Roman Drug Use

[Germanicus]

Can someone point me in the right direction on this ? Am I correct in assuming that alchohol was the drug mostly used for both medicinal purposes and recreational ones ? What about Opium ? One would think the Romans may have come into contact with it, and marijuana through the Parthian campaigns. I'm interested to know if they used these in medicine or for recreation, if at all ?

[Primus Pilus]

Pliny the Elder provides an exhaustive resource on various remedies in his Natural histories.

[Fatboy]

Well, Marcus Aurelius was a smackhead wasn't he ? So opium for sure.

[Moonlapse]

Pretty much every psychotropic plant or fungus was known at that time.

[Guest Scanderbeg]

I remember reading about Marcus Aurelius being addicted to the opium

[Moonlapse]

To answer the original question, I'd assume that most Romans drug of choice was wine. A few people, to whom they were available, probably used some of the other drugs known at the time. I wouldn't necessarily think of it in terms of modern drug use since most of these substances were primarily used as entheogens - most people simply didn't know why they worked and believed it was supernatural.

[Germanicus]

Thanks all, will have to go back to Pliny the Elder. Now that you mention it, I do remember something about Marcus, maybe that was the real reason behind his Parthian campaign - the spoils included 50 talents of raw opium !

[Primus Pilus]

Natural Histories books 23 - 32

 

Courtesy of the Perseus Project, which is unfortunately often quite slow.

[Germanicus]

Thanks PP!