One of the ways the elements of the psychoactive revolution contributed to “modernity” as we know it is in how we approach the combination of sex and drugs. Now aphrodisiacs are not a new concept, they have been around for millennia. They certainly have been a part of European culture since 1563 when Garcia d’Orta described the hallucinatory and aphrodisiac uses of hashish. . However, the secondary use of prescription drugs such as amphetamine and antidepressants to enhance male performance became more common in the 1960s and 1970s. Timothy Leary certainly sparked a generation’s imagination with his descriptive analysis of the pleasures of sexual intercourse for both men and women while under the influence of LSD. .
Marijuana is reputed to enhance the enjoyment of just about everything, sex, food, music are all included in the list of activities that are associated with enhanced pleasure by cannabis users. . It also spawned a secondary market for paraphernalia. Everything from simple bamboo rolling papers and briarwood pipes up to futuristic spill proof bongs and exotic art glass hookahs became hotly marketed items. “In the mid-1970s the Drug Enforcement Administration began estimating domestic marijuana consumption simply by extrapolating from cigarette paper sales.” . This new flood of products contributed to “modernity” in the way they infiltrated and then became fixtures in modern awareness.
A third way that the psychoactive revolution contributed to “modernity” was not to enhance enjoyment, but to mitigate the ill effects users often felt in the aftermath. Manufactures’ have been taking advantage of these so called “problem profits” ever since the manufactures of Bromo-Seltzer realize that it delivered relief from hangovers. They promptly revised their ad campaign accordingly. Alka-Seltzer followed suit with a campaign of its own aimed at men who smoked and drank while matchbooks ran ads for cough drops. The “Madison Avenue” culture celebrated in the series “Mad Men” was born
References
Courtwright, D. A Trap Baited With Pleasure. In World, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern (p. 103).
