Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century

By Stefan Isaksson

Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century
Mike Jay
Dedalus Ltd.
277 pages
ISBN: 1873982488

Many people think that drugs are a new thing, which the hippies in San Francisco in the 1960s more or less introduced drugs to the West, and that people “in the good old days” never dealt with drugs whatsoever. Drug use and drug abuse is something new, something only modern man has ever done, and most important of all: if you’re interested in drugs, then you’re a junkie, and that’s how it is. Period.

Not true. Drugs aren’t a new thing, go ask any archaeologist or anthropologist, and you’ll be told how humans throughout history have used different intoxicants in order to reach other levels of consciousness and come in contact with their gods. There was a time when drugs – or, what contemporary man define as drugs – were not yet criminalized, when you could go to your local pharmacy and buy a bag of heroin or cocaine, and when many of the greatest names within literature, medicine, art, and philosophy were to try any substance they could get their hands on.

This was the nineteenth century, and in Emperors of Dreams Mike Jay offers a precise account of how cannabis, cocaine, opium, “laughing gas”, ether, magic mushrooms, and mescaline were introduced to 19th century England, Europe, and America, who the individuals were that first started experimenting with them, and how society’s views of the substances were shaped into what they are today.

Yeah, well, why should anyone bother reading about people doing drugs more than a century ago? Simply because sometimes – unfortunately quite often, to be correct – truth hurts and/or is very different from what you were taught in school, and there are few things as refreshing as a dose of the real world:

Sigmund Freud? A great fan of cocaine. Baudelaire and Gautier? The more hashish the better. Conan Doyle? Another cokehead for you. Queen Victoria? Sure, I’ll have some more weed. And so on….

Books about drugs have a tendency to be divided into two camps: either pro or against legalization. Perhaps that’s not very surprising, since drugs are something that most people (even the ones who never tried any) have strong opinions about. And that’s why it’s such a pleasure reading Jay’s historical account, since he masters the difficult art of staying neutral. Yes, he admits that drugs can be bad for you, but he also admits that many people are able to use one of more substances without becoming total addicts. On page 240 he says:

”The story of drugs in the nineteenth century doesn’t demonstrate that their widespread use is entirely without its problems and dangers – far from it – but it does enable us to focus with more clarity on the problems and dangers which only emerged after the supply and possession of drugs were criminalised.”

Emperors of Dreams is a good book to read, partly because it offers a sober yet daring view of a reality many people are afraid to accept, and partly because the reader will be able to look at today’s War on Drugs from a historical perspective. And historical knowledge truly is a must in order to make sense of the crazy world we all live in these days.