Higher than the Shoulder of Giants

Author: https://twitter.com/mold_time

Link: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/04/19/higher-than-the-shoulders-of-giants-or-a-scientists-history-of-drugs/

This article details the history of the most popular drugs - caffeine, alcohol, marijuana, hallucinogens, cocaine - in an attempt to prove that drugs are a foundational technology, and their suppression is at least part of, if not the whole reason, innovation has been stifled in the last 50 years.

The final takeaway: "what is clear is that drugs are foundational technologies, like the motor, combustion engine, semiconductor, or the concept of an experiment. New drugs lead to scientific revolutions. Some of those drugs, like coffee, continue to fuel fields like mathematics and computer science, even some hundreds of years later."

Sure, it's constructed like a conspiracy theory, noting coincidences and such, but the history of these drugs is fun and interesting nonetheless. Below, I list my favorite fun facts by drug

[[caffeine]]

  • "In 1675, King Charles II briefly banned coffeehouses in London, claiming they had 'very evil and dangerous effects.'' We don’t know the exact details of the public response, but it was so negative that the king changed his mind after only eleven days! Ten years later, coffee houses were yielding so much tax revenue to the crown that banning them became totally out of the question."

  • Researchers has consumed more coffee than any other profession since the drug first spread to Europe

[[cocaine]]

  • [[Sigmund Freud]] was a big [[cocaine]] user at points through his life. He liked to use it before lectures... he also liked to write letters to his fiance about it

    • “I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump. And if you are forward, you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle little girl who doesn’t eat enough, or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body. In my last serious depression I took cocaine again and a small dose lifted me to the heights in a wonderful fashion. I am just now collecting the literature for a song of praise to this magical substance.”

  • The chemist Angelo Mariani, “invented” cocawine in 1863, and branded it as [[Vin Mariani]], from cocaine.org:

    • “If cocaine is consumed on its own, it yields two principal metabolites, ecgonine methyl ester and benzoyleconine. Neither compound has any discernible psychoactive effect. Cocaine co-administered with alcohol, however, yields a potent psychoactive metabolite, cocaethylene. Cocaethylene is very rewarding agent in its own right. Cocaethylene is formed in the liver by the replacement of the methyl ester of cocaine by the ethyl ester. It blocks the dopamine transporter and induces euphoria. Hence coca wine drinkers are effectively consuming three reinforcing drugs rather than one.”

  • Mariani had a bevy of celebrity endorsements, including proof that [[Thomas Edison]] was a [[Vin Mariani]] drinker...

  • Did you ever hear as kid that the original coca-cola had cocaine in it? Well, it turns out that was true. A pharmacist in Georga named John Pemberton nade a [[Vin Mariani]] competitor, but alcohol was outlawed in Georgia in 1886, so he invented Coca-Cola instead - coca wine without the alcohol. He had to remove the cocaine in 1914 when it was outlawed as well.

  • [[Karl Koller]], a colleague of [[Sigmund Freud]] was the first surgeon to use [[cocaine]] as a local anaesthetic, which was a breakthrough discovery of the time

    • [[Karl Koller]] gave the first successful eye surgery in 1884, at age 25
    • this is why many other anaestheics end with "caine"
    • before this, all you could do was just get really drunk and scream in pain during surgery

  • [[cocaine]] was outlawed in the US in [[1914]]

[[alcohol]]

  • This ones a bit obvious, but slimemoldtimemold is the first person I've seen throw out this theory: Prohibition was introduced the decade before [[The Great Depression]]. "Was it a coincidence that the Great Depression began to turn around in March 1933, the same month that President Roosevelt signed the first law beginning the reversal of Prohibition? Probably it is, but you have to admit, it fits our case surprisingly well."
  • Tesla, the person, abuse only one drug - alcohol. He called it "a veritable elixir of life"

[[LSD]]

  • [[Albert Hofmann]] synthesized LSD and was the first person to take a "small" dose - 250 micrograms (the typical, modern dose is no more than 150). His day known as bicycle day.
  • John Lennon and George Harrison got "dosed" (given LSD without being told) by their dentist the first time they did LSD... that's fucked up. They had a good time though and forced their bandmates Paul and Ringo to do it as well.
  • polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was invented by [[Kary Mullis]], who was a big time psychedelics user. PCR is a foundational technology that much modern work was built on


My Linked Notes

  • 2021-06-13

    I came back across this website this week when I read [[Higher than the Shoulders of Giants]]. This piece dives into a history of some of the most well known drugs - caffeine, alcohol, cocaine, hallucinogens - then uses that history to construct a (conspiracy?) theory that the [[1970 Controlled Substances Act]] was the monocausal event that led to all the diverging trends that began in 1970. The result is possible because "drugs are foundational technologies, like the motor, combustion engine, semiconductor, or the concept of an experiment. New drugs lead to scientific revolutions. Some of those drugs, like coffee, continue to fuel fields like mathematics and computer science, even some hundreds of years later."

One last thing

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