Court Ordered Drug Rehab

Part III
THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN HEROIN ADDICT

Far from being a recent development in this country, drug or alcohol addiction has been part of the American scene for more than one hundred fifty years. And for thousands of years before that, drugs and alcoholic products have been intertwined throughout various cultures from the ancient Egyptians and Persians to the Romans. They have been labeled as the work of the devil, promoted as miracle cures for disease, even the key to finding God. Some drugs have healed or made terrible trauma survivable. Others have destroyed lives and even entire cultures.

As we begin to search for effective solutions for today’s drug problem, we must first understand the origins of drugs in America. How did they come to have such a powerful influence in today’s society?

Wherever there have been channels of commerce established, drugs and alcohol have eventually showed up as commodities of trade. This has been true since at least 1300 B.C., with the export of opium from Egypt to Greece and Europe. As soon as international trade to opium-producing countries opened in America, those who wished to trade in human misery and addiction could profit from this entirely new frontier. And then once the opium channels were open, those same channels could be utilized to purvey morphine, heroin and other drugs.

Opium began to arrive in the mid 1800s as Chinese workers immigrated to work on the railroads or gold mines. By the late 1800s, opium was a fairly popular drug. Soon, opium dens were scattered throughout the country, including well-known sites in Tombstone and Williams in Arizona, Deadwood in South Dakota, New York City, Denver and San Francisco.

The stereotypical cowhand bellied up to the bar drinking straight whiskey – or so we are told. That was only part of the story of the West. Often, the cowhand was not bellied up to a bar at all. He was lying in a dim candle-lit room, smoking opium in the company of an oriental prostitute. It was not uncommon for some of these cowhands to spend several days and nights at a time in these dens in a constant dreamlike state, eventually becoming physically addicted to the drug.

At about the same time, morphine became available to physicians in the United States. Earlier in the century, a German pharmacist had succeeded in deriving morphine from opium for the purpose of using it as a surgical and post-surgical anesthetic. But not only did it alleviate pain, it also left the user in a completely numb and euphoric state. The benefits of the drug were considered nothing short of remarkable to doctors of the time. Unfortunately, the addictive properties of the drug went virtually unnoticed until after the Civil War. It was even utilized as a treatment for opium addiction.

During the Civil War, morphine was used during the treatment of terrible war-related injuries. When tens of thousands of Northern and Confederate soldiers became morphine addicts, the country was plagued with a major morphine epidemic. A review of New York Times articles from post-Civil War years shows case after case of ruined men or morphine suicides among veterans of the war. Even though no actual statistics were kept on addiction at this time, the problem had grown to proportions large enough to raise serious concerns from the medical profession. Doctors were completely in the dark as to how to treat this new epidemic.

By 1874, the answer to this increasing problem was thought to be found in another German invention: HEROIN. Soon after invention, heroin was imported into the United States. It was pitched to American doctors as a “safe, non-addictive” substitute for morphine, specifically for use in treating morphine addicts.
Thus, the American heroin addict was born.

NARCOTIC USE REACHES NEW LEVELS OF RESPECTABILITY

From the late 1800s through the early 1900s, reputable drug companies of the day manufactured drug kits that anyone could buy and use at home for the administration of morphine or heroin or later, cocaine. These kits contained glass-barreled hypodermic needles and vials of opiates packaged attractively in engraved tin cases.

Laudanum (opium in an alcohol base) was also a very popular elixir that was used to treat a variety of ills. Laudanum was administered to children and adults alike as freely as aspirin is used today. Charles Dickens was known to consume laudanum for pain he experienced after he was injured in a train crash. Edgar Allen Poe and Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of the president, were also customers. Preparations were given such comforting names as Dover’s Powder, Dr. J. Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne and Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, recommended for teething children. Unfortunately, opium overdoses were not uncommon among small children, resulting in their death.

Newspapers and magazines of the time carried advertisements for these and other narcotic products, unchecked by any legal restriction. The drug companies producing these products promoted their use as the cure for all types of physical and mental aliments ranging from alcohol withdrawal to cancer, depression, sluggishness, coughs, colds, tuberculosis, aches, “female trouble,” headaches and even old age. Most of the elixirs pitched by traveling “snake oil salesmen” in their medicine shows contained one or more of these narcotics in their mix.

As heroin, morphine and other opiate derivatives were unregulated during these times, they were able to be sold legally and freely until 1920 when Congress passed the Harrison Act. This new law created law gave the federal government regulatory control of the over-the-counter distribution of narcotics and dangerous drugs.

By the time this law was passed, however, it was already too late. A thriving market for heroin in the U.S. had been created. By 1925, there were an estimated 200,000 heroin addicts in the country. The market has only grown since then. In 2005, more than a quarter million people were admitted to treatment for heroin addiction.

In the next century, America’s problems with opium, morphine and heroin would be joined by a whole new set of problems. Cocaine (and the later derivative crack cocaine) were on their way from South America and would cut a wide swath through the lives of the affluent and the entertainers for many decades.