In the aftermath of the Civil War a savage drug addiction ran rampant among wounded veterans who had received a powerful medication in field hospitals; so the urban legend goes anyway. But in 1874 a British chemist was hard at work on a new substance that would rescue victims from the curse of
soldiers disease, AKA
morphine addiction.
Neurotransmitters and their respective receptors fit together like a key in a lock. One class of neurotransmitters associated with pain are the endorphins. Just as a lock can be picked by a skeleton key, pain can be blocked and consciousness changed by molecules that resemble beta-endorphin. Resin scraped from the ripening seed pods of the opium poppy contain such molecules.
Opiates are effective analgesics because they directly block pain, sedate the patient, and produce euphoria which makes pain more tolerable. The latter effect in particular has made opiates popular as a recreational drug for centuries (A dangerous habit indeed considering that one of the other possible side effects is fatal cardiopulmonary collapse). The price is that opiates are physically addictive and produce tolerance. Users have to continually escalate their dose to gain the desired high. And once hooked, going without for even one day can produce virulent withdrawal symptoms described by some addicts as 'five times worse than the flu.'
The closing years of 19th century were a drug fiend's dream. Opium, cocaine, and other mood altering substances were sold over the counter. Drugstores offered a convenient combo mixture of opium tincture and alcohol called laudanum for less than a bottle of gin at the liquor store. Opium 'dens' became widespread in the US.
Concerned about the rise of opium addiction and in the wake of ill-fated American Imperialism in Asia, which saw even more opium coming into the country, Congress began enacting a series of laws to stem the tide. These new laws made the import of all narcotics a highly regulated, taxable business, with associated Draconian penalties for lawbreakers. Neo-puritanism and the black-market drug distribution system were enjoined, and our modern drug subculture was born.
I want to be crystal clear about this lest any readers construe this post as advocating we just give up and start putting oxycontin as prizes in boxes of Cracker-jacks: There is little doubt that untold numbers of lives have been saved or improved due to enforcement of existing drug laws. The question is, how many lives have been needlessly ruined in the bargain by treating substance abuse and/or addiction as a major crime?
The US will spend over 40 billion dollars directly on drug law enforcement and prosecution this year. Law-abiding patients who cannot afford or find a chronic pain specialist may suffer intractable pain, even as dealers sell $20 baggies on street corners with enough dope in them to anesthetize a charging rhinoceros. Property can be seized regardless if suspects are convicted or even charged. Every year, hundreds of thousands of men and women charged with relatively minor drug offenses bog down our legal system.
"Danbury wasn't a prison. It was a crime school. I went in with a B.A. of Marijuana and come out with a Ph.D. of Cocaine."--George Jung played by Johnny Depp in Blow
And yet, we turn a blind eye to 'friendly' producers like Afghanistan, now the largest producer of illicit opium in the world. One has to wonder just what the neocons are smoking when they repeatedly hold out that beleaguered nation as a model of success of Bush's foreign policy. Especially as much of that Afghan opium is refined into more powerful, more addictive, and far deadlier drugs.
Which brings me back to 1874 and chemist C. R. Wright. The substance he derived from poppies was dubbed diacetylmorphine. It 'rescued' morphine addicts alright, with just one dose a day. And perhaps because of the glorious way diacetylmorphine made users feel, or as the legend goes because wounded Civil War heroes carried a little bottle of the 'cure' around with them as a diminutive companion, it became known as heroine.