Quick Tokes #4: Explaining the Death of "Opiates" (Part 3) With a Little Help From Our Friends
Plus a surprising connection to the CIA's LSD experiments
Dear Readers,
I want to apologize. This “quick toke” became a much longer toke. But there were just too many fascinating twists and turns in this story to keep it short. So stick with me!!
This week I wrote paid subscribers about Demerol, the first fully-synthetic, opiate-like drug.
Now, I realize that I could’ve cut that sentence in half by simply substituting the word “opioid” for “fully-synthetic, opiate-like drug.” And usually less is more when it comes to writing (a rule I’m violating in more ways than one this morning).
But using the word “opioid” there would’ve been anachronistic, because when Demerol was first synthesized in the 1930s, the term “opioid” had not yet been coined. Indeed, it was the synthesis of Demerol and other fully-synthetic, opiate-like drugs (e.g. methadone) that inspired the invention of this new terminology in the middle of the twentieth century.
Here’s a 1955 source on the question:
The nomenclature of the constituents of opium and its derivatives is well …
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to History on Drugs to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.