Before I go ~ wasn't Sherlock a cocaine freak like Freud? As I remember,
opium is associated with crime in the Holmes stories, as in the Victorian
era in general (though many used it in the form of laudanum), which may or
may not be connected with subliminal guilt about turning on the Chinese
nation to papaverum somniferum (which I've never had the opportunity to try,
sigh) & even fighting 2 wars about the British right to peddle to the
heathen Chinee. There's quite an amusing crime novel about Holmes & Freud,
btw, _The 7% Solution_ (referring to Holmes' cocaine injections). I'd heard,
as Martin Mindfight says, that E is largely adulterated nowadays, one reason
why I stopped taking it in the early 90s. That's the trouble with any drugs
you don't grow or pick yourself. For the all-time worst scenario concerning
drug distribution read P.K.Dick's _A Scanner Darkly_.
Martin
|