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Did recreational drugs 💊 start with the ur-hippies or with the “momentous” occasion of the Beatles dropping acid in 1964 for the first time? Maybe it was the hippies’ slightly older cousins from the Beat Generation? Jack Kerouac come home, all is forgiven! A cursory glance at the newspapers and newsreels of the day might suggest these conclusions to you. The answer to this burning question however is no! Gizmodo tell us that that rec-drugs in various forms and concoctions have been around since the dawn of time! Once again we go to the shards of broken pottery, random fragments of stone and other debris lying around in the dirt for bulk aeons of time for the evidence. A reading of the archaeobotanical “tea-leaves” reveals that our ancestors (or some of them) consumed Ephedra (weed from the Ephedra sinica plant) and Cannabis for their “psychoactive effects” as far back as the Neolithic (its not called the New “Stoned” Age for nothing!) and Bronze ages (circa. 12,000 years ago)! [so says Prof. Phil Withington].
Then again who was first to get high with a little help from intoxicants might depend on what your definition of recreational drugs is. Take alcohol for instance…especially in large doses! Mind and mood-altering, no doubt about it! Pharmacology researcher Ryan Riley informs us that it’s likely that “our primate ancestors enjoyed the dizzying, physiological effects of (ethanol-creating) fermented fruits for tens of millions of years”. Try coming down from a trip after that long!
There you have it—the exhumed earthenware, correctly carbon-dated, doesn’t lie!—there was nothing novel or innovative about the Beatles or the first wave of hippies or any of these fashionista weed cats getting high on a smorgasbord of narcotic substances for fun or pleasure…all of them were just joining a very long line of drug-indulgers that extends back to the very onset of human history itself.
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| Danny smoking the notorious “Camberwell Carrot”, a whopping 12-skin joint in Withnail and I |
