Another Era of Drug Abuse

Yesterday I was on my walk and my friend X told me his mom was a mean alcoholic. His dad when on leave from the army would go to NYC with a friend to score heroin. "This was in the 50's," he said. "They also took asthma inhalers to get high." He mentioned some name I'd never heard of.

My other friend Y told me her dad sold candy and tobacco for a living and "His delivery route was all bars. He came home sloshed every night. My mother said "Quit or I'm leaving."
"What happened?" I asked. "He quit! He got grouchy, and he still is grouchy, but he doesn't drink." Y said.
"That's good," I said.

Both X and Y are reformed alcoholics. God bless them. I love X drinkers, and gravitate towards them at social functions. They are usually not afraid to look at the hard stuff of life, and they know where to find the seltzer.

Our generation is more open about alcoholism but we still need to conquer some of the other ills.

When we moved into our house 20 years ago there were things in the medicine cabinet that I'd never heard of. Laudanum.

When I was 11, in 1972 my mother told me she was addicted to diet pills. "Does dad know?" I asked, "No." She had her own psychiatrist she saw a few times a week and a medicine chest full of bottles of amphetamines and Valium. She was always on her way up or down trying to medicate her bipolar. My bio dad was of the medicate by martini school. His Yonkers apartment fridge had olives, and vermouth, gin and frozen bagels. Nothing more.

My parents worshiped (and shopped-for) doctors, religion and engaged in medical quackery.

Laudanum /ˈlɔːdᵊnəm/ is a tincture of opium containing approximately 10% powdered opium by weight (the equivalent of 1% morphine).[1]

Reddish-brown and extremely bitter, laudanum contains almost all of the opium alkaloids, including morphine and codeine, and its high morphine concentration makes it a potent narcotic. Laudanum was historically used to treat a variety of ailments, but its principal use was as an analgesic and cough suppressant. Until the early 20th century, laudanum was sold without a prescription and was a constituent of many patent medicines. Today, laudanum is recognized as addictive and is strictly regulated and controlled throughout most of the world.

Laudanum is known as a "whole opium" preparation since it historically contained all the opium alkaloids. Today, however, the drug is often processed to remove all or most of the noscapine (also narcotine) present as this is a strong emetic and does not add appreciably to the analgesic or anti-propulsive properties of opium; the resulting solution is called Denarcotized Tincture of Opium or Deodorized Tincture of Opium (DTO).

Laudanum remains available by prescription in the United States and theoretically in the United Kingdom, although today the drug's therapeutic indications are generally confined to controlling diarrhea, alleviating pain, and easing withdrawal symptoms in infants born to mothers addicted to heroin or other opioids. Recent enforcement action by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) against manufacturers of paregoric and opium tincture suggests that opium tincture's availability in the U.S. may be in jeopardy.

The terms laudanum and tincture of opium are generally interchangeable, but in contemporary medical practice the latter is used almost exclusively.