On 17th century "cocaine" | Hacker News Reader

On 17th century "cocaine"

resobscura.substack.com

161 pointsbenbreen209 comments

Can anyone with a scientific background give an opinion about the first comment to the linked post? They say they are sceptical because "there are a number of Tropane alkaloids which are very close to cocaine and are present in other plants - especially nightshades (e.g., belladonna) - which were known to and used for various purposes by Europeans for a long time."

As you would expect, this is covered in the actual paper [0]:

> Therefore, the 3rd molecule detected in the brain tissues of our subjects, hygrine (an alkaloid present in the leaves of Erythroxylum spp. only), was essential to determine that the molecules detected in these human remains derived from the chewing of coca leaves or from leaves brewed as a tea, consistent with the historical period.

If I'm reading this right, they checked for a number of markers and one of those is found only in coca leaves.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030544032...

Thank you! I should have thought of checking the paper first

Author here, I had the same question and looked into it. The author of that comment seems to be onto something because hygrine is indeed found in nightshades as well as in coca. Interesting.

Where are you getting that hygrine is found in nightshades? The authors of the paper specifically say it's only found in Erythroxylum and I'm not finding any references in my own research to that specific chemical being present in nightshades.

I'm no chemist, but according to wikipedia, cuscohygrine is found in belladona plants and it metabolizes into hygrine. So that could be what he's referring to?

I read the same wikipedia page and that statement is confusing if not incorrect. Hygrine is a not a metabolite of cuscohygrine, it's in fact the other way round: hygrine is the precursor and cuscohygrine is the metabolite.

The first reference on that page is "The role of hygrine in the biosynthesis of cuscohygrine and hyoscyamine"

No, it does not appear to be true that hygrine is found in nightshades.

Cuscohygrine does occur in those plants yet it's precursor hygrine does not. How it then gets there without us being able to detect hygrine could be because it only occurs in very small concentrations or is produced and then quickly and wholly converted in to its cusco metabolite, or that it's produced through a different biosynthetic pathway.

The research group behind the paper looks reliable, they have a publication record in the area and while it's surprising they can detect metabolites (and surprising that brains were preserved from the 1600s) they seem to have done a lot of detailed work, here's some of their other related work (they also found cannabis residues in some of their material):

"Forensic toxicological analyses reveal the use of cannabis in Milano (Italy) in the 1600's (2023)"

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Forensic-toxicological...

I inherited a small hardcover handbook on the use of cocaine in medicine and the household. I don’t have it in front of me at the moment so I don’t remember the print date. I’m guessing late 1800 or early 1900. Ah. DDG to rescue, here is a version of it. https://www.thebookmerchantjenkins.com/product/coca-and-coca... Certainly a different perspective on it from today.

Reading the complete Sherlock Holmes stories a few months ago, I also noticed how casually the frequent use of cocaine by Holmes is mentioned as a small vice, a recreational drug that is also "chemically clean", so nothing to worry about. Opium, on the other hand, is associated with disease, crime, and the criminal underworld.

Is it not still the same?

We won’t talk about crack, of course

Probably pretty hard to get "chemically clean" cocaine if you don't have a pharmaceutical source.

I’m not sure Victorian England pharmaceutical grade cocaine would actually be much cleaner, but yeah.

I use cocaine semi-frequently but avoid all opioids. The people I've known with cocaine problems always have tangential problems with alcohol abuse, excessive/irresponsible partying and generally unstable lifestyles. I've rarely seem people with acute addictions. The (many more) people I've know with opioid addictions are often 'regular' people with moderate-to-severe pain or mental health issues that become severely addicted, usually starting with prescriptions. We shouldn't pretend that the use patterns or use cases of the two drugs are the same, even if the dug war tried really, really hard to make us think that way.

I don't know your age, but as I've gotten older a consistent observation is that vices grow tend to grow with time and we tend towards becoming the older versions of the people we hang around. The social heavy drinking of our 20s becomes the solo heavy drinking of our 30s and the alcoholism of our 40s.

It's rare to see 70-80 year olds with a casual cocaine habit, and of the people I've known who have been interested in cocaine - the consequences caught up to them by the time they turned 30 with a consequence peak in their mid-20s.

Maybe a dumb question, but would a 70-80 year old be able to use cocaine without dying? If you're not using it often enough for it to be a problem, you also probably don't have much of a tolerance. I would think anyways.

Using a huge amount of cocaine could kill anyone, but a moderate amount can be tolerated by anyone without preexisting cardiovascular problems. That might rule out a lot of people 70+, but certainly not all. Like with most recreational drugs, most of the risks come with using large amounts or chronic use. Remember, these are substances used by tens of millions of people every year and have been for decades if not longer. They may not be FDA approved (well, some forms of cocaine are) but they are known quantities (well, minus the black market impurities).

I'm mid-40's.

I've seen the use of "party drugs" lessen or cease as people I know get older. It gets harder to fit those drugs into your life when you have increased responsibilities and fewer opportunities. Opioids are not party drugs for the most part. Alcohol is obviously a party drug, but like opioids it can become an acute addiction and a maintenance issue (even more so than opioids due to the uniquely dangerous withdrawal symptoms). A drug like cocaine is, to me, similar to molly/ecstasy. It's not fun to do maintenance amounts or to do a lot solo. So use seems to wax/wane with lifestyle. A pattern I have seen a lot is people who used/abused cocaine and alcohol frequently when partying, eventually stopped with the cocaine, and continued on as alcoholics into their 30s/40s/50s.

One interesting things about cocaine addiction is it has one of the strongest genetic/hereditary links of any addiction...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01256-1

I’ve never known someone to do cocaine in moderation unless the window between uses was very large (like once a year). It’s all anecdotal but if you’re doing it once a week or once a month, it will eventually grow over time to take over your life.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/coca-and-cocaine-their-history...

Here are other printings as well, in case anyone else wants to pick up a copy.

The ban on cocaine is kind of annoying even in its pure form, it’s a very useful local anaesthetic with good tolerance, low side effects that few people are allergic to. I have often wished it was included in some of the more advanced first aid kits, or used more widely for minor operations.

We have good local anesthetics that don't carry the same addiction risk. There's no reason to provide such a potent addictive drug at OTC.

As it turns out, lidocaine causes a lot of nerve damage. It even has long-lasting cognitive effects, in some patients.

oh heck, i had no idea! i just bought a huge tube of it for an elbow injury. time to pitch it i suppose. thanks for the info. it's sad what the nanny-state babies inflict on society for lack of understanding second-order effects.

I think you will find that cocaine actually compares very favourably and exceeds most current ones, except for the addiction potential, and the damage it did to the US foreign currency balance way back when they made it illegal.

If you have two drugs that are comparable, except one has a high risk of addiction, why would you consider the one with addiction potential except in very specialized situations?

Used as a local anesthetic there's no addiction risk. You don't get high from it, and it's not prescribed at home so you can't make a habit out of it. The only risk is medical people who have access to it stealing some.

Grandparent was suggesting including cocaine in OTC first-aid kits

"In the United States, cocaine is regulated as a Schedule II drug under the Controlled Substances Act, meaning that it has a high potential for abuse but has an accepted medical use. While rarely used medically today, its accepted uses are as a topical local anesthetic for the upper respiratory tract as well as to reduce bleeding in the mouth, throat and nasal cavities.", from Wikipedias cocaine page. I remember septoplasty surgery using topical cocaine for example.

Where do I buy it for my med kit?

In any upscale nightclub restroom.

If only that was actually cocaine...

The same place you buy Adderall or Fentanyl, which are also schedule II.

Just take sugar instead. Cheaper, stronger and legal.

Are you claiming sugar is a better local anesthetic than cocaine?

I was referring to the widely unknown facts that sugar is a stronger drug than cocaine[1], and more addictive[2]. Also much more dangerous.

[1] fedup movie (sundance 2014)

[2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Cocaine is sometimes used in the US to stop nose bleeds and for blood vessel constriction generally, in addition to occasional use as a local anesthetic.

"Analyzing mummified brain tissue from two men who died at the hospital in the seventeenth century, they found evidence of coca use—the earliest ever detected outside of South America. "

There is at least one person who disagrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henut_Taui

Cocaine in Egyptian mummies??

I’m not usually one to split hairs, but that Wikipedia page says “on” and not “in”.

Had they found the cocaine in the mummies, I suspect there would be less reason to suspect contamination after they were dug up.

One does not simply waste it without tasting it

egyptian mummies in the 17th century? o.0

I guess strippers were in shorter supply at the time?

The difference between coca and cocaine is rather like the difference between sugar cane and refined sugar. In fact, that is quite a good analogy in more ways than one.

More like the difference between a beer and grain alcohol.

Not the subject of the article, but in the vein (so to speak) of 19th century industrial refinement processes, gin and other cheap spirits were also a really big deal, and a really big problem at the time. The temperance movement didn’t come out of nowhere. I think it’s an interesting parallel between fermented beverages and coca tea on the one hand, and cocaine and hard liquor on the other.

People somehow forgot the ether epidemic in some parts of Europe at the turn of the 20th century.

I wish the US would legalize coca leaves. Our nation's drug laws are so goddamn stupid.

Two different Popes drank Vin Mariani!

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

I am disappointed this product is not still available

Isn't cocaethylene profoundly unhealthy? Even if both components were legal i don't think any country would allow them to be sold combined in one beverage.

Coca tea on the other hand, is not psychoactive, it's extremely mild and relaxing, similar to mint tea.

It's psychoactive, but not euphoric. Promoting wakefulness is a psychoactive property.

There is also this one from Italy:

https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_Buton

(Which is a actually buyable product that appearantly is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, coke leaf import company in europe. It's a lovely liqueur)

You can buy coca tea in headshops in Netherlands as well.

It actually works great replacing coffee as an after lunch drink.

Also recommend Guayusa which is not illegal anywhere AFAIK.

Really? Didn’t realise it was still available.

I remember one of the online smartshops used to sell it, it was actually rather pleasant as a caffeine alternative.

The article is just hilariously bad. Whatever he writes about coca and cocaine is just wrong.

The leaves contain the base. The base has a low melting point and can be smoked (crack).

Cocaine hydrochloride is created chemically from the base. It is water soluble and can snorted. Because of the PH of the blood it decomposes into the base.

Chemically there is no difference once the drug is in the blood stream

Coca-Cola still uses coca leaves in the production of its drink.

The Stepan Company plant in New Jersey is the only place in the USA authorized to import coca.

"Equality before the law" is unfortunately a farce in this country, if you didn't already know.

> Coca-Cola still uses coca leaves in the production of its drink.

Is this actually true? A quick search gives me a lot of sources like "Natural News" and similarly dubious sources. What do they actually use the Coca leaves for?

It is 100% true. It seems a DEA source would convince you: https://museum.dea.gov/exhibits/online-exhibits/cannabis-coc....

"In the late 1800s cocaine was used as a primary ingredient for flavor in Coca-Cola. In the early 1900s cocaine in its crude form was removed. Today the extract of the coca leaves, a de-cocainized version, is manufactured in the United States and used in the flavoring for Coca-Cola."

Fair enough!

> DEA source

It has a step-by-step description of cocaine extraction process further down the page.

I mean you can probably find the same on the YT, but seeing it on a DEA site is still a bit jarring.

>Today the extract of the coca leaves, a de-cocainized version, is manufactured in the United States and used in the flavoring for Coca-Cola."

Interesting, I had always heard that they had to "de-cocainize" the extract outside the US and import the resulting product.

Nope. Coca-Cola and the Stepan Company have worked very hard to keep this fascinating fact under wraps. It's obviously not a good look for them.

i thought they need the separated drug part of the extract anyway because that's the source we use to produce lidocaine in the US.

They do the extraction in New Jersey

https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2024-06177.pdf

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

Drug Enforcement Administration

[Docket No. DEA-1335]

Importer of Controlled Substances Application: Stepan Company

Was it approved, denied, or still awaiting a decision?

It’s literally in the name, I’d be disappointed if it didn’t have coca in it. It definitely doesn’t have cocaine in it anymore though. I bet that sold like hotcakes when it did though.

>"Equality before the law" is unfortunately a farce in this country, if you didn't already know.

To be fair, it's not like they're letting them do whatever they want with the plants. They use them for a very specific purpose, and I'm sure there's very strict accounting involved, as is done with factories that produce solvents and their customers.

The question is whether a new business could be started that had a legitimate use for coca and could get a similar exception extended to it.

The answer is obviously not, since there's only 1 and there's been presumably hundreds of applicants (at least) who have tried the same and been rejected.

It's actually a fascinating example of where government backs a private monopoly as opposed to breaking it up, which is often a case for having a strong government apparatus.

> there's been presumably hundreds of applicants

Well, that's exactly the question, isn't it. You can't presume this because the answer to the question turns on the actual fact of the matter.

I'm presuming it because it's very likely, we don't need a double blind randomized controlled study to declare certain things are true.

Like that the idea "equality before the law" doesn't exist in this country, unfortunately.

I will not defend the claim that equality before the law exists in the U.S. It's still far from obvious to me that hundreds of entities have applied for coca import permits with legitimate justification and been denied.

Great, we agree on the far more important claim

In that case you don't have to bring coca into it at all, that just muddies the waters. All you have to do it look at Marcellus Williams and Richard Glossip and compare how they were/are being treated to how Donald Trump is being treated.

We don't need double blind randomized controlled studies, we just need documentation showing that hundreds of business applied for an exception to import coca leaves for legitimate purposes and were denied.

To show that equality before the law doesn't exist in our country?

Also, you're asking for evidence no one can produce. How convenient.

I was being hyperbolic to point out that the "evidenced-based" culture has gone too far, to the point where you need obviously unobtainable evidence to prove something that is obviously true.

Yet this is something where it should be possible to produce evidence. Paperwork like is needed is generally available if you ask the right place. Any company trying that was rejected is has a bunch of people who did that paperwork and they could talk about it - indeed if the company was serious they have incentive to talk about it.

Now it is possible that the paperwork required means hundreds of companies never even tried, and evidence of that chilling effect is hard to produce. However that is not the claim.

The claim is "equality before the law" doesn't exist in the USA (unfortunately)

The request is evidence. So far all I get are claims. However I know from experience that many claims are false so I want to know if this one is real or just another one made for a point without any real trust behind it.

I'm not claiming the US is perfect, but you are making a strong statement that is either completely false, or is true but only with pages of fine print (and it may turn out that if I read all those details I'd be fine with that as a place where we shouldn't allow equality in the first place)

The history of how and why they were granted this exemption is extensively chronicled by Ricardo Cortes. https://rmcortes.medium.com/the-cocainemaker-reefer-madness-...

You’re unsure our government and institutions are corrupt?

There is always corruption. The question is what level. A blog on medium is not where I'm going to look for unbiased answers to that question.

He wrote a whole book, the "blog" articles are excerpts from his book

I mean, why are you making claims that neither you nor anybody else can back up? You could have said anything in reply to my comment, or even nothing at all, but you chose to say something that you have no idea about. That's somehow my fault?

I can very easily back up the claim that the USA does not have equality under the law.

Your claim that no one has ever wanted to import coca leaves requires a laughably impossible amount of evidence

>Your claim that no one has ever wanted to import coca

No, no. I made no claim, I just asked a question.

>Could a new business be started that had a legitimate use for coca and could get a similar exception extended to it?

Instead of saying something you know for a fact, such as "I don't know", you made a specific claim:

>there's been presumably hundreds of applicants (at least) who have tried the same and been rejected

You've admitted you can't possibly know this. Don't try to shift the burden of proof onto me. I don't need to provide evidence for something I didn't claim. Maybe some businesses have tried to obtain that exception, maybe none has. I don't know, and you don't know either.

Just admit you said something dumb and move on.

I said presumably for a reason. We can't presume anything? Your question didn't even make sense. The exception was applied back in the 20's. Your question of "gee has anyone wanted that same exception" is a dumb question and I was dumb to try to answer it, correct.

So the question is if at a minimum, one of thousands of cola makers (or tens of thousands of hobbyists) wanted to make a cola closer to coke and was willing to spend any reasonable amount of money/time relative to their intended volume.

Knowing the answer to this would be like knowing if anyone ever wanted to make a watch with a Rolex like movement.

"evidenced-based" culture at its worst. I like being evidenced-based but you can certainly have too much of a good thing.

Why are you presuming the answer to the question you are genuinely asking?

I didn't ask any question.

>"Equality before the law" is unfortunately a farce in this country, if you didn't already know.

This specific case seems like it's more about the law grandfathering in an existing product vs whatever conspiracy theory you have in mind.

Why it happened is chronicled by Ricardo Cortés in a lengthy series. https://rmcortes.medium.com/the-cocainemaker-reefer-madness-...

Why wasn't it grandfathered for traditional users of the leaves?

It's amazing the moment you point out that massive institutions care more about each other than the little guy, you get called a conspiracy theorist.

Amusingly, Red Bull famously got in trouble over trace amounts of cocaine were found in their Simply Cola during govt certification process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull_Simply_Cola#Cocaine_c...

>As you can see, the Times was not the only news outlet to be confused about the distinction between cocaine and coca

Unfortunately, the author of this article is the one who is confused. Cocaine is the name of the alkaloid present in the coca leaf, much like the coffee bean contains caffeine. If they were using coca leaf, they were using cocaine.

TFA literally already says what you said. They're making a reasonable distinction between chewing coca leaves for mild stimulant effect and huffing a fat rail of the pure stuff.

It gives the wrong idea to say these 17th century people were doing cocaïne.

They were using cocaine. It was a less concentrated form, sure, but it’s still using the same substance for a psychoactive effect.

> were using cocaine. It was a less concentrated form, sure

I was going to say this is pedantically correct, but on closer inspection, it's not even that. Cocaine, the chemical, is present in both coca leaves and cocaine, the drug. When people say cocaine--particularly in this context--they're referring to cocaine the drug, not cocaine the chemical.

Cocaine the drug and cocaine the chemical are homonyms, and it's incorrect--fully technically--to confuse their use.

Cocaine, the chemical, is the active drug ingredient in coca leaves the same way caffeine, the chemical, is the active ingredient in coffee and ethanol, the chemical, is the active ingredient in beer. Powder and crack cocaine deliver much higher doses of cocaine than raw coca leaves, much like liquor is more potent than beer, but the chemical is the drug here. It’s not like it’s chemically transformed from one substance into another like with fermentation; it’s concentrated, like with distillation.

> It’s not like it’s chemically transformed from one substance into another like with fermentation

Banks, the financial institutions, are not transformed into banks, exposed riverbeds, when they're proximate to water. Cocaine, the drug, and cocaine, the chemical, are simply homonyms. Claiming the Inca did cocaine is a dad joke, not serious argument.

While I see sense in articulating that cocaine use was different in 17th c. compared to now, I don't believe that you'd argue the same against someone saying that a person drinking beer is drinking alcohol, because beer has less alcohol than vodka.

To make this analogous, the words for "alcohol" and "vodka" would have to be the same. The OP is arguing that when people say "doing cocaine" they are generally referring to the high-strength powdered form, not the underlying chemical in general.

And that if we interpret the sentence like that (which we should if that's how it's generally understood) then it is not true that people were doing cocaine in the 17th century.

Random tangent: now I’m curious if there are any languages where the word for alcohol and vodka (or whatever is locally the most common spirit) is the same. Seems plausible that there would be.

Scottish?

The word vodka is apparently derived from the Slavic word for water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vodka#Etymology

The word "whisky" is derived from the Scottish Gaelic word for "water", too. (Maybe that's what your sibling comment is referring to?)

Cocaine hydrochloride (i.e. powder) isn’t even the only purified form of cocaine. There’s also crack. Would you argue that people who smoke crack aren’t doing cocaine?

Furthermore, the most purified form of drinking ethanol actually is called “grain alcohol”; Everclear is a popular brand.

> Would you argue that people who smoke crack aren’t doing cocaine?

Yes. This is true colloquially and legally.

The only unserious argument here is your absurd analogy to banks. A homonym is when two words have totally unrelated meanings. Cocaine is the psychoactive drug found in coca leaves; we refer to cocaine hydrochloride (i.e. powder cocaine) as “cocaine” for the same reason we refer to Everclear as “grain alcohol”.

When people drink coffee, they don't say "I'm taking caffeine."

When people eat poppyseed bagels they don't say they're doing codeine or morphine.

It's generally understood that "smoking weed" is likely to be a different experience than "taking THC"

Poppyseed bagels don’t have a psychoactive dose of opioids and cannabis contains multiple cannabinoids, so those examples are totally irrelevant.

When it comes to coffee, people are generally aware that caffeine is the active ingredient. If you ask someone, “have you had any caffeine today?”, they’re not going to say “no” if they’ve had six cups of coffee. They’re going to say, “yes, I’ve had six cups of coffee”. They’re not going to try and pick a tedious argument that they didn’t really have caffeine because they drank coffee instead of snorting crushed up caffeine pills.

Cocaine, the drug, is cocaine, the chemical. They're literally exactly the same thing. They're not homonyms.

> Cocaine, the drug, is cocaine, the chemical

Nope. Cocaine, the drug, is a cocaine salt. Commonly cocaine hydrochloride, but Wikipedia seems convinced it's also neutralised into sulfates and nitrates. Crack contains cocaine, the chemical, but is not cocaine, the drug.

You're saying that freebase cocaine isn't "cocaine, the drug", but chlorides and sulfates are? It may be relevant to this discussion that salts dissociate in solution, but maybe it won't convince you because it sounds like you're steering painfully close to "the sun goes around the earth because people say 'the sun rises', and therefore it doesn't make sense to talk about sunrise on Mars."

That is, it sounds like you're trying to bend over backwards to invent a coherent meaning to impose on the utterances of people who are just confused and ignorant, with the result that your own utterances are losing meaning. The reason people say things like "crack isn't cocaine, the drug" and "coca leaves don't contain cocaine" isn't that their utterances refer to some coherent entity called "cocaine, the drug", which consists of some arbitrary collection of cocaine salts but excludes the hydroxide. They're just wrong, because being wrong is a thing that people do a lot, especially when they're talking about things they don't know about, like chemistry.

> saying that freebase cocaine isn't "cocaine, the drug", but chlorides and sulfates are

Yes. So does the DEA. We had separate charges for “cocaine” and “crack” for decades, with the former referring to the powdered salt and the latter to the base. The fact that the active compound is identical is irrelevant.

> They're just wrong, because being wrong is a thing that people do a lot, especially when they're talking about things they don't know about, like chemistry

We’re talking about language. Not chemistry per se.

Someone saying someone doing crack is doing cocaine is simply incorrect in a colloquial context. Sort of like how tomatoes are culinarily a vegetable even if botanically they are fruits.

I mean, taking your definitions from the DEA for cocaine is just wrong. Even if you believe it to be meaningful, it is US-centric to a fault, and government definitions of things are not meant to generalize.

Crack is "crack cocaine". It is a Form of cocaine.

The separation of "cocaine" and "crack" was a policy and marketing choice, in order to make it possible that a black person would get 20 years for dealing the same drug that would only get a white person 5 years.

The people chewing coca leaves before the 1800s were doing so in order to consume the cocaine within.

While the white people consuming the cocaine were only doing it because they liked the smell, so they only get 5 years. ;)

Cocaine makes me feel like a new man. And he wants some too!

The DEA isn't even trying to say true things instead of false things; they routinely describe cocaine as a "narcotic" and lithium as a "methamphetamine precursor", because such lies enable them to increase their jurisdiction beyond what enabling statute law or public opinion would tolerate.

Someone saying that doing crack is doing cocaine is simply correct in a colloquial context. If the DEA says they are incorrect, they are simply bullshitting due to political incentives.

I’m genuinely flabbergasted by these posts.

You are flabbergasted that an argumentative, person with autism would spend all night arguing crackhead semantics?

I suppose the better term would be synecdoche, since the similarity in pronunciation isn't coincidental, like "The sun rose in the morning." and "Look at the pretty rose petals." but is a form of motivated polysemy.

It definitely seems misleading to talk about coca leaf use as cocaine use, given the common expectation for what that means. People reading the newspaper probably don't know all these details, and it isn't spelled out. I can't imagine some guy in a club not feeling like he was robbed after paying for a powdery drug and then receiving a handful of leaves. I can't imagine an Andean woman sitting down for morning tea being pleased to have a bunch of powder dumped in her cup.

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Cocaine

Does the molecule C17H21NO4 exist in both the raw, dried leaves of the coca plant, and a powdered, refined extract from the same plant?

https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/04/your-statement-is-10...

Perfect response. I'm chuckling, so thank you.

What's also humorous to me is this entire discussion is centered around vernacular usage of a word versus the scientific definition. Cocaine is cocaine, but "cocaine" means different things to some people and not to others.

Bullshit is bullshit, but "bullshit" means different things to some people and not to others.

Which part is bullshit? The discussion, generally or the pedantic point that the active compound is the same in the various presentations people are arguing about?

You must misunderstand what I said if you think the article says the same thing. As someone already mentioned to you, the article says “cocaine was being used in the 17th century by literally no one” when using cocaine is literally exactly what they were doing. It’s just the same as someone saying “no one was using caffeine in the 17th century…they were just drinking coffee.” You honestly don’t understand why that is blatantly wrong?

If this were a passage in a reading comprehension exam, I think you would be expected to read "cocaïne didn't exist" as "cocaïne in the form we think of when someone 'does cocaine' didn't exist".

You would be expected to read it this way because the article explicitly elaborates on how cocaine hydrochloride is isolated from leaves (that alone should have stopped you from trying to "inform" anyone), and uses that to drive the main thesis about the industrialization and democratization of drugs.

And that's an entirely self-contained pathway to the correct reading, nevermind what you already knew going into the exercise.

The caffeine analogy is useless because there is no common sense of people using caffeine to very different effect the way there is for cocaïne.

"TFA" has got to be the most inscrutable acronym that is common internet parlance, I simply can't guess it could be, and I refuse to look it up

That sounds like a "you" problem, TBH.

TFA means "the fucking article."

It's derived from RTFA, "read the fucking article."

"Fine" article, my fine internet stranger.

Wrong.

Por qué no los dos, amigo?

I don't think it's that common. This is my first time seeing it, and it's an odd acronym for including "the". I was able to guess at its meaning though.

So when you drink Coca-Cola, you're drinking cocaine?

At one point in history, yes, this was literally true, in the exact same way that if you are drinking black tea, you are drinking caffeine.

Coca leaves are still used in the production of Coca Cola, see sibling thread

Trace amounts of it, but yes.

No. There is no cocaine in coca-cola since 1929. Before that, yes you would be drinking cocaine.

Stephen Maturin switches from opium to coca leaves about halfway through the Master and Commander series (around 1800). Ensuring a steady supply of the leaves becomes a recurring theme as is his sharing of their wonders with the various scientific personalities he comes across.

Coca tea is very underrated. Too bad its probably impossible to legally buy outside of south America

“I was making frequent use of cocaine at that time ... I had been the first to recommend the use of cocaine, in 1885, and this recommendation had brought serious reproaches down on me.”

“... a big wild man who has cocaine in his body.”

― Sigmund Freud

Oh, come on, you can't add that last quote without the rest of the context!

"Woe to you, my Princess, when I come. I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump. And if you are forward, you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle little girl who doesn't eat enough, or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body" - a letter to his fiance.

Anyone here ever actually try coca leaves? Going to guess its effects are somewhere between coffee and cocaine

Only coca tea. It's a small boost, perhaps like coffee if you don't drink coffee everyday

Had a lot of them chewed or in tea in Bolivia and it's pretty close to a caffeine buzz, it's very, very mild.

Caffeine affects people differently… it has very intense effects on me- I would never call it “very very mild”

For the vast majority of people caffeine is very mild compared to cocaine. Coca leaves are in the ballpark of caffeine, however you would rate that subjectively. And personally I think I would have found it hard to tell which was which in a blind test.

As a side note coca tea (or chewed leaves) are often recommended for managing altitude, and chewing leaves did seem to help with headaches I was having at > 12k feet, but again it was fairly subtle, and I am not convinced it's not just placebo/a nice distraction.

If I’ve gone a long time without caffeine a single coffee could keep me awake up for two consecutive all nighters. As a regular drinker I still cannot handle more than one cup of coffee per day. It turns out that I have a number of genes that increase the intensity and the duration of effect. I think genes explain most of the differences in experiences with caffeine.

Have you done a whole genome study?

Yes, a 30x WGS, I recommend it to everyone and you only have to do it once.

Do you have an affiliate link?

I do not, I went with Dante Labs, they have regular discounts down to less than $250. It might take a long time though.

interesting. i have about 1-2 cups most days but 5-6 over a few hours is fine and i still get ok (but poorer quality) sleep

Same, the first time I ever had a cup of coffee I missed two nights sleep.

I have only done 23andme not a WGS like you, but I have at least one liver enzyme SNP that dramatically slows down caffeine metabolism. It took me quite a while to realize that the advice of "no caffeine after 5pm" or whatever needed to be something more like - no more than one cup of coffee before dawn.

Yeah, it would be nice if these general life rules / advice could be written down somewhere with the exceptions listed. I would have appreciated getting a personalized handbook that would have given me a heads up that I was different. Given the price of WGS being low enough to be generally available I think this is something humanity could benefit a lot more from.

I'm sure someone has a list somewhere. I've seen a few of these from the colonial era, but I want a modern one.

That concept is so broad and generally useful it can only be broadly represented by something like Timothy Leary's statement of "think for yourself, and question authority."

Of course, knowing for sure specific facts showing that you are different in some way such that general advice doesn't apply is super useful because it saves you the effort of having to solve the problem on your own- you will always find new ones that nobody has already solved.

Wow. I typically drink 6+ cups a day and it doesn't really seem to affect my sleep unless I have it within ~6h of bedtime.

I think it's pretty common for visitors to Macha Picchu to receive a cup of coca tea upon arrival, for altitude sickness. The people I talked to said it was like a cup of coffee.

I can attest to the magical effects against altitude sickness.

I used to drink coca tea a lot when I lived in Argentina where you get it in the supermarket. It's around on par of nicotine as an appetite suppressant for me, as a stimulant I feel caffeine and mate are better for the "stay awake" but coca tea is better for "zoning in", with less of anxiety driving but it's a more single tasked high where interruptions are harder to deal with than with caffeine. Like if I have a lot of meetings I prefer coffee and if I have to code for four hours I prefer coca tea. I used to rotate coffee, mate, and coca tea as a daily driver and having something else on the rotation may have been helping more than that something else being coca tea.

> single tasked high where interruptions are harder to deal with than with caffeine

That comports well with my contemporary and anecdotal understanding of cocaine's most popular effects.

Yes, anyone who’s ever been trapped in a conversation with someone yakked to the gills can tell you all about singleminded focus as an effect of cocaine.

Cocaine in the U.S. is at least 5/10% anfetamines tho, so it's probably worse.

>I used to drink coca tea a lot when I lived in Argentina where you get it in the supermarket.

Really? I've never seen it. Were you in a northern province? Reading the comments I became curious and figured I could probably find it somewhere, but I wouldn't expect to find it in a supermarket.

The Chinese supermarkets all had it, I moved out on 2018 and I think they had it in the Jumbo in Palermo in the section where they had some Peruvian stuff on the back of the store. I can't find it on the online Jumbo store, but Mercadolibre has it.

That's close to the office. I'll have to check. Weird that I've never seen it. I guess I just haven't been paying attention.

Thanks for replying.

I used them while hiking in Peru.

It's better than caffeine, because it comes with a mild euphoria. Nothing crazy, just enough to have energy and not feel like hiking at altitude is work.

When I hike with coffee I just feel determined to finish. With Coca it just felt natural to keep walking.

I likewise had it in tea several times hiking in Peru. I personally didn’t notice any effect whatsoever, might as well have been mint tea.

Perhaps it's the fact that I was chewing them? I don't know! I'd assume tea was more potent. But I definitely had a decent reserve and was imbibing all day.

Wikipedia says that 59% to 90% of the alkaloid is absorbed when drunk as a tea [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca

Interesting, I'd always assumed people snorted the powder because it's not absorbed if consumed orally, but apparently that's not true. Maybe just it's just for the absorption speed? So... if someone drank industrial quantities of coca tea in one go, it'd be a 2-12 hour cocaine high?

snorting means it is absorbed into the bloodstream in your nose - that is very fast. Drinking means it goes through the stomach and then is released into the intestines to be absorbed (depending on what else you ate this could be slow or somewhat fast - but always much more drawn out than snorting).

Hiking in altitude is hands down the hardest thing I did in my life. On the first day I almost died of an altitude sickness. On the following days, climbing 5 meters up the mountain felt like climbing the whole mountain twice. After every 10 steps I had to stop for 30-60 seconds and catch my breath.

I drank a lot of coca tea and couldn't feel anything different.

Peru, especially cordillera negra/blanca is the most special place on earth I've ever been too. Everything is magical in a weird way. It's literally breathtaking. I can't really describe it. It feels mystical, even with no drugs involved.

> Hiking in altitude is hands down the hardest thing I did in my life

HOw much preparation did you do before hand ? I'm looking at a himalayan trip next year to around a 23k feet summit (over the course of 30 days or so). I'm taking a year to train for it, but I have no way to train for 'altitude', and as I understand it reaction to altitude doesn't correlate that much with overall fitness. You can apparently be super fit but still get altitude sick, which is concerning me.

If you can't train at altitude, I'd focus on distance/time in. Go on long runs, long hikes, long bike rides. Endurance. Elevation gain is good too. Try to at least mirror the conditions per mile in your training. Hill intervals are useful - walk up a big steep hill at a steady pace, and then walk back down; rinse/repeat. A solid cardiovascular base should prepare you just fine.

There are two factors.

1) cardio fitness (ability to do x amount of work)

2) altitude adaptation (ability to exist at altitude)

It takes from several days to several months to adapt to altitude, depending on exactly what you mean by adapt. The first 24-72 are the highest risk for altitude sickness (which can be life threatening).

Both factor into performance at altitude.

Three friends and I summited Vulcan Misti in Peru (~19k ft) over 2 days with no altitude training. All of us came from sea level, had 2 days to acclimate staying in the town nearby (~7k ft). This was a year out of college, all of us were D3 athletes so reasonably fit but probably not considered elite level fitness.

The altitude impact was no joke, but for whatever reason it affected all of us to different degrees. I just felt a little more winded than usual, had to take my time a bit but was overall fine, whereas one of the group had a rough go of it, needed frequent breaks and vomited a couple times. The other two were somewhere in between.

So I'm sure being fit helps, but it seems there's more to it than that.

You can't prepare for acclimatization, and you don't know how well your body will handle it before actually going up there.

You will suffer regardless, acclimatization just makes things possible and over time mentally more bearable experience. But prepare for 3-5 steps and rest routine in higher parts, pushing through is actually pretty stupid and will fire back quickly and badly, listen to your body.

That being said, what others say is correct - a lot of endurance training helps a lot reaching the limit of your body. Plus train carrying medium backpack uphill a lot (10-15kg).

I've camped 6000m high on Aconcagua, but I couldn't sleep well above 3000m, almost nothing above 4000m, regardless of what mild medicine/support I took. Some sleep up there like babies. High mountains are just not for me, but I am happy with European alps though, they have it all apart from that much altitude suffering. Higher peaks just for hiking below/around them like Annapurna or Everest, loaded multi week 5500m hikes are not easy neither and you actually experience way more in 3-4 weeks rather than progressing slowly up one empty valley to the top.

> You can't prepare for acclimatization, and you don't know how well your body will handle it before actually going up there.

This is something of an enduring medical mystery despite efforts to find related genes, etc. I think part of it is the compounding of second order effects, like who can say whether individual performance one week into an expedition will be more affected by bad sleep, bad digestion, or bad headaches? If one is immune to some side effects, how long before the others really take a toll? The team member who is strongest one day may be weakest the next depending on how the schedule of different kinds of attrition and reserves all line up, so it’s really hard to predict in advance without some direct experience. Even then it’s a moving target as we train or age.

On site you can easily predict with O2 saturation in the blood, small portable testers are available for decades. You see any problems coming a bit in advance, btw this is also true for general health in normal altitude.

Now why the number is as it is in altitude while next guy was more fit down below, but now vomiting furiously is another question, I agree not very clear. Maybe red blood cell pace of production but even that is not a complete picture.

I also had it in hiking Peru. I found it to be a mild stimulant, similar to caffeine but wihlthout any jitters. Didn't notice any euphoria at all, TBH.

My wife and I drank coca tea during the whole stay in Peru, and the altitude didn't bother us at all, which I presume was because of the coca.

I'm sure it's dose / brew strength dependent, but the coca tea I had definitely had a noticable effect, but felt milder than a regular (caffiene) black tea to me. Much milder than a coffee. Mind you I'm quite caffeine sensitive, so if you YMMV.

Had a hippy friend that discovered coca leaves while hiking in Peru. She packed a bunch to bring back with her to show us her great new discovery for natural energy.

Apparently they already knew about these new things called 'coca leaves' at the border because they took them away from her.

This is a true story. Friggin hippies man.

She had it easy. A local guy got 3 years in prison with no parole for bringing like 70 coca leaves. The level of retardness of some countries is unbelievable.

https://cluj24.ro/pictor-clujean-condamnat-la-inchisoare-pen...

This is a surprise to me. That airport doesn't look at me twice when I travel through it. I've been >30 times and I'm foreign. Never once questioned anything I brought in. To be fair I'm not trafficking anything

>> To be fair I'm not trafficking anything

Why don't you try it next time, let us know how it went :)

Now seriously I think they must have had some dogs or devices to sniff up the drug, otherwise I can't explain how they isolated him from the crowd.

I ordered some from a Bolivian website when I was a teen. I chewed them a couple times at work while doing landscaping. The closest thing I could compare it to is a nicotine buzz.

I brewed tea out of the leaves and also chewed them when hiking in Peru. Stimulant level-wise it felt similar to green tea. Maybe also a slight euphoria when chewing them but it's definitely still way less potent than a coffee (atleast for me).

The only interesting side effect was that both my wife and I experienced tingling feet when combining coca leaves with acetazolamide, the altitude sickness meds we were taking (tingling feet is apparently a side effect of those meds). I wonder if on some level it does have a similar mechanism for altitude sickness?

Tingling feet/toes and hands/fingers are an extremely common side-effect of acetazolamide (diamox).

Had more than few cups over the past week in Peru. Going up to Puno @4000MASL, I had the same tingling hands, I thought I developed CTS! My guess is that it had to do with swelling of the extremities? Overall I found coca tea to be slightly less stimulating than coffee, but more relaxing.

It’s extremely mild, not even as strong as coffee. It takes 1/2 a kilo of coca leaves to make 1g of cocaine!

I often wonder why nobody has CRISPR-ed the genes from the Coca plant that make the alkaloids into yeast by now… given the $100bn market you’d expect someone to give this or another process a go.

Probably because the DEA would find a reason to shoot their dog almost immediately haha

Coca tea is ubiquitous in Peru. Morning, noon, and night. It's on a par with mate or green tea in other parts of the world. Mostly harmless.

The leaves are readily available everywhere, like right beside the chewing gum at the checkout in supermarkets and the like. I tried chewing some to help offset altitude problems; it didn't help with the altitude problems but it made half my face go numb and other than that, nothing. I understand the local combine it with limestone or something to release different alkaloids but I did not.

A lot of stores in Peruvian Andes sell concentrated coca leaf extract as candies. They help on higher altitude hikes. Theres one in particular that is as strong as a chemical extract.

Actually quite effective as an alternative to ADHD medicine.

I bought a bag of those very cheaply in Bolivia cca 8 years ago, locals used some sort of chalky 'activator' with it, so did I. And most if not all locals used it, ie in Potosi mines it was basically mandatory. Heck you could buy a stick of dynamite like from old westerns in random stalls across the city.

I got some anesthetic effects in my mouth in the place I kept chewing them. Wasn't checking whether it made me more alert, even coffee normally doesn't have much effect on me and I drink it for the taste.

Other than that, 0 effect. But I've never used any variant of cocaine so can't even compare.

The chalky stuff was probably bannana peel ashes, they have something in them that acts as a MAOI inhibitor.

> Was recreational or medicinal coca use something that was happening all over Europe in the 1600s?

I'd think we'd already know, because there would be historical (literature and records) references.

> As David Courtwright writes in his book Forces of Habit, “factories did for drugs what canning did to vegetables. They democratized them. It became easier, cheaper, and faster for the masses to saturate their brains with chemicals.”

This is a really interesting use of the word "democratize." I've seen it used in many other contexts (usually in a business sense), and some have been more ominous than others.

According to oxford languages, the #2 definition of democratize is "make (something) accessible to everyone" [0]. Can you elaborate on why using the dictionary definition of a word is really interesting?

0 - just google define: democratize

I've seen the word used in different contexts, usually as a marketing buzzword, a shortcut to elicit a positive feeling. (This article does not take that route, which is why I found it interesting.)

If you look at the Google search recommendations after typing in the word "democratize," for example, you get people trying to understand what it means to "democratize finance" (initially, the solution was almost exclusively paired with words like "unbanked", "cryptocurrency," and a rush to bring these products to Africa - rarely a particular place for a particular reason, just Africa in general).

Other phrases like "democratize data" are used in a corporate sense. Apparently "democratize AI" is a huge one too, which is appropriate because Sam Altman of OpenAI fame is one of the people who wanted to "democratize finance" by expanding his Worldcoin project into Kenya. More recently, I've seen the phrase "democratize art" thrown around by people who support generative AI as a form of art.

All of these examples appear to have the same context: bringing something to the masses, just like a factory produced drug or can of corn.

If you look at the Google search recommendations after typing in the word "democratize," for example, you get people trying to understand what it means to "democratize finance"

I don't see these results (Google search results are personalized). I guess I took for granted that the meaning of the word was well understood or that people would look up words they thought were being used in an odd way.

A word can be overused by marketing without distorting its meaning. I didn't expect so much pushback over saying I found it interesting!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com