Or at least emerging – a trickle of Victorian chic flowing through the back alleys of the intellectual underground. In lofts and garrets in the Pacific Northwest, artistic types looking for inspiration in a glass are beginning to dust off the drugs their forefathers made famous. Opium and laudanum (a tincture of opium and saffron) are making inroads among would-be Samuel Taylor Coleridges and Elizabeth Barrett Brownings, while at absinthe gatherings artists, writers and just plain partyers are raising illicit tumblers of the potent wormwood-infused liqueur to past devotees like Rimbaud, Wilde and van Gogh. “People are romantically attracted to Victorian-era drugs,” says Jim Hogshire, 36, author of “Opium for the Masses,” a history and how-to guide that’s been fringe-publisher Loompanics Unlimited’s top seller of the summer (2,000 copies). “A lot of the creators of that era credited these drugs with their inspiration, and people now are interested in checking them out firsthand.”
Martin Adams, for one, is looking for some laudanum. The 24-year-old Seattle musician named his band for the narcotic elixir after reading Poe, but he’s never tried it. The artistic aura surrounding the drugs is perhaps their pre-eminent draw, but they appeal for more earthly reasons as well. “People are tired of the criminal element of dealing with dealers,” says Hogshire. “This stuff is accessible, cheap and easy to make.” And illegal, but then again, say some, that just keeps the scene cozy. “People are having small, intimate parties where minds open up and people talk about literature, current events, religion,” says the tea-making artist. “Modern-day salons centered around ritual and intimacy.”
Not to mention getting high. “That tea knocked me on my ass,” says a Portland, Ore., writer (few people interviewed for this story were eager to be named) who stumbled upon a field of opium poppies near his house. “I became totally relaxed and floated downstream while sitting in my kitchen.” Now he’s planting his own poppy patch. As for absinthe, the most popular of the retro intoxicants, “it put me in a mind-numbing stupor,” says Larry Reid, 41, who heads a Seattle PR firm and sampled the emerald liqueur in Portugal, one of the few countries where it’s still legal. “I was so messed up I had to call a cab to cross the street.” San Francisco poster artist Frank Kozik gets a few bottles each year from Spain. “You sit there and get spacey,” he says. “The whole mystique of it is to be in a visually interesting place, to sit and drink it, and get all degenerate and poetic.”
Degenerate may be an apt word. “The concern with absinthe is wormwood,” says Dr. David Musto, professor of the history of medicine at Yale. “It’s thought to cause brain damage. It’s not a wise substance to mess around with, but it all depends on how much one uses.” Opium is actually less toxic than absinthe, though powerfully addictive whether smoked or sipped. And withdrawal can mean life-threatening convulsions.
The drugs may not exactly be wheat germ, but then again, they’re not crack either. “The reason these Victorian forms were replaced as addictive substances was because it became possible to take much more purified and powerful versions of these drugs,” says Musto. “To go back to them now is primarily a reflection of nostalgia. You wouldn’t be doing it to get a stronger jolt.” Milder or not, Victorian drugs remain illegal. Erma Hart, spokeswoman for the Seattle police, says anyone busted with opium, laudanum or absinthe would be subject to a felony charge – though it’s been years since they handled such a case. As one Seattle movie projectionist points out, “It’s a hell of a lot easier to score heroin.” That deadly opium derivative won’t be history any time soon.
