Drug Use, History of

Certainly one, among many things, at which humans consistently excel is the willingness and desire to alter our consciousness and augment our sensory experiences. The vehicle for humans from prehistoric time to current day is the use of drugs to quickly accomplish this goal (although there are a host of nondrug practices to equally alter consciousness, such as meditation). The large majority of humanity does not suffer from drug addiction; yet, members of every human culture (from Aboriginal to Indian, Chinese, Egyptian, South American, Aleuts, Chukchi, and Eskimo) use psychoactive drugs on a daily basis for a variety of reasons (i.e., pain relief, religious, vision seeking, consciousness expansion, entertainment, as a food source, healing disease, and even seeking immortality).

Historically, the vast majority of drugs used ...