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Publisher: Macmillan Reference (Gale/Cengage), Detroit, MI, 2009, $620.
ISBN: 978 0 02 866114 8. 4 vols, Also available as an e-book (ISBN 978 0 02 866064 6)
The use of chemicals from external sources to stimulate the nervous system, even when these are demonstrably harmful to the organism, can be observed in a wide variety of creatures. Ants and birds as well as mammals have a noticeable preference for fermenting fruit. A current practical scientific test for the addictiveness of a drug is to measure how readily rats will self-inject with it. Archaeological evidence suggests that the earliest humans discovered the pleasure to be gained from leaving gathered seed-grains around in water long before they discovered how to take the resulting mush out and cook it - beer came before bread. The earliest cuneiform description of brewing is around 5,000 years old, but the technology is far older. The earliest Sumerian and Egyptian references to poppy-growing for the purposes of extracting opium are nearly as old, and, again, the technique probably far predates the written record. As far as I am aware there is no human society which does not have its intoxicants. The Inuit and Lapp shaman of the frozen north drank the urine of reindeer or elks that had fed on fly agaric toadstools, and large areas of forest a little further south were radically depleted by the Fennic habit of tapping them to make spruce beer.
Archaeological evidence suggests that tiny primitive stone huts found in the southern steppes were used by the earliest settlers to huddle in, round a fire fed with hemp. Practically the first thing Noah did when he landed was to plant a vineyard, and subsequently to get disgustingly drunk on the produce. Although it has been suggested that Homer's "wine-dark" seas are a survival of a simile based on a beer bittered with ivy leaves, fermenting fruits are so readily available that it is hard to imagine the earliest proto-humans not discovering the basics of wine or cider making.
What all these substances have in common is that they are at least habit-forming, and can be addictive: that is to say the regular user reaches the stage where he or she cannot voluntarily cease without discomfort. Drugs...