August 7, 2013
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If a definitive link between intellectual capacity and drug use does exist, it will likely be some time before anyone establishes one. Having said that, this much is for certain: history has more than its fair share of experimenting experimentalists. Let’s meet 10 of history’s most influential scientific and technological visionaries, along with their drugs of choice.
1. Sigmund Freud – Cocaine
To Freud, cocaine was more than a personal indulgence; he regarded it as a veritable wonder drug, and for many years was a huge proponent of its use in a wide array of applications. In a letter written to his fianceÃ©, Martha, Freud wrote: “If all goes well, I will write an essay [on cocaine] and I expect it will win its place in therapeutics by the side of morphine and superior to it… I take very small doses of it regularly against depression and against indigestion and with the most brilliant of success.”
Freud published such a review, titled “Uber Coca” in 1884. Interestingly, Freud’s paper was one of the first to propose drug substitution as a therapeutic treatment for addiction. While replacing morphine with cocaine is something we now know to be counterproductive to recovery, the concept of substitution therapies persists to this day. (For a great overview of Freud’s relationship with cocaine, check out this post by Scicurious.)
2. Francis Crick – LSD
Francis Crick – of the DNA-structure discovering Watson, Crick, and Franklin – reportedly told numerous friends and colleagues about his LSD experimentation during the time he spent working to determine the molecular structure that houses all life’s information.
In fact, in a 2004 interview, Gerrod Harker recalls talking with Dick Kemp – a close friend of Crick’s – about LSD use among Cambridge academics, and tells the Daily Mail that the University’s researchers often used LSD in small amounts as “a thinking tool.” Evidently, Crick at one point told Kemp that he had actually “perceived the double-helix shape while on LSD.”
3. Thomas Edison – Cocaine Elixers
In 1863, French chemist Angelo Mariani invented ” Vin Mariani,” a Bordeaux wine treated with coca leaves, the active ingredient of which is none other than cocaine. The ethanol content in the Bordeax could extract cocaine from the coca leaves in concentrations exceeding 7mg per fluid ounce of wine. Thomas Edison – the prolific American inventor and notorious insomniac (though perhaps not surprisingly) – was one of many people of the period known to regularly consume the cocaine-laced elixir.
4. Paul ErdÃ¶s – Amphetamines
Paul ErdÃ¶s – well known for his hyperactivity; his habit of working 19-hour days, even well into his old age; and his tendency to show up on his colleagues’ doorsteps demanding they ”open their minds” to mathematical dialogue – was one of the most prolific mathematicians who ever lived, publishing more peer-reviewed papers than any other mathematician in history.
His secret? According to him, amphetamines. Included here is an excerpt from a book published in 1998 by ErdÃ¶s’ de factobiographer, science writer Paul Hoffman, which explains ErdÃ¶s’ proclivity for amphetamine use:
Like all of ErdÃ¶s’s friends, [fellow mathematician Ronald Graham] was concerned about his drug-taking. In 1979, Graham bet ErdÃ¶s $500 that he couldn’t stop taking amphetamines for a month. ErdÃ¶s accepted the challenge, and went cold turkey for thirty days. After Graham paid up – and wrote the $500 off as a business expense – ErdÃ¶s said, “You’ve showed me I’m not an addict. But I didn’t get any work done. I’d get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I’d have no ideas, just like an ordinary person. You’ve set mathematics back a month.” He promptly resumed taking pills, and mathematics was the better for it.
Republished from: AlterNet