I have mentioned before that I would like to grow hemp in the garden, but am prohibited from doing so by UK drug laws. That and my developing interest in ethnobotany (the intersection of people and plants) has made me more curious about drugs in general – in a purely academic sense!

Pete bought me High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture for my birthday. Written by Mike Jay to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Wellcome Collection last year, the book is an exploration of the use of drugs throughout history and across global cultures – and a truly fascinating read.

The first stage of the book is called ‘A Universal Impulse’, and explores the fact that drug use is just that – animals seek out plants with physiological effects, and we have been doing so since before we could call ourselves human. Think about cats and catnip, reindeer and fly agaric mushrooms, baboons chewing tobacco or various African mammals getting drunk on rotting fruit (which looks hilarious until you’re in a village terrorized by drunken elephants).

The book then goes on to explain that the effects of drugs are only understood in a cultural context – if you smoked tobacco on your own without knowing anything about it, then you would probably find the experience so off-putting that you wouldn’t try it again. Only the cultural support of other smokers (or beer drinkers or whatever) gets us past their idea that we’re being poisoned and on to the stage where it’s supposed to be fun. There’s an interesting anecdote later in the book about a family that thought they were dying after accidentally ingesting magic mushrooms; it seems like the hallucinogenic effects of our native species wasn’t really appreciated until modern times.

High Society travels backward and foreward through time and across continents, looking at drug use in different cultures. It does begin with prehistory and end in the modern era, but it’s not a straightforward timeline in the middle.

‘From apothecary to laboratory’ looks at the development of science and its role in the realm of drugs. From the days of Dioscorides and his first real list of medicinal plants, through to 19th century when the alkaloids of morphine, caffeine, nicotine, codeine, theobromine and cocaine were first produced and rapidly turned into medicinal drugs and commoditized over-the-counter remedies.

Hang on a minute… not all of those things are drugs, are they? How did caffeine, nicotine and theobromine (found in chocolate) make the list? Well, they are mind-altering substances – psychoactive drugs that have an effect on our consciousness. That’s why we’re careful about giving them to children, as any parent who has had to cope with a chocolate-fuelled toddler rampage knows. So if you’re reading this with a cup of tea or coffee in your hand, it’s time to adjust your perspective. Especially as sugar and alcohol are also on the list.

The chemical age brought with it the first synthetic drugs, including LSD and Ecstasy, and now we have new ones emerging all the time – legal ‘highs’ only until anti-drug legislation catches up with the chemistry. And with Prozac and Ritalin commonly prescribed, are we heading for a future where we’re all medicated into optimum mental performance? And where do information junkies (like me!) fit into it all?

The last section of the book examines ‘The Drug Trade’ through the ages, and the less than stellar involvement of Western countries in introducing drugs to different cultures (e.g. Opium to China) for the financial rewards. It charts the arrival, widespread adoption and then prohibition of the various drugs we now consider to be harmful, and the lucrative taxes applied by every government to the ones that it sanctions. And the enormous illegal trade in illicit drugs, one of the top three international markets (along with arms and oil), and organized crime. The final scene is an example of a society falling out of love with a drug – in this case tobacco. The realization of the damaging effects of tobacco on health hasn’t really led to a decrease in the number of smokers, but smoking is now seen as anti-social in many Western countries; smokers have been rebranded as addicts, and smoking has gone downmarket.

For the most part, High Society doesn’t examine the health problems associated with drug use, nor does it dwell on the problems addiction brings to societies. It explains the cultural framework for drug use, and its history. As such it explains how we got to where we are – but it doesn’t suggest a way to extricate ourselves from our current situation (where most forms of ‘recreational’ drug use are demonized), which I still consider to be ludicrous.

Beautifully illustrated throughout, with colour pictures of cultural artifacts, High Society isn’t the least bit dry. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable, and eminently rational, read. The whole topic of drugs has become stigmatized; we need to be better informed to be part of the discussion, and I found this book a good place to start.