[We imagine some would say that historical psychoactive drug use in Christian Europe, where it was available, would be tempered by religious faith which was capable of bringing people closer to the divine – otherwise, frankly, what good was it? That someone like Faust would turn away from such an opportunity was the scandal, but for some, faith is not enough. Then again, was Faust interested in becoming closer to God? He had been that route, and was already dissatisfied. People have taken mind-altering drugs, it seems, for thousands of years with the intent of altering perception and even finding God.]
‘Psychoactive drug use can be traced to prehistory. There is archaeological evidence of the use of psychoactive substances (mostly plants) dating back at least 10,000 years, and historical evidence of cultural use over the past 5,000 years. The chewing of coca leaves, for example, dates back over 8000 years ago in Peruvian society. Medicinal use is one important facet of psychoactive drug usage. However, some have postulated that the urge to alter one’s consciousness is as primary as the drive to satiate thirst, hunger or sexual desire. Supporters of this belief contend that the history of drug use and even children’s desire for spinning, swinging, or sliding indicate that the drive to alter one’s state of mind is universal.”One of the first people to articulate this point of view, set aside from a medicinal context, was American author Fitz Hugh Ludlow (1836–1870) in his book The Hasheesh Eater (1857):
[D]rugs are able to bring humans into the neighborhood of divine experience and can thus carry us up from our personal fate and the everyday circumstances of our life into a higher form of reality. It is, however, necessary to understand precisely what is meant by the use of drugs. We do not mean the purely physical craving…That of which we speak is something much higher, namely the knowledge of the possibility of the soul to enter into a lighter being, and to catch a glimpse of deeper insights and more magnificent visions of the beauty, truth, and the divine than we are normally able to spy through the cracks in our prison cell. But there are not many drugs which have the power of stilling such craving. The entire catalog, at least to the extent that research has thus far written it, may include only opium, hashish, and in rarer cases alcohol, which has enlightening effects only upon very particular characters.’
Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_drug>
[Following is the same section quoted from Archive.org’s copy. It’s trivially different we suppose, but it is different. This is from an edition from the same year (1857) as the above, which we cannot find.]
‘But there is one ground upon which the righteousness of the tendency toward stimulants may be upheld without the fear of any dangerous side issues, namely, the fact that it proves, almost as powerfully as any thing lower than direct revelation, man’s fitness by constitution and destiny by choice, for a higher set of circumstances than the present. Let it, however, be understood what, in this instance, is meant by the tendency to stimulus.
We do not mean that mere bodily craving which, shared equally in common by the most bestial and the most spiritual of men not disembodied, urges them alike to some expedient which will send their blood throbbing with a livelier thrill of physical well-being, blind them to the consideration of disagreeable truths, and eclipse all thought by the dense shadow of the Animal.
That of which we speak is something far higher — the perception of the soul’s capacity for a broader being, deeper insight, grander views of Beauty, Truth, and Good than she now gains through the chinks of her cell. It is true that there are not many stimuli which possess the power in any degree to satisfy such yearnings. The whole catalogue, so far as research has written it, will probably embrace only opium, hasheesh, and, acting upon some rarely-found combinations of temperament, liquors. ‘
Pasted from <The hasheesh eater : being passages from the life of a Pythagorean by Ludlow, Fitz Hugh, 1836-1870>