A universal impulse. High societies. The evolution of drugs. Animal intoxication. Drugs and shamanism. Drugs and culture. The culture of kava. The culture of betel. Drug prohibitions. Drug subcultures. The cultures of ecstasy
From apothecary to laboratory. What is a drug? Drugs in antiquity. Renaissance herbals. Witches and flying ointments. The invention of laudanum. Linnaeus and the Enlightenment. The first synthetic drugs. Opium and the Romantics. The Club des Haschischins. Freud and cocaine. Addiction and drug control. Mescaline, LSD and beyond. Drugs of the future
The drugs trade. Drugs of the New World. The psychoactive revolution. Tobacco in China, tea in Europe. The opium wars. The anti-opium campaign. Temperance and prohibition. The 'War on drugs.' Epilogue: the decline of tobacco.
