Opium, Empire, and India

https://pointsadhsblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/opium-empire-and-india-part-i/

by Hooke • 9 years ago

48 40 9 years ago

pointsadhsblog.wordpress.com

pruthvishetty• 9 years ago

Surprised not to see a mention of the Tatas here.

gjkood2• 9 years ago

Can you shed some more light on why the Tatas should be mentioned in the article?

As far as I can tell from Part 1 of the article which is posted, the discussion is more of society's use of Opium through the latter part of the millennia. It doesn't go into any specific purveyor of opium products except for the regulation and subsequent clandestine production after prohibition.

By Regulation XIII of 1816, opium cultivation was legalised in Bengal under the supervision of the Commercial Resident of Rungpore. The control of the Opium Department went from the Board of Revenue in the Customs, Salt and the Opium Departments by the Regulation IV of 1819. In 1850, by Act XLIV, the Customs, Salt and Opium Board was merged in the Board of Revenue at Calcutta. In 1797, prohibition was imposed on the private cultivation of poppy in Bengal proper and in Behar division of the province. It was then that the attention of the Government proper was being met by ‘systematic smuggling and clandestine production’

I am really curious about the Tata family role in this that you allude to. Please elaborate.

clock_tower3• 9 years ago

From your tone, it sounds like this is a known controversy in India. Could you elaborate?

I know nothing about the Tatas' origin, although it's hard to miss the importance of the modern Tata Group. Wikipedia says that the family fortune was founded by Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, who had some wealth from his father Nusserwanji and parleyed it, through trade, into enough capital to recondition a cotton mill.

Are you saying that Jamsetji's trading company dealt in opium? That his father's business was involved in it? Or even both? If so, looking at things from a United States perspective, I'd find that a little heartening. I'd always seen the opium trade as a matter of pumping money from undeveloped China to already-rich London and Boston; if there was going to be an opium-for-silver trade regardless, at least some of the silver went to somewhere else in need of capital.

555552• 9 years ago

Please elaborate. This sounds very interesting. Edit: I've found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratanji_Dadabhoy_Tata

atxcrab• 9 years ago

This might be interesting to readers : ibis trilogy from amithav ghosh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibis_trilogy

miraj• 9 years ago

it sure is a great historical fiction! in another HN thread I too suggested this for readers interested in drug trade during colonial India.

ultimoo• 9 years ago

Having never tried any hard drugs or the mentioned concoctions, pardon my basic question -- what effects does consuming opium have? Is it like consuming modern day heroin? Does it imitate what people feel after smoking pot? Just trying to understand why people consumed it -- the article mentions pain relieving uses as well as 'taking the edge off' uses.

6stringmerc• 9 years ago

Most depictions I've come across - and having been given opiates in medical situations - allude to it being like a dream-state. A bit of euphoria. Feeling so good you don't want to move. Hence the attraction for repeating the experience.

mattnewton• 9 years ago

I have never tried opium but given many painkillers are called "Opiates" I imagine they all share the same fundamental mechanism of opium and feel like different flavors of each other. Quite unlike marijuana then.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opiate

kleer001• 9 years ago

https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/opium/opium.shtml

pstuart• 9 years ago

Physical pain melts away and there's a sense of "feeling really good". It's not mind altering like cannabis, more like relaxed taken to the next level.

Or so I've heard....

555552• 9 years ago

It's an analgesic. All opiates feel pretty similar; heroin and codeine are really not too different. When you take a lot of either, it feels like being wrapped in a warm blanket.

Opium IIRC is a natural mixture of morphine and codeine among some other alkaloids, but primarily those two.

You can buy opium in the US in the form of "unwashed" poppy seeds (The seeds are from the pod and are coated in opium, which is typically washed off), which I don't particularly recommend due to safety and legal reasons, but that's up to you ofcourse.

Source: I have tried my share drugs and smoked opium in rural parts of Asia several times.

mtdewcmu8• 9 years ago

"Narcotic" means numbing, and that's an accurate description IMO. Reports of euphoria are exaggerated. It feels good if you are feeling pain or malaise and it takes the pain or malaise away. Otherwise it doesn't feel like much.

Nursie3• 9 years ago

Having experienced euphoria once or twice from codeine (>100mg) I would dispute that.

chimeracoder2• 9 years ago

"Narcotic" means numbing

Just to be clear, for anyone else reading this, that's true in the etymological sense. But from a biological or pharmaceutical standpoint, 'narcotic' has a pretty narrower meaning, referring to a specific class of drugs (which tend to produce numbing effects, but not everything with numbing effects is a narcotic).

To make matters more confusing, law enforcement, on the other hand, uses 'narcotic' as synonymous with 'any illegal drug', whether or not it actually is a narcotic (in the biological sense) or has a narcotic effect (in the literal sense that you are referring to).

For example, the 'narcotics unit' will deal with cocaine, which is used as a topical anesthetic for numbing[0], but cocaine is very much not a narcotic from a medical standpoint.

[0] in theory, you could use cocaine for a root canal, but you're more likely to get Novocaine instead.

fragsworth• 9 years ago

Reports of euphoria are exaggerated.

No, they aren't. It depends a lot on the person, the specific narcotic, and the quantity taken. Some (most in my experience) people feel intense euphoria, others don't.

wavefunction• 9 years ago

Many opiates produce a euphoric feeling, which in practice means a general 'warmness' in the body and pleasurable mental state. The senses are dulled, time dilation is common and the stresses and concerns of life are forgotten or at least reduced in importance.

For someone experiencing pain whether physical or emotional, the opportunity to escape that pain seems to me to be understandable if not well advised.

Opium -which I have tried once- was lovely. I don't like other opiates though, they provoke a minor allergic reaction consisting of itchiness and uncomfortable warmness I did not experience with opium. These were hydrocodone and other legally and appropriately prescribed medicines for a serious injury.

tn135• 9 years ago

Opium would be a cross between pot and morphine. Its primary usage has been painkiller. Even as a child in India I remember using opium based oil as painkiller for tooth pain.

opiate_eng2• 9 years ago

I was an opiate addict for 10 years, and still use a bit. Never bought off the street; always got pharma connects, except for opium which I got some a local guy with some flowers. During the whole time I've been a software engineer, and done some cool stuff. I'm also bipolar, and opiates have been my treatment. Opiates don't make you dumb like pot. I'm totally functional, indeed, more functional (as evaluated by third parties inc medical professionals) when using opiates.

Opiates are amazing. They take away a lot of depression. I got up to 50mg of oxy a day, which is quite modest and very inexpensive. It made me happy. Melted away worries. At one of my startups, we got crossed by a partner, almost had to fire everyone. The stress was paralysing - business partner attempted suicide. Me? Start the day with oxy and feel ready to take on things.

Even now, it can change that morning lethargic everything-sucks-why-don't-I-binge-Star-Trek-or-kill-myself into "hey I'm gonna write some software".

The other comments describe it alright - a warm happy dream. It's quite pleasurable even if you're by yourself; you can spend hours just "nodding" off, in and out of consciousness. It's quite sublime. The peace is so powerful, that a few times when I was being self destructive and got to the edge of OD, I noticed but simply didn't care. I'm more careful nowadays, though oral opiates are quite safe if you don't act reckless.

IV opiates step it up a bit. Users talk of a rush. It's similar to an oncoming amazing orgasm x10, then the warmness floods your body and everything's perfect and you might even gasp for breath it's that good. I think part of that is just the IV, and having a huge shift so quickly. For instance, there's a rush when IV'ing midazolam (dangerous, do not use without medical supervision), right before you pass out.

I've gone off opiates a few times. It wasn't as an enjoyable life. The only downsides are constipation (eh, saves time) and possibly lower testosterone (as someone often manic, lower libido is great - but it's easy to get TRT anyways.) I've not seen much as far as long-term damage from use.

danmaz74• 9 years ago

I've not seen much as far as long-term damage from use

Isn't addiction the biggest problem, requiring increasingly higher doses to achieve the same effect?

Opium, Empire, and India

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