Friend or foe? Substance use
Lisetta Lovett, Alannah Tomkins
January 28, 2022 DOI: 10.1201/9781908911025-15 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis |
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| Key points | The text recounts that a woman died of a cocaine overdose supplied by her partner Reggie de Veulle, and that cocaine and opium use was fashionable in early twentieth-century literary and theatrical circles despite a 1917 select committee finding no evidence of serious use in Britain's civilian or military population. It also reports that some experts suggest Palaeolithic Lascaux art may have been produced by shamans in drug- or trance-altered states, and that hallucinogenic drugs may have facilitated the human capacity for symbols and symbolic thinking. |
Abstract
The newspapers were full of details about her untimely death. A court case heard that she had died of an overdose of cocaine that had been supplied by her dress designer and partner Reggie de Veulle and that she had been using cocaine and opium heavily for some time. In the first decades of the twentieth century, cocaine sniffing and opium parties were fashionable in literary and theatrical circles, although a select committee on the use of cocaine concluded in 1917 that there was no evidence of serious use in the civilian or military population of Britain. Mind-altering substances have been used throughout history. In the caves of Lascaux in southern France, Palaeolithic rock symbols and art may have been produced by shamans whose consciousness was altered by drugs or self-induced trance states. Some experts even suggest that the human ability to make symbols, which later led to the development of art and symbolic thinking, was facilitated by hallucinogenic drugs.