Drug Addictions: A Historical and Ethological Overview
Drug Addictions: A Historical and Ethological Overview
1. Introduction
1.1. Preliminary considerations: Focus on cocaine and heroin
It is well established that several psychoactive substances can lead to addiction. These include legal drugs such as alcohol and nicotine which generate the major part of the addiction-related social and economical costs to modern societies, and a pleiad of illegal drugs amongst which cannabis, cocaine and heroin are the most commonly used.[1]
When one wants to consider the harmful consequences of an addictive drug, both the dependence and physical harm potencies of the drug should be considered for these two aspects contribute to the deterioration of the user’s life. A recent classification of the major classes of addictive drugs reveals that heroin and cocaine are clearly the most dangerous ones since both their addictive properties and physical harm potency are high.[2] Cocaine and heroin are followed by barbiturates and street methadone, but tobacco is shown to have addictive property of the same magnitude as cocaine, thereby demonstrating that the legal status of a substance is not a predictive factor of least addictive properties.
In the present chapter, we will consider exclusively cocaine and heroin addictions, not only because these two drugs are clearly the most dangerous ones, but mainly because cocaine and heroin use have been increasing among western countries populations in the last ten years. This focus is one limitation of the general conclusions that will be provided in the following chapters that will also address alcoholism and food addiction that will be joined by another addiction, namely pathological gambling, in the clinical definition of addictions in the upcoming DSM-V. Thus, addictions are increasingly recognized as abnormal persistent maladaptive behaviors driven by specific, initially reinforcing, stimuli in the environment that are not anymore restricted to psychoactive substances.
1.2 Drug use: A behavior as old as humankind?
Drug use seems to have entered human customs as early as the emergence of human societies. Evidences that recreational drug use has emerged early on after human sedentarisation, perhaps with the development of religious rites, can be found for several drugs and routes of administration.
The addictive potential of a drug varies from substance to substance, and from individual to individual. Dose, frequency, pharmacokinetics of a particular substance, route of administration, and time are critical factors for physical harm and addictive potency. Heroin and cocaine are clearly the most dangerous ones since both their addictive properties and physical harm potency are high.
Thus, 5000 B.C. the Sumerians used opium, as suggested by the fact that they had an ideogram for it which has been translated as HUL, meaning “joy” or “rejoicing.”[3] A 3500 B.C. Egyptian papyrus provides the earliest historical record of the production of alcohol in the description of a brewery.[4]