History of Drugs: 450 B.C.–1959 C.E.

450 BC
Greek historian Herodotus records how tribesmen living near Mongolia throw hemp seeds onto a hot stone. “As it burns, it smokes like incense and the smell of it makes them drunk, just as wine does,” he writes of what sounds suspiciously like a pre-Christian Bonnaroo. “As more fruit is thrown on, they get more and more intoxicated until they jump up and start singing and dancing.”

1797
British poet and opium addict Samuel Taylor Coleridge wakes from a drug-induced sleep and writes his poem “Kubla Khan.” The hallucinogenic verses will later inspire the Rush track “Xanadu,” and maybe those nifty drum rolls in “Tom Sawyer” too.

1928
Louis Armstrong releases “Muggles,” whose title is the trumpeter’s pet name for marijuana. This, in turn, may help explain why he found the world so “wonderful.”

1937
Harry Anslinger, first commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics, warns Congress that “coloreds with big lips” are “luring white women with jazz and marijuana.” He calls pot “the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.” In response, Congress takes the first step toward outlawing it with the Marihuana Tax Act.

1940
Jazz saxophonist and drug dealer Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow is sent to prison for three years for selling marijuana.

1943
LSD is created by scientist Albert Hoffman, who accidentally ingests it through his fingers. He is subsequently forced to lie down and sinks into a “not unpleasant, intoxicated condition characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination.”

1943
Keith Richards is born.

1954
Author Aldous Huxley publishes The Doors of Perception, which describes his experience taking mescaline. The similarly hallucinogen-friendly Jim Morrison will later name his band the Doors in tribute.

1955
Jazz saxophonist and longtime heroin addict Charlie Parker dies at the age of 34—not in his fifties, which is what the coroner who conducts the autopsy on Parker’s drug-ravaged body estimates he is.

1959
Jazz singer, alcoholic and drug addict Billie Holiday is hospitalized suffering from heart and liver problems. While undergoing treatment, she is arrested after a quantity of cocaine is discovered in her tissue box. Nearly two months after being admitted, she dies.