19th century people used narcotics, how could they survive?

I think many would point to the non criminality of the 1800s as an excuse to legalize, but I think drugs were less potent then. Drugs have been refined and the their source plants bred to make our drugs these days far more potent then their tame counterparts.
As an ER doctor I frequently find people who have fallen off the wagon after a decade or two of abstinence, and they can come in dead or nearly dead after using what they thought was a good starter dose, only to find it was much more potent then they expected.

Maintenance use of narcotics and other drugs is not that deleterious to physical health. It’s a lot different from using street drugs to get high. There are people that use heroin for years and lead productive useful lives for many years.

But 19th century people did have problems with long term use of morphine and heroin. Consider depictions of opium dens, as people essentially warehousing themselves in a drug den.

And Sherlock Holmes did have problems with his cocaine usage, and Watson had to wean him off the drug.

Also, people who died did so early because there was not the kind of medical system we have today to revive them

They couldn’t. You are referring to fiction.

After 1860, opium use continued to increase with widespread domestic production in China, until more than 25% of the male population were regular consumers by 1905
regular consumers.

Opiate use was huge in those eras, plenty of addicts before the term was even known.
Beyer used to manufacture Heroin drops for teething infants. lol
Laudnum, opium, heroin, cocaine, all the many “elixers” for various ailments were chock full of opiates. The use of these drugs probably had less to do with mortality than the basic fact that there was no medical care or cure for many common illnesses that are managed today.
Many people died of tuberculosis, various other diseases like Diptheria, Smallpox, Typhoid, Plague, Scarlet/Reumatic fever, etc. Not to mention childbirth and minor injuries that became infected.

I doubt that narcotic use was all that widespread. People needed access and resources to buy the substances. Recreational opiates were likely a privilege of the wealthy, not something used by farmers, factory workers, and the rest of society.

People use narcotics now and survive too. As others have pointed out, the drugs were probably of lower potency then and also diluted in elixers or medicine. Gin was frequently drunk daily and given to teething babies. Opiates were given to make children sleep (oh, to live in the 19th century!) But there were also many addicts and opium dens. Coca Cola was called that because it originally had coke in it – or so I’ve heard.

@SadieMartinPaul I suspect the drugs were cheaper then and used in some form by poor people as well possibly cut down or degraded. Gin was drunk because it was cheaper than tea.

My uneducated guess:
The drugs were not as potent
There was no support network . If you were strung out and couldn’t work, you did not eat.
People did die.
The ones that died out, died out.

Sherlock Holmes doesn’t seem like a healthy, normal person to me.

Read Confessions of an opium eater by Thomas De Quincy (1821). He had an opium habit for many years. His preferred form was laudanum, a mixture of opium and alcohol. Laudanum addiction was fairly common as it was often taken for pain.

They didn’t. Seen any around lately?

@ETpro just Dorian Gray. He always looks great, though.

Many Civil war veterans were opiate addicts. I would be too, brutal amputations and other injuries, it“s a freaking wonder anyone lived through such primitive “surgeries,”

Don’t forget Freuds “Cocaine papers”...he enjoyed his snuff enough. lol

www.historyhouse.com/in_history/cocaine/

Great little amusing article.

They didn’t. Average life expectancy in the UK in 1880 was less than 50.
(source: http://www.jbending.org.uk/stats3.htm)

Many didn’t stay healthy mid-term and for this reason doctors and scientists eventually discovered the addiction potential of the substances you mentioned, which led to a change of policies.

@downtide, life expectancy is always skewed by infant mortality, though. Lots of people in the late 1880’s lived much longer than that. With or without narcotics. Just sayin.

@susanc – that’s why you look at the later columns too; life expectancy at age 40 for example. The most interesting one would be life expectancy at age 20 but that data is oddly missing.