Recreational Drugs... 1600's - 1700's

[Jib]

Took a look at a book entitled "Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs" by Jerry Webber. In the book Mr. Webber notes that people in the 1700's drank 3 times as much alcoholas we do today. He also mentions Marihuana Tax act of 1937 and says that the use of Marijuana stretches back thousands of years (page 18).

Made me think? Did Pirates enjoy something other than rum, wine, ale and beer from time to time?

[Animal]

I would think that if they were in the company of local natives, what ever the custom was, they partook. Chewing coca leaves and chewing beetle nuts have been doone in South American countries for centuries.

Animal

[Quartermaster James]

I would think that if they were in the company of local natives, what ever the custom was, they partook. Chewing coca leaves and chewing beetle nuts have been doone in South American countries for centuries.

Animal

I am very interested in your source material citing betel in South America.

[Capt. Bo of the WTF co.]

Hey, even Moses was known to burn some bush!

Hadda do it. The devil made me!

Bo

[Fox]

A Captain Knox spent several years in the East in the second half of the 17th century, and when he returned presented to the Royal Society a paper on the narcotic qualities (as opposed to medicinal, which had been known for yonks) of cannabis. Not evidence of pirates using it, but the knowledge was certainly there.

Additionally, it has been suggested (without proof AFAIK) that the 'medicine' demanded by Blackbeard off Charleston may have been laudanum, which also has narcotic qualities.

[Mission]

Laudenum and various other recipes featuring opium were popular medicinally at this time. I don't know that people would regard them as recreational drugs per se. However, someone who was treated with them might find the concoction to be most pleasurable and try to get at them if the opportunity presented itself. Note that the opium was diluted in all of the drugs I have come across. There were many patent medicines and pain relief recipes (analgesics) that featured opiates. If I recall correctly, I believe laudenum usually consisted of no more than 25% opium. (Recipes for patent medicines varied widely.) I have found no period references to drug problems or recreational drug use thus far. This may be because it was not regarded as a problem or because it was understood as an abusive behavior. So all that leaves you is conjecture.

Smoking is rarely mentioned in most accounts, and when it is it is usually in reference to cargo being taken (tobacco). My feeling is that it was so common that comment seemed unnecessary. For the most part, it was not thought to be a harmful activity at this time; that is a modern concept. So, by extension, if sailors came across Indians in the New World smoking marijuana, they might have just regarded it as another form of tobacco - possibly one with different properties than what they were used to. They might have thought little more of it. Marijuana is technically not chemically addictive (in fact, many recreational drugs aren't), but it is slightly psychologically addictive if I remember my classes correctly. If you don't have any special association in your mind to the tobacco the Indians proffer and that which you get everywhere else, it wouldn't seem to me that there would be much ground for psychological addiction. Again, this is conjecture.

I have also read modern commentary about abuse of alcohol, which at least one author claimed to be a huge problem during period. Drinking excessively is commented on in just about every period account I have read. If you want to read more about alcoholism during period painted as a problematic behavior, I highly recommend the book Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 1600-1770 by Emily Cockayne. She also talks about smoking, although the period evidence is not as compelling. (I don't believe she mentions drugs at all.)

[Note: edited erroneous references to cocaine and replaced them with the correct drug, opium. Thanks to Sjöröveren for pointing out my error.]

[Sjöröveren]

Laudanum is an opiate - no cocaine in it. Cocaine, if memory serves, (doubtful at this time of the morning) was typical used by chewing the whole dried leaf, mixed with lime, wood ash, or some other mildly alkali substance. Still the way it is used today in the Andes. Cocaine as a recreational drug is quite recent - late 19th century I believe, when many plant-based medicines were being researched to find their active chemicals. Heroin, aspirin, nicotine and many other pharmaceuticals were discovered and/or synthesized around that time.

[Mission]

My bad. It is indeed referred to as containing opiates in my references.

[William Brand]

The term 'recreational' is a relatively modern term when applied to drugs of any kind, but the use of opiates was common enough socially to be considered relatively public in regions such as China and India. For example, Opium was used socially as early as the fifteenth century in those parts of the world, but it was not used 'widely' due to expense. Opium became popular enough in China throughout the 1600s that prohibition was introduced by 1729 and references to the use of opiates in the East can be found all over the place by many Chinese historians down through the ages.

This is all well and good for someone portraying a pirate in the Far East, but use of opium as we think of it in the West was limited to medicinal purposes such as laudanum from 1527. Opium dens would not arrive in force until the 1850s.

Now, if you want to talk about smoking tobacco of the South seas, you may wish to study madak (or madat), which was tobacco mixed with herbs that often contained amounts of opium. Madak was the most widespread addictive substance that pirates might have used if traveling to those parts of the world such as Java, China, Taiwan, India and the Philippines. Pirates who travelled to the South seas, such as Kidd, may have seen or even used madak, but I have not found a reference to it. It could be argued that trade would have brought madak outside of this region to other parts of the world, so watch for it as you read.

[William Brand]

This is an excerpt from the book Narcotic Culture by Frank Dikötter, Lars Peter Laamann, Zhou Xun...

"The Spread of Madak c. 1660-1780

Engelbert Kampfer, a Westphalian physician working for the Dutch East India Company, recorded that the Javanese soaked their tobacco in water that made the head 'spin violently'. The opium required for this preparation quickly became the most precious traded commodity in Batavia. The first traders to introduce opium for smoking to China were probably the Dutch between 1624 and 1660, first to their trade posts in Taiwan, and from there to Fujin. During the tumultuous decades of the Ming-Qing transistion, opium (madak) smoking was confined to the Taiwan Strait, and not noted by the Qing authorities until Xaimen was captured in 1683.

Javanese opium was blended with roots of local plants and hemp, minced, boiled with water in copper pans and finally mixed with tobacco: this blend is called madak. The mixture was prepared by the owners of smoking houses and fetched a prices significantly higher than for pure tobacco. Opium house owners in Taiwan also provided the smoking implement: a bamboo tube with a filter made of coir fibers produced from local coconut palms. Early reports from Taiwan indicate that they often offered the first smoke of madak free, serving copious amount of appetizers, food, and desserts. Travelers to Fujin and Taiwan observed that honey, candy and fruits were eaten as the opium was budding and crackling above the lamp. Contemporary observers such as Zhu Jingying also mentioned the opium (yapian) originated from parts of Southeast Asia which correspond to Indonesia and the Philippines today. The same author described the first opium pipes: made of tobacco, round, slender and with a fine opening, with a mouthpiece made of china clay. The substance was smoked with a hollow pot made of yellow clay, which was used to cook the opium. While the cleaning tool and the opium box were made of bamboo, opium paste scrapers were based on either iron or bamboo, flat or curved.

Althought these early reports were condemnatory, the habit of smoking madak spread throughout the coastal provinces of South China, even though never exceeding the popularity of tobacco. A precise chronology is not possible in the absence of reliable source material. The first references to opium smoking date from the early eighteenth century and come from Fujin and Guangdong, the same ports of entry as for tobacco: 'The opium is heated in a small copper pan until it turns into a very thinck paste, which is then mixed with tobacco. When the mixture is dried, it can be used for smoking by means of a bamboo pipe, while fibres are added for easier inhalation. There are private opium houses where people gather to lie on couches and smoke in turns by passing the pipe around. This carries on till late at night and goes on night after night without a break' Another description is provided in a memorial sent to the Yongzheng emperor in the 1720s:

Opium (yapian) is produced overseas, and the foreign merchants who import it as medicine (yaocai) derive a lucrative business from this trade, in particular in the Fujianese districts of Xiamen and Taiwan. Shameless rascals (wulai guntu) lure the sons of good families into [the habit] for their own profit. The opium is boiled down to a paste and blended into tobacco (yan) in order to produce smoking opium (yapianyan, i.e. madak). Privately run inns are established, where [smokers] congregate at night, only to disperse at dawn (ye ju xiao san), leading to licentious behavior. The truth is that youngsters become corrupted (xie) by smoking (xi) it until their lives collapse, their families' livelihood vanishes, and nothing is left but trouble. If one is intent on extirpating this evil (hai), one must tackle it at the root by ordering the imperial officials of Fujin and Guangdong to be strict in prohibiting the trade. Strict legal measures...will prevent any resurgence of the opium trade and lead to the closure of private opium houses."

There's a little more, but I'm tired of typing it up.

[Iron Jon]

As far as the widespread chewing or use of coca leaves and cocaine goes -

Philip II (1556-1598) of Spain issued a decree recognizing the coca as essential to the well-being of the Andean Indians but urged missionaries to end its religious use. The Spanish are believed to have effectively encouraged use of coca by an increasing majority of the native population to increase their labor output and tolerance for starvation.

Coca was first introduced to Europe in the 16th century, but did not become popular until the mid-19th century, with the publication of an influential paper by Dr. Paolo Mantegazza praising its stimulating effects on cognition. This led to invention of cocawine and the first production of pure cocaine.

The active ingredient (an alkaloid) from the coca plant (erythroxylum) was first isolated by a chemist named Albert Niemann. In 1860 he gave the compound the name cocaine.

Cocawine (an alcoholic beverage that combined wine and cocaine, developed in 1863) and other coca-containing preparations were widely sold as patent medicines and tonics, with claims of a wide variety of health benefits. The original version of Coca-cola was among these.

[Rumba Rue]

I can tell you that back then the marijuana grown was not very good and I suspect you would have only gotten a light buzz at best. Today's pot which has had the THC triple in specially grown pot strains that now exist and many can give you a whole new feeling in just one puff.

[Iron Bess]

Cocawine (an alcoholic beverage that combined wine and cocaine, developed in 1863) and other coca-containing preparations were widely sold as patent medicines and tonics, with claims of a wide variety of health benefits. The original version of Coca-cola was among these.

(Ahem... holding her soda glass aloft and singing the old stand-by...)

*Thing go better with Coke!*

[Quartermaster James]

I can tell you that back then the marijuana grown was not very good and I suspect you would have only gotten a light buzz at best. Today's pot which has had the THC triple in specially grown pot strains that now exist and many can give you a whole new feeling in just one puff.

I wonder about this. Certainly the recreational vegetation of a few decades back pales in comparison to what is available today (or so I am given to understand). But can one necessarily extrapolate from American ditch weed of the 50's to anything from Asia a few centuries ago? Cannabis, Hashish and cannabis extracts have a long history of cultivation and use as drugs. Their horticulture and preparation were well refined centuries before Puritan and Victorian morals, and the Harrison Narcotic Act. I suspect what we have here is a situation far more akin to the micro-brew revolution: the beer available now is much stronger and tastier than what was common in America four or five decades ago, but that is not to say strong and good beer was unknown to the world before the 80's.

[Salty]

mescaline, cocaine, opiates......god grows his own, no wonder europeans liked the "new world" so much.

[Quartermaster James]

Heroin, aspirin, nicotine and many other pharmaceuticals were discovered and/or synthesized around that time.

Yes, I believe it was very late in the 1800's when Bayer marketed its new non-addictive morphine substitute: Heroin!

[Jib]

I forgot about Hash! And that was popular in the Middle East since the Dark Ages!

[Jib]

How about "Snuff"? That appeared at about this time did it not?

[William Brand]

How about "Snuff"? That appeared at about this time did it not?

Snuff was first observed by Europeans in one of Columbus' voyages. It was used during the 1700s, but enjoyed less popularity than smoking tobacco.

[Capt. Bo of the WTF co.]

The THC levels in canabis are a direct result of the soil, nutrients, and climate conditions in which it grows, as well as the genetics of the particular strain you are working with, but I don't know anything about that.

Bo

[Cannibal Chrispy]

umm... uh.... I forgot what I was gonna say.

[Jib]

I know they found plenty of clay pipes in the ruins of Port Royal. I wonder if they found anything else that could have been used in recreational drug usage?

[Quartermaster James]

I know they found plenty of clay pipes in the ruins of Port Royal. I wonder if they found anything else that could have been used in recreational drug usage?

Well, mugs, cups, glasses, and goblets, could have been used for beer, wine, and spirits (since you include tobacco - for which the clay pipes - as a recreational drug, then alcohol must likewise qualify, no?)

[Jib]

I assume that everyone drank more than they do today. Of course Pirates on a bender would go through a lot of the juice!

[Rumba Rue]

Hmmmm.....sounds like some of the pirate parties I've been to.