I learned recently about “Vin Mariani” a wine from the 1860s that was fortified with coca leaves and contained 6mg per liquid ounce of the wine; except for the bottles sold in USA where it was 7.2mg per ounce, because there were other patent medicines that had cocaine in them and the manufacturer added a bit more to be competitive in the market.
The Pope of the time loved the stuff and awarded the company a Vatican medal for it.
> and contained 6mg per liquid ounce of the wine; except for the bottles sold in USA where it was 7.2mg per ounce
Oral bioavailability is lower (around 1/2 to 1/3 if I recall correctly) than nasal use. It also gets spread out over a much longer time because it's absorbed more slowly, which results in lower peak concentrations.
So between the low dose, lower oral bioavailability, slow onset, and lower peak blood concentrations the effects would not have been similar to what we imagine when we think of cocaine users today.
Drugs like this can have very different effects depending on the dose and route of administration. I'm not suggesting that it was a good idea to put this into drinks, but I don't want people getting the wrong idea that anyone drinking this wine in the past was getting the same effects as someone doing a line of cocaine.
In some countries you can get coca leaf tea (mate de coca) which is made from coca leaves and contains small amounts of cocaine, not far from the doses used in this old wine. A lot of tourists are disappointed to discover that it's only mildly stimulating if they feel anything at all, not the intense drug rush associated with taking larger concentrated doses nasally.
While I love the Internet and all sorts of modern life fixtures (in a developed country), I feel a bit like I missed out by not being alive when all the crazy drinks were around.
Unadulterated cocaine is not readily available to 99% of people. Who wants to risk getting some fentanyl or whatever else as a layperson wanting to try it?
This comment seems addressed to the portion of the population that both doesn’t know how to safely buy illegal drugs and also is able to determine which drug sellers are reputable. i can only assume this is an extremely small amount of people
Vinum debet esse naturale de genimine vitis et non corruptum. [1]
IANACL, but I don't see why infusing wine with coca leaves to produce cocaine would be considered any less natural than infusing grape juice with yeast to produce alcohol, and the official Vatican English translation of "corruptum" here is "spoiled", so…maybe?
never knew this was a thing. seems it's still available to buy! sounds like a more respectable version of Buckfast, the tonic wine made in an abbey in Devon that had/has a cult popularity with the youth of parts of Ireland and Scotland
"Buckie" was supposed to be "auntie's pick me up". It is still a minor political issue in Scotland whenever some hack politician wants to make a name for themselves.
The Pope of the time loved the stuff and awarded the company a Vatican medal for it.