The transformation of tobacco and cannabis into early modern global obsessions

> The story of smoking in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is capacious enough to include the distillation apparatus of the alchemist, the water pipe of the cannabis smoker, and even medicinal smoke enemas.

I had no idea this was a thing, that's disturbing lol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke_enema

Hey, I have your book Age of Intoxication!

When I was in Lisbon I'd visited the Museu da Farmácia (mostly because my grandfather was a pharmacist), but after reading your book I realized that (despite also having spent a little time there) I'd overlooked multiple things going on in the park across the street.

It's interesting how early European accounts of Native American tobacco smoking don't seem to bear much similarity to my experiences of tobacco use. In this it describes the Taino becoming "almost drunk" off it. But the only time tobacco made me exhibit anything like that was when I accidentally inhaled way too much of a cigar and became physically ill and delirious. The experience was an extremely unpleasant one involving vomiting, tremors, having difficulty standing up, and slurring speech. But there was none of the "fun" parts of inebriation. I wasn't disinhibited or "loosened up," I just felt like my heart was pounding out of my chest and that I might die. I simply could not imagine anyone putting themselves through that on purpose as recreation.

I also never experienced hallucinations, which is another thing early accounts said Native Americans experienced with tobacco use. I can only imagine they were taking extremely large doses frequently enough that they had been pretty desensitized to it. I can't imagine what cancer rates must have been like!

"A dance of “glorious and strange beauty” took place in a wintry garden in the south of England on January 6, 1614."

So specific!! And that's just the first line!

Is it just me, or are they just telling stories about the 16th century? Historians themselves will say history is an interpretative act. 'History' is for us in the present - it only lightly relates to what may or may not have occurred in the past, even if it presented as a fait accompli. I don't think it is possible to get this detail about what went on back then.

I see this sort of article as 'myth making'. Its not to do with reality - no sources are provided for us to check. Its just presented as a ready narrative, and we are meant to accept it.

So, what if that is the myth what are meant to take from it? I think we are meant 'edu-tained'. We can laugh at the fools back then who were literally blowing smoke up each others arses, in reclined splendour. We can enjoy a cannabis narrative - this talks to how we legalise it nowadays. These sorts of myths support the idea of how we are progressed, superior, etc.

> Tobacco is indeed native to the Americas, and early modern Europeans, Africans, and Asians did encounter tobacco smoking as a new practice without precedent in ancient texts or preexisting social conventions. But, as archaeologists and anthropologists have been documenting for decades, tobacco was not the only drug that the peoples of the Old World smoked—even before the voyages of Columbus.

that was harder to say when "Tobacco is Evil" propaganda dominated any discussion of smoking. Some of the old school mixtures are rough I'd rather smoke sawdust.