But what, exactly, did they find?
As it turns out, people have been getting high since basically the dawn of time.
This article was originally published on December 31, 2018.
Illustration: Angelica Alzona (Gizmodo)
I would nominate the species Ephedra as another candidate for the worlds oldest recreational drug.
However, this subject has garnered much scholarly dispute.
And we know that opium has been used for a very long time.
But we only really know what things were used for once people start writing.
We also find information in writing by the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and so on.
We know cannabis was used for a long time.
If you look at the ancient writings of Hinduism or Zoroastrianism you find information about cannabis.
But these drugs werent used recreationally.
The whole idea of recreational drug-taking didnt really start until the 19th century.
The one outlier of all of this is alcohol.
But in Europe and the West, it wasnt until the 19th century that real recreational drug-taking started off.
But if I were to make an educated guess, I would probably say that it was ethanol.
So I would put my money on alcohol!
Does the fact that consuming it also generates some degree of intoxication make it recreational?
Thats much harder to say.
And yet it also seems to be the case that tobaccos cultural usage tended toward diplomacy and ceremony.
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