Opium Read Online Free Page B

and requires a high purity to be effective. The best non-injectable way to use heroin is to sniff it in powder form through the nostrils – a method known as ‘snorting’ – which allows absorption into the bloodstream through the nasal mucous membranes.
    The quickest, most effective way to take heroin is to inject it. This requires certain equipment: a cooker (usually a large spoon), a source of flame and a hypodermic syringe. The addict mixes heroin in the spoon with water, or glucose and water, in order to dissolve it. Lemon juice, citric acid or vitamin C may be added to aid dissolving. This cocktail is heated until it boils, drawn into the syringe through a piece of cotton wool or a cigarette filter to remove solid impurities and injected whilst still warm. An addict calls his equipment his ‘works’ or ‘kit’.
    Subcutaneous injection is known by addicts as ‘skin-popping’, whilst intravenous injection – injecting straight into the vein – is called ‘mainlining’. The mainliner also requires a tourniquet of some sort to distend veins. When the tourniquet is released, the effects of the heroin are almost instantaneous. Most heroin is taken by injection: however, since the arrival of AIDS and the risk of cross-infection through shared needles, the habit of smoking and snorting heroin has been on the gradual increase.
    Whatever the means of consumption, whatever methods of taking the drug have become tenable or fashionable, the fact remains that, well before man had developed into a civilised, social being, he had discovered the precarious magic of poppy sap.

2
    The Discovery of Dreams
    Opium has been used by man since prehistoric times and was arguably the first drug to be discovered. Being naturally occurring, it almost certainly predates the discovery of alcohol which requires a knowledge of fermentation.
    The preserved remains of cultivated poppy seeds and pods have been discovered in the sites of fourth millennium BC Neolithic pile-dwelling villages in Switzerland. Botanical examination has shown these not to be Papaver setigerum, but P. somniferum or possibly a deliberate hybrid. As these ancient farmers also grew linseed, it is likely both crops were utilised for their oil although no suitable contemporary tools for oil extraction have been found and it is, therefore, just as likely the poppy was grown for its narcotic effect, either as a painkiller or for use in religious ceremonies – or for both.
    It has long been suggested that the knowledge of opium spread from Egypt through Asia Minor to the rest of the Old World but the Swiss discoveries cast this theory into doubt. What is as likely is that the secret of opium originated in the eastern reaches of Europe – in the Balkans or around the Black Sea – and spread south and west from there.
    Around 3400 BC , the opium poppy was being cultivated in the Tigris–Euphrates river systems of lower Mesopotamia. The Sumerians, the world’s first civilisation and agriculturists, used the ideograms hul and gil for the poppy, this translating as the ‘joy plant’. Their invention of writing spread gradually to other societies and it is from them the Egyptians probably learnt the skill: it follows they may also have learnt of opium. It may be reasoned, therefore, that the Sumerians not only gave humankind literacy but also one of its greatest problems.
    By the end of the second millennium BC , knowledge of opium was widespread throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Poppy juice is mentioned in seventh-century BC Assyrian medical tablets contained in the royal library of the Babylonian King Asurbanipal, although these are thought to be copies of earlier texts. Doctors of the time considered opium a cure for almost every ailment, sometimes mixing it with liquorice or balsam: of 115 vegetable concoctions mentioned, 42 concern opium which was collected early in the morning by women