Flight from reality

Abstract

Since time immemorial, man, in every stratum of his society and in every segment of his competence, has sought "some brief respite from the disenchantments of reality ", for "who is ever really free from care, gloom, apprehension, boredom, or mental fatigue-free enough to float the mind above the sordid anchorage of reality"? Thus writes the author in the introduction to this highly informative and entertainingly written book on those products of the plant world which for ages have narcotized those who have sought " flight from reality ". The desire for these elixirs is so innate in man that to attempt legislative prohibition of them, rather than control of their abuse, is absurd, in the opinion of the author, for "next to the instinct of survival it has dominated more people than any religion, costs more than any food, and it yields in this country more than two billion dollars' yearly revenue to the United States Treasury ". Elsewhere in this volume the author states: "Even a superficial glance at the literature of anthropology, botany, pharmacology, and narcotics should convince the curious that they deal not with depravity but with a human need beyond the strictures of the moralist, buried deep in the very fiber of man's existence. How else explain the discovery of cohobo (Piptadenia peregrina) by the ancient Caribs of Haiti, a narcotic which is known today under a variety of names in Amazonia, and still used in Colombia under the name of 'niopo snuff'? It has nothing to do with tobacco although it is used like snuff. Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) and the related genus Datura, both containing deadly alkaloids, were used for centuries in all-but-unprintable rites, ages before their legitimate use in medicine. Even today a derivative of Datura Stramonium, the common Jimson weed, is used criminally in a mixture of sexual excitants to break down the will of girls attempting to resist 1 237 pages. Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York. 1949. prostitution. Properly extracted, the plants of this family yield such valuable medicines as stramonium, scopolamine, atropine, hyoseyamine, and other alkaloids. Less well known, but used long before coffee was heard of, is the African khat (Catha edulis), the constant use of which so reduces libido that marriages among its addicts are few or late ". "Also from Africa, mostly near Gold Coast and in the Congo valley, the natives discovered the kola nut (Cola acuminata), rich in caffeine. It became notorious not only for its caffeine content, but because the women slave carriers upon whom the traffic depended were once subjected to barbaric cruelties. Why, too, should the women of India have turned to the root of kaner (Nerium indicaum), a sweet-scented relative of the equally poisonous oleander. Kaner, in less than dangerous doses, has been so much used by rejected or jealous women of India that their more fortunate sisters taunt them by saying, "Go and eat of the kaner root". Many suicides are on record from eating too much, for the plant yields a dangerous alkaloid. How, one asks, could frustrated women of India, centuries ago, have discovered the peculiar narcotic effects of these roots? And how or why did the ancients discover the virtues of darnel (Lolium tremulentum), a grass without narcotic properties until, like ergot, it is attacked by a fungous disease? Greeks and Romans knew it well, and used it sometimes in such large doses that narcotic visions were followed by death ". " By far the most famous of these secondary agents of escape is the mandrake (Mandragora officinarum), not to be confused with the American mandrake or May-apple. The true mandrake of Eurasia is a perennial herb, the root of which is often bifurcated, manlike, and has been the subject of countless legends, some of them blasphemous and nearly all unprintable. For a thousand years credulous oriental women bought the roots upon the wholly gratuitous assumption that they would promote conception. Its more