[HN Gopher] A Brief History of Freud's Love Affair with Cocaine
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       A Brief History of Freud's Love Affair with Cocaine
        
       Author : pmoriarty
       Score  : 25 points
       Date   : 2021-07-31 17:27 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
        
       | underseacables wrote:
       | One of my favorite Sigmund Freud quotes, From a letter to his
       | fiance:
       | 
       |  _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._
        
       | okareaman wrote:
       | See also: William James was experimenting with nitrous oxide in
       | 1882
       | 
       | https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1996/05/the-nit...
       | 
       | When I was a lad, the common wisdom was that cocaine was not
       | addictive. This was also later said about nitrous oxide. I found
       | out to my great ruin that both can be highly addictive to certain
       | people. Sounds to me like Freud wasn't an addict.
        
         | pmoriarty wrote:
         | _" Sounds to me like Freud wasn't an addict."_
         | 
         | He definitely was.
         | 
         | From some other articles:
         | 
         | Freud _" was using cocaine quite a bit in 1895 on himself, to
         | the point he was having chest pain. He was depressed. And he
         | also -- his nose was so congested, he had to have a surgeon
         | open it up with a knife so he could breathe, lots of signs that
         | you might want to lay off the stuff."_[1]
         | 
         |  _" At no point in his letters does Freud consider the
         | possibility that cocaine may produce adverse effects, or indeed
         | any effects apart from those he values. This is clearly
         | illustrated in another letter: "... I was suffering from
         | migraine, the third attack this week, by the way, although I am
         | otherwise in excellent health. I took some cocaine, watched the
         | migraine vanish at once, went on writing my paper as well as a
         | letter to Professor Mendel, but I was so wound up that I had to
         | go on working and writing and couldn't get to sleep before four
         | in the morning." It does not appear from this letter that Freud
         | was aware of the connection between his use of cocaine and his
         | being wound up and unable to sleep."_[2]
         | 
         |  _" Freud, for a few years, became such a regular consumer that
         | his nose was red and wet. To put an end to the bad habit of
         | drinking, he tried to keep busy as long as possible: he got up
         | at six in the morning, saw twelve patients, read and wrote
         | until the middle of the night. Freud managed to rehabilitate
         | himself and completely abandoned his addiction."_[3]
         | 
         | [1] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/cocaine-how-miracle-
         | drug-n...
         | 
         | [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/22/archives/freuds-
         | disaster-...
         | 
         | [3] - https://psychologysays.net/psychology/sigmund-freud-and-
         | his-...
        
       | tedjdziuba wrote:
       | Stimulant use is one of those things that everyone knows, but
       | nobody talks about. Silicon Valley, like the German army in WWII,
       | runs on amphetamine.
        
       | mam3 wrote:
       | In any electro party in any western european, ~ 25% people at
       | least regularly take either c, d, l or k... most of us pretty
       | reasonably.
       | 
       | Meanwhile an insane proportion of engineer are downright
       | alcoolics...
       | 
       | "Drugs" is not a thing. Only addiction is, and in a few years, a
       | few of them will be legalised for (rare) medicinal purposes.
       | Especially MDMA.
       | 
       | Stay safe (harm reduction first) but dont be scared to experiment
       | at all.
        
         | cyberpunk wrote:
         | But how else can you sleep at night knowing about _that one_
         | cron job or whatever... ;)
        
         | pmoriarty wrote:
         | _" In any electro party in any western european, ~ 25% people
         | at least regularly take either c, d, l or k... most of us
         | pretty reasonably."_
         | 
         | c = cocaine
         | 
         | d = dmt? heroin?
         | 
         | l = lsd?
         | 
         | k = ketamine?
         | 
         | What about MDMA (aka ecstasy or molly -- though often what
         | users get under those names is actually not MDMA but other
         | drugs, leading to fatalities) ?
         | 
         | And why even abbreviate the names of these substances?
        
           | mam3 wrote:
           | D is mdma/ecstasy. Its not that often mixed with other stuff
           | ... super rare in europe.
           | 
           | Btw never do the big 3: heroin crack and meth
        
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