10 Historical Figures Who Were Probably On Drugs

10) William Shakespeare
We don’t need to tell you who William Shakespeare was. From Macbeth, to King Lear, to Hamlet,
Billy Shakes spent his career knocking out one classic play after another.
In fact, by the end of his life, Shakespeare had managed to produce 11 tragedies, 16 comedies,
10 histories, a whole bunch of poems and probably at least a bit of erotic fanfiction.
How did such a prolific author keep himself inspired over so many years? Well, recent
research points to the idea that Shakespeare may have stretched his mental limits with
marijuana.
In 2015 a South African forensics company analyzed the remains of clay tobacco pipes
found in the bard’s garden. Of the 24 pipe fragments, 8 were found to have cannabis residue
on them.
And this pipe analysis isn’t the first time people have suggested that Shakespeare liked
to get baked. Before the discovery, people looked to his sonnets, arguing that a verse
about finding ‘invention in a noted weed’ was a reference to the writer using marijuana
to increase creativity.
9) Sigmund Freud
Whether it’s because of his work on dream interpretation, his investigation of myths
or his theory that everyone really wants to bone their moms, you’ve probably heard of
Sigmund Freud.
The genius Austrian neurologist completely invented psychoanalysis, and also devised
influential concepts like the ego, the superego and the id.
He was also rolling on coke for about ten years straight.
Throughout his early career, Freud was a huge user and proponent of cocaine. In 1824, he
even wrote an entire paper, ‘On Coca’, praising the stimulant. Freud would go on
to claim that cocaine should be used as everything from an antidepressant to a cure for morphine
addiction. Because if there’s one thing that really helps drug addicts, it’s giving
them a brand new addictive drug to try.
To be fair, cocaine’s habit forming nature wasn’t known at the time. And as soon as
it became known, Freud stopped advocating the drug.
But historians think cocaine may have helped Freud in his later psychiatric career. After
all, coke tends to make people a little chatty. Freud knew this first hand, and understood
the importance of talking out your problems. Even if it's in a club’s smoking area at
4AM.
8) Most US Presidents
America’s current President and tangerine-in-chief may have his own wine and vodka brands - or
at least he did until he bankrupted them - but the man himself is famously teetotal.
After his brother Freddie tragically fell into alcoholism and died, The Donald swore
off alcohol and drugs for life. But Presidential history suggests that this is the exception
rather than the rule.
Martin van Buren and Grover Cleveland both drank heavily in office. And Nixon once got
so wasted that he tried to nuke North Korea, forcing his generals to try and talk him out
of it.
In fact Trump may be the first booze-free President since that other paragon of health,
WIlliam Taft.
And booze isn’t the only drug that former Presidents have enjoyed. 11 Presidents, including
Washington, Jefferson and Obama, have openly smoked weed. But none were as ballsy as JFK,
who is reported to have ripped bong hits WHILE IN THE WHITE HOUSE. There are even rumors
that he dropped acid while President. Which explains that time he stopped peace negotiations
with Khrushchev to go and fight dragons in the 5th dimension.
7) Pablo Picasso
It probably won’t surprise you to hear that Picasso knew a thing or two about drugs.
After all, the Spanish artist created some of the most trippy images ever to be splashed
onto a canvas.
A pioneering painter, Picasso’s landmark style went on to be known as ‘Cubism’.
Presumably because ‘crazy multi-colored brain drippings’ didn’t sound intellectual
enough.
But before his cubist work, Picasso spent four years as a heavy opium smoker. Between
1904 and 1908, he smoked opium three times a week.
What’s even stranger is that Picasso didn’t start taking drugs to experience more creativity,
or to find inspiration, or to benefit from what he called the ‘derangement of the senses’.
No, Picasso took up an opium habit simply because he was curious about what it would
be like. Yeah, he spent three years gulping lungfuls of what is basically heroin just
because it looked interesting.
Picasso kicked his heroin habit in June 1908, after his housemate killed himself under the
drug’s influence. Heartbroken, Picasso re-dedicated himself to his work, and went on to change
the face of art.
6) Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre is most famous as a playwright, novelist, and pioneer of the philosophical
school of existentialism.
But the French thinker should also be remembered for his truly obscene intake of drugs.
According to his biographer, Jean-Paul ‘Charlie Sheen’ Sartre had a daily routine that included
knocking back two packs of cigarettes, a quart of whiskey, two hundred milligrams of amphetamines
and varying amounts of aspirin and barbiturates. Every. Single. Day.
This Keith Richards meets Ernest Hemingway meets Hunter S Thompson diet continued throughout
Sartre’s adult life. It frequently made him ill, a fact that should surprise precisely
no one.
Sartre also dabbled in drugs as a younger man. While studying at École Normale Supérieure,
Jean-Paul once smoked the naturally-occurring psychedelic mescaline. This sent him tripping
so hard that he started to hallucinate talking crabs.
While the trip itself was short-lived, the after effects of it lingered in Sartre's mind
for weeks. Imaginary crabs started following him everywhere, even chasing him down the
Champs-Élysées one time.
5) Howard Hughes
In the 1930s, Howard Hughes was a god among men. A billionaire business tycoon, a successful
movie director, and a record-breaking pilot: Hughes was basically Bruce Wayne but with
a giant unflyable wooden plane instead of the Batmobile.
However, Hughes’ glamorous lifestyle fell apart over the years. The billionaire’s
increasingly crippling OCD, coupled with chronic pain caused by his numerous plane crashes,
gradually turned him into a reclusive drug addict.
By 1958 Hughes was in constant pain, unable to wear clothes without being in agony. He
was also heavily addicted to the powerful pain-killer codeine. In fact, to speed up
the drug’s effect he would inject it directly into his muscles.
Even while semi-tranquilized on prescription drugs he could only have his hair and fingernails
cut once a year because the pain was so great.
Then again, at that point Hugh’s OCD was so severe that he was storing his own urine
in jars, so maybe being dependent on sedatives was the least of his problems.
4) Francis Crick
The discovery of DNA’s double helix structure in 1953 is rightly celebrated as a great moment
in scientific history.
School textbooks will tell you that the breakthrough was made by James Watson, Francis Crick and
Rosalind Franklin. But what those textbooks won't tell you is that Crick spent much of
his spare and work time on brain-melting acid journeys.
The Nobel Prize winning Francis Crick was a lifelong advocate of drug legalization.
A fan of the novelist and mescaline adherent Aldous Huxley, Crick belonged to a group called
‘Soma’ that lobbied the government to make weed legal.
Of course, you don’t have to use drugs to advocate their legalization. But it’s also
well known that Crick took LSD on numerous occasions. In fact, he made no secret of it,
telling other scientists that he thought it was a useful way to boost his powers of thought.
It’s tempting to imagine Crick dropping acid and suddenly seeing the shape of DNA
appear before him. But whether or not he had used LSD by the time he discovered DNA’s
structure is hard to establish. The New York Times says that’s accurate; his biographer
says he only tried it later in life.
3) Plato
While Jean-Paul Sartre’s daily drug deluge is pretty hard to beat, the French existentialist
was far from the only philosopher to have dabbled in mind altering substances.
According to historian David Hillman, Socrates and his pupil Plato were chewing on shrooms
way back in 400 BCE.
Both philosophers were almost certainly members of a secretive Ancient Athenian cult known
as the Eleusinian Mysteries. While we don’t exactly know what happened in the cult, that’s
the point of the whole “mysteries” thing - Hillman argues it was basically an excuse
for Athenians to trip balls together.
Sources at the time credited the Mysteries with allowing members to see vivid visions
of the underworld during its ceremonies, ones so powerful that they actually reduced the
members’ fear of death.
Hillman argues that this was achieved through the use of magic mushrooms. That would mean
that Plato and Socrates were giving themselves trippy death dreams at the same time as they
were laying the foundations for all future Western Philosophy.
2) Jesus
Jesus has always fit the hippy stoner profile pretty well. After all, he’s a long haired,
peace-loving guy who liked to hang out with his friends and talk about how should all
love each other maaaaan.
Maybe that's because, according to historian Chris Bennett, Jesus rubbed cannabis oil on
his face and used it in his seemingly miraculous healings.
Here’s the theory: The Bible references an anointing oil being used in early Christian
medicine, including some of the healings performed by Jesus. The recipe for this oil is given
in Exodus, and included an ingredient described in Hebrew as ‘kaneh-bosm’. This has mostly
been translated to ‘calamus’, a common marsh plant with no known medicinal properties.
But Bennett argues that the early Church deliberately mistranslated the word, which should have
been ‘cannabis’.
Basically it’s the Da Vinci Code but with Jesus having a secret love child swapped out
for Jesus having a secret love of cannabis facials.
The non-canon text The Gospel of Philip claims that baptisms were originally intended as
a metaphor for the rebirth people can experience while taking psychedelic journeys.
It even claims that taking cannabis oil will transform you, and make you “no longer a
Christian but a Christ”.
With a message that was literally “Drugs will make you Jesus”, it’s not that surprising
the Church chose to suppress this gospel.
1) Hitler
There are plenty of phrases you could use to describe Adolf Hitler. ‘Psychopathic
war-monger’. ‘Anti-Semitic madman’. ‘A bit of a dick’.
But according to German historian Norman Ohler, another accurate term for the dictator would
be ‘gibbering super junkie’. Which is also a great band name, by the way.
You see, it turns out that Hitler spent the last year of his reign blasted out of his
skull on crystal meth and heroin.
According to Ohler’s excellently named book “Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany”, the
Fuhrer was put to sleep at night by Eukodal, a morphine-based sedative, and woken up in
the morning with Pervitin, a stimulant pill containing crystal meth. Hitler would also
inject himself with bull’s semen in order to increase his testosterone levels.
When not popping meth pills or chugging bull cum, Hitler was still in charge of the German
army. In fact, Ohler claims that a major cause of the Nazi downfall was that a cracked out
Hitler kept making strange and terrible military decisions.
In 1944 the British government received word that Hitler was essentially killing his own
army one pill at a time, and stopped trying to assassinate him.
Spoiler alert: the plan worked and the Nazis lost the Second World War. Turns out cigars
and brandy beat amphetamines and bull jizz.
So, that was 10 Historical Figures Who Were Probably On Drugs. Which world-changing druggie
was your favorite? Did we leave any iconic junkies off the list? Let us know in the comments
below.
And if you want more trippy 10s, check out 10 Terrifying New Drugs That Could End You,
playing now.

10 Historical Figures Who Were Probably On Drugs

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