. It makes people feel they need to conceal use, and it tends to promote “in for a penny…” type thinking about what could otherwise be a relatively healthy relationship to psychoactives. It’s the exact thinking behind both the war on drugs and abstinence-only recovery, both largely failed approaches which people don’t always survive.
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So it was Calgon before Tide Pods?
With a little help from their friends, of course.
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I had a colleague whose are of sociology/public health research was high-functioning heroin users. People (usually upper/middleclass men) who held down jobs, lived normal lives, etc etc, but when they got home from work on Friday they took heroin as their “relax and recreation.” No outwardly deleterious effects, no impact on their personal lives. He had a lot of trouble getting published, and it was almost impossible to get funding for his studies. Heroin wasn’t going to be seen like that—it was a drug that was “abused,” and people didn’t want to hear otherwise.
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