大象传媒

Derived from the juice of the poppy, it relieves our pain and cures our insomnia. It may even inspire great art.

It also causes addiction, misery and death.

Historian Lucy Inglis鈥檚 book explores man鈥檚 long and complex relationship with opium.

鈥淚n mankind鈥檚 search for temporary oblivion,鈥� writes Inglis, 鈥渙piates possess a special allure. Since Neolithic times, opium has made life seem, if not perfect, then tolerable for millions. However unlikely it seems at this moment, many of us will end our lives dependent on it.鈥�

In 17th Century England the invention of laudanum 鈥� an easy-to-swallow opium tincture 鈥� led to 鈥渁 new age in drug-taking.鈥�

A century later, laudanum became popular with writers of the Romantic movement such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose great poem Kubla Khan was famously inspired by a drug-induced dream when he was a young man of 25. (He died aged 61, a housebound addict.)

In the American Civil War morphine was used extensively to relieve the pain of wounded soldiers. After the war, drug addiction among former soldiers was so common it became known as 鈥渢he army disease.鈥�

But it was the Vietnam War a century later that brought the idea of the 鈥渏unkie soldier鈥� into popular culture.

Today, heroin addiction remains a global problem:

鈥淲here opiates and opioids are available,鈥� says the author, 鈥減eople will consume them.鈥�

Omnibus of five parts abridged by Anna Magnusson.

Read by Anita Vettesse.

Producer: David Jackson Young.

First broadcast on 大象传媒 Radio 4 in August 2018

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