Historical Figures & Substance Use: Washington, Warhol & Mor

Starting dad George Washington, on the other hand, couldn’t function without routine opium, in the form of the medication narcotic. He washed it down with high-strength alcohol, just to alleviate the pain brought on by his uncomfortable dentures.

George Washington’s Opium Use

Then there was Pope Leo XIII, the productive late-nineteenth-century pontiff whose favorite tipple was white wine tied with cocaine. “It was the papal matching of Popeye consuming a can of spinach,” creates Kelly.

For radicals like Hughes, the decision to take drugs, whether medicinal or leisure, was a method to unleash clearer, a lot more creative thinking. It’s why, says Kelly, the pop artist Andy Warhol took them, although he declared he refrained.

Billionaire filmmaker and pilot Howard Hughes, meanwhile, was extremely based on the pain reliever codeine after a near-fatal aircraft crash in 1946. He suffered burns to 78% of his body, damaged 54 bones and had his head cleaved open by the effect.

Howard Hughes & Codeine Addiction

The book covers 40 historical numbers and their propensity for obtaining stoned, high and hammered. Elvis Presley took 3 bags of prescription drugs on tour. Alexander the Great consumed alcohol big bowls of 40%-alcohol wine without ever before diluting it with water.

More frightening, Richard Nixon made use of to drunk-dial cupboard members in the center of the night and get them to destroy Cambodia, just for Assistant of State Henry Kissinger to intervene and have the Pentagon shelve the issue till Nixon was sober.