We tend in our culture to make a radical
distinction between
drugs and foods
With what we call spices sort of falling somewhere in the middle in point of fact
a culture is what it eats and
an individual's personality is
Often largely a reflection of their diet there has not been a human culture
that did not bear upon it the stamp of its relationship to certain plants which altered the
individual and mass psyche
We can think of numerous
examples the influence for instance of sugar on the growth of 19th century
Mercantilism or the way in which the British?
Manipulated opium policy in the Far East or as you mentioned?
Alcohol which has always been the drug of choice
in
Western culture who can imagine
modern industrial office culture without coffee
These are major
drug
Dependencies that have placed their stamp on the lives of millions and millions of people it's simply that we choose to
Linguistically define it in such a way that the effect is not something most people are cognizant
Oh, I think coffee is a very interesting example because when it was first introduced into our culture as I understand
It was considered a virtually a hallucinogenic drug. Oh, yes, when coffee was first introduced into Western culture
It was associated with certain
establishments wear loose women and loud music were available and the
bohemian literati would gather and drink coffee and talk into the night, and it was considered quite a
Risque thing to be involved with that's right and wasn't tobacco also viewed that way initially
Yes, tobacco is a very similar case
the anthropologist
Eduardo Luna has pointed out that tobacco
Which had a history of millennia of use in the new world
Was within a hundred years of being introduced into Europe through?
Portugal was being buried in the graves of subarctic
Lapland
Shamans, so it shows how the character of a drug is quickly discerned by a culture even
A culture that is encountering that plant or that drug for the first time
You
