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> why Alcohol was popular when cocaine and other opiates didn't carry negative associations We've rewritten history to help ignore this, but they were quite po
by chimeracoder 12y ago
> why Alcohol was popular when cocaine and other opiates didn't carry negative associations
We've rewritten history to help ignore this, but they were quite popular.
Laudanum used to be heavily used in the US, and even Sherlock Holmes was written to be a regular, casual user of cocaine (Dr. Watson viewed it as "his only vice", such as a smoker of tobacco pipes, but had no medical objection to it).
- pdonis 12y ago> had no medical objection to it Actually, he did. Watson tells Holmes early on (in The Sign of the Four, I think) that using cocaine might damage his powers of observation and deduction; and in the stories after Holmes' return, Watson mentions several times that he felt obliged as a medical man to wean Holmes from the drug, and that he gets worried when there is a long period without Holmes having a case because Holmes might be tempted to start using the drug again.