Editing Opium (section)

=== Recreational use in Europe, the Middle East and the US (11th to 19th centuries) ===
[[File:The Opium Seller (W. Müller).jpg|thumb|right|An artist's view of an Ottoman opium seller]]
Soldiers returning home from the [[Crusades]] in the 11th to 13th century brought opium with them.<ref name=drugs>{{cite book|author=Philip Robson|title=Forbidden Drugs|url=https://archive.org/details/forbiddendrugs0000robs|url-access=registration|year=1999|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-262955-5|page=[https://archive.org/details/forbiddendrugs0000robs/page/161 161]}}</ref> Opium is said to have been used for recreational purposes from the 14th century onwards in Muslim societies. Ottoman and European testimonies confirm that from the 16th to the 19th centuries Anatolian opium was eaten in Constantinople as much as it was exported to Europe.<ref>{{cite web |title=Why a Medieval Woman Had Lapis Lazuli Hidden in Her Teeth |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/the-woman-with-lapis-lazuli-in-her-teeth/579760/ |first=Sarah |last=Zhang |publisher=[[The Atlantic]] |date=January 9, 2019 |access-date=May 10, 2020 }}</ref> In 1573, for instance, a Venetian visitor to the Ottoman Empire observed many of the Turkish natives of Constantinople regularly drank a "certain black water made with opium" that makes them feel good, but to which they become so addicted, if they try to go without, they will "quickly die".<ref>Garzoni, Costantino. 1840 [1573]. "Relazione dell'impero Ottomano del senatore Costantino Garzoni stato all'ambascieria di Costantinopoli nel 1573". In Le relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, serie III, volume I, ed. Eugenio Albèri. Firenze: Clio, p. 398</ref> From drinking it, dervishes claimed the drugs bestowed them with visionary glimpses of future happiness.<ref>{{cite journal | author = Hamarneh Sami | year = 1972 | title = Pharmacy in medieval Islam and the history of drug addiction | journal = Medical History | volume = 16 | issue = 3| pages = 226–237 | pmc=1034978 | pmid=4595520 | doi=10.1017/s0025727300017725}}</ref> Indeed, the Ottoman Empire supplied the West with opium long before China and India.<ref>Michot, Yahya. ''L'opium et le café. Traduction d'un texte arabe anonyme et exploration de l'opiophagie ottomane'' (Beirut: Albouraq, 2008) {{ISBN|978-2-84161-397-7}}</ref>

Extensive textual and pictorial sources also show that poppy cultivation and opium consumption were widespread in [[Safavid]] Iran<ref>Matthee, Rudi. ''The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500–1900'' (Washington: Mage Publishers, 2005), pp. 97–116 {{ISBN|0-934211-64-7}}. Van de Wijngaart, G., "Trading in Dreams", in P. Faber & al. (eds.), ''Dreaming of Paradise: Islamic Art from the Collection of the Museum of Ethnology'', Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Martial & Snoeck, 1993, p. 186-191.</ref> and [[Mughal Empire|Mughal]] India.<ref>Habighorst, Ludwig V., Reichart, Peter A., Sharma, Vijay, ''Love for Pleasure: Betel, Tobacco, Wine and Drugs in Indian Miniatures'' (Koblenz: Ragaputra Edition, 2007)</ref>

==== England ====
In England, opium fulfilled a "critical" role, as it did other societies, in addressing multifactorial [[pain]], [[cough]], [[dysentery]], [[diarrhea]], as argued by [[Virginia Berridge]].<ref name=Dikotter>{{Cite book|last=Dikotter|first=Frank|title=Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China|publisher=Hurst|year=2004|isbn=978-0-226-14905-9|page=3}}</ref> A medical panacea of the 19th century, "any respectable person" could purchase a range of hashish pastes and (later) morphine with complementary injection kit.<ref name=Dikotter/>

[[Thomas De Quincey]]'s ''[[Confessions of an English Opium-Eater]]'' (1822), one of the first and most famous [[Opium and Romanticism|literary accounts of opium addiction]] written from the point of view of an addict, details the pleasures and dangers of the drug. In the book, it is not Ottoman, nor Chinese, addicts about whom he writes, but English opium users: "I question whether any Turk, of all that ever entered the paradise of opium-eaters, can have had half the pleasure I had."<ref>{{Cite book|title=Confessions of an English Opium-Eater|last=de Quincey|first=Thomas|year=1821|page=188|title-link=Confessions of an English Opium-Eater}}</ref> De Quincey writes about the great English Romantic poet [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] (1772–1834), whose "[[Kubla Khan]]" is also widely considered to be a poem of the opium experience. Coleridge began using opium in 1791 after developing [[jaundice]] and [[rheumatic fever]], and became a full addict after a severe attack of the disease in 1801, requiring 80–100 drops of [[laudanum]] daily.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Hubble D|date=October 1957|title=Opium Addiction and English Literature|journal=[[Medical History (journal)|Medical History]]|volume=1|issue=4|pages=323–35|doi=10.1017/s0025727300021505|pmc=1034310|pmid=13476921}}</ref>