In the 1880’s, Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud began experimenting with and researching a new miracle drug called “cocaine”. In 1884, he published his findings in a report entitled “Uber Coca”. Freud sung the praises of this “magical substance.” He touted it as a cure for digestive ailments, asthma, fatigue, pain, alcoholism, headaches, and melancholy. He even thought it could cure morphine addiction. Freud himself used it through injection or orally. He found it helped with his shyness. He encouraged his fiancée Martha to use it “to make you strong and give your cheeks a red color”. He turned friends on to it and prescribed it for his patients. When the report was translated into English, American pharmaceutical companies and assorted quacks caught on to it. It was the main ingredient in many “medicines” aimed at the various ailments Freud had listed, plus more that were invented. In 1886, an enterprising John Pemberton concocted a beverage containing cocaine to cure headaches. He called it Coca Cola.
– maroon 30
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