mozzaok
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OzPolitic
Posts: 6741
Melbourne
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I have to laugh that so many of you believe that opiates were stopped being handed out as cold relief a hundred years ago. Less than fifty years ago the chemist made up his own cough mixture which was primarily a mix of Opium Tincture, and Alcohol. Mostly opium. You could inject the opium tincture, but it was a very dark brown colour so you needed to know your veins, because you could not see if you were in by drawing back blood. This was available well into the 70's, maybe even the eighties. Chemists used to keep lots of raw opiates on hand to make various mixtures, in both liquid and powder form, these were almost all forms of morphine. They even had one which was a hyperdermic tablet, that was a tablet so pure that it was dropped dry into the barrel of a syringe, and as soon as water was sucked in with it, it dissolved completely, particularly convenient, and what we would see if they ever decided to legalise heroin, as dose control is simple and accurate. They also used to keep pure cocaine, which was a crystalline powder which was used primarily as a local anaesthetic, and very often for eye ointments. Scott of the antarctic and all early explorers carried pure cocaine tablets to pop onto their eyeball if they got snow blindness, or other painful conditions.
When these drugs were more freely available, many, if not most, of the very best and brightest were frequent and enthusiastic consumers.
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