Drugs are one of the foremost problems in our modern-day society. Drugs bolster all kinds of criminal organizations, and are nothing but a detriment to society. They destroy lives, families, and whole cities, even. The moral of the story? Don’t take drugs, kids! It may surprise you, though, that drugs have been consumed in form or another for a very long time.
The first drug that we know of is alcohol. And yes, alcohol isn’t traditionally counted as a drug because:
- Most people drink once in a while without any issues
- Alcohol is legal in most countries (barring Islamic nations, because all intoxicants are forbidden by Islam and alcohol is considered as one of them)
However, alcohol does fit the category of a recreational drug. Anyways, alcohol was first made in Egypt as beer, which was not like our beer, but rather a fermented wheat porridge. This quickly caught on in Mesopotamia, along with their own sesame wine. Centuries later, the Greeks also made wine from grapes, which is the stuff we drink today.
The Central and South American peoples used tobacco and coca leaves (the source of cocaine) as a recreational drug, and many Native Americans regularly smoked tobacco. Psylocibin mushrooms and the highly hallucinogenic ayahuasca plant, still in use today, were also in favor with many South American tribes.
In the 4th millenium BCE, the Indo-Iranian peoples used drugs as a form of recreation and a way to commune with the gods. Opium and marijuana were used by the Iranian Bactrians of Afghanistan in the 2nd millenium BCE. However, the most important drug was Soma, made from the stalks of an unidentified plant. Soma is the Sanskrit name for the drug, while haoma is the Iranian name. Soma was offered as a libation in yajnas or sacrifices. The Zoroastrians of Yazd in Iran used the ephedra plant, which creates an adrenaline-like effect, in their rituals while modern-day Hindus use the somalata plant, which doesn’t have any of the effects described in the Vedas, the main source of info for soma. The most likely candidate is a mixture of ephedra, which creates alertness, and Peganum harmala, a hallucinogenic plant similar to the aforementioned ayahuasca.
The presence of the Phalaris grass and Peganum harmala, which inhibits the toxicity of the former, at many sites in Iran increases the chances of the latter playing a major role in soma/haoma. In Afghanistan, Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi discovered traces of opium poppy, cannabis, and ephedra at the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex, although other researchers haven’t been able to verify his claims. However, soma was and still is a huge part in both Zoroastrianism and Hinduism. Interestingly, the Hindu epic Mahabharata says that commercial vendors of Soma incur sin equal to that of slaying a Brahmin (Hindu priest), which is one of the highest levels of sin possible. It shows that people did know the dangers of drugs and that drug use was in fact limited.
On a similar note, the Scythians of Central Asia, who were early offshoots of the Indo-Iranians, regularly smoked marijuana or cannabis for recreational and shamanic purposes. They probably introduced the herb to China, and it was drank along with fermented mare’s milk. Today, a similar custom is practiced in North India on the festival of Holi, albeit with fresh cow’s milk and hashish, a concentrated dried form of marijuana. This is likely due to influence from the Scythians who invaded and conquered parts of India during the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. In fact, India’s traditional Sanskrit calendar starts with the defeat of the Sakas, or the Indo-Scythian kingdoms by the Telugu king Vikramaditya in 78 CE. Back to marijuana, though. Back to marijuana though, the name cannabis is a Scythian word itself and has a cognate in the Hindi ganja, with the altered meaning of the flowers of the hemp and marijuana plants.
The Europeans discovered tobacco during the Colombian Exchange and the drug quickly became popular across Europe and Asia. Hookahs were the most popular way of inhaling tobacco in Asia, where they were already in use for hashish and opium, while pipes became favored in Europe. The word hookah is the Anglicized spelling of a Hindi word huqqaa, but in the Middle East it is usually called ‘arjilah in Arabic or nargilah in Hebrew. Nargile is used for the hookah’s pipe in the Balkans and it all derives from Sanskrit ‘narikela’ via Persian, meaning coconut. This suggests hookahs were first made from coconut shells.
In the end, the history of psychedelics is long and interesting – and perhaps even a fundamental yet dark part of our ancestry, seeing that chimpanzees are now getting addicted to alcohol which they raid from human villages, and the fact that we are the only two species with the ability to digest it. While other drugs are definitely illegal in most places and are looked down upon by society, alcohol and tobacco addictions are still rampant in many countries. As an ending note, I’ll repeat something I said earlier: Don’t take drugs, kids!
Anay Ganesh 