Disinformation Book of Lists (4 page)

The novel closes with these paragraphs:

“The division seems rather unfair,” I remarked. “You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?”

“For me,” said Sherlock Holmes, “there still remains the cocaine-bottle.” And he stretched his long white hand up for it
.

After Doyle killed off Holmes in 1893 and brought him back eight years later for an additional two novels and 30-plus short stories, the detective is never again mentioned as using drugs.

Vin Mariani was made by steeping coca leaves in Bordeaux wine, resulting in 150 to 300 mg of cocaine per liter. Due to creator Angelo Mariani's groundbreaking publicity efforts—which included testimonials from popes, royalty, presidents, doctors, artists, athletes, and hundreds of other notables—he sold huge amounts of the stuff in France and America from the late 1860s to at least 1913. Among those who publicly toasted the cocaine-wine:

1.
Albert I, Prince of Monaco

2.
King Alphonse XIII of Spain

3.
Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi

The creator of the Statue of Liberty enthused: “Vin Mariani seems to brighten and increase all our faculties; it is very probable that had I taken it twenty years ago, the Statue of Liberty would have attained the height of several hundred meters.”

4.
Sarah Bernhardt

5.
Louis Bleriot

Bleriot was the first person to fly over an ocean in a plane, and he did it with a flask of Vin Mariani.

6.
“Buffalo Bill” Cody

7.
Thomas Edison

8.
Anatole France

9.
King George I of Greece

10.
Ulysses S. Grant

11.
Zadoc Kahn

The Grand Rabbi of France wrote: “My conversion is complete. Praise be to Mariani's wine!”

12.
Cardinal Lavigerie

“Your coca from America gave my European priests the strength to civilise Asia and Africa.”

13.
Pope Leo III

14-15.
Auguste and Louis Lumière

16.
Pope Pius X

17.
Auguste Rodin

18.
Jules Verne

19.
Queen Victoria

20.
The Shah of Persia

21.
H.G. Wells

22.
Emile Zola

23-36.
Fourteen kings and queens

37-42.
Six Presidents of France

Honorable Mention

Mariani sent a case of his coca wine to
President William McKinley
, whose secretary wrote a thank-you note saying that the wine would be used. It's not known whether McKinley and guests ever drank it.

Absinthe is a greenish alcoholic brew containing the herbs anise, which gives it a licorice-like flavor, and wormwood, which gives the drinker a buzz unlike any other liquor or drug. The decadent drink became extremely prevalent in France in the 1840s. Its popularity only climbed as decades went by and the Green Fairy—as absinthe was known—spread abroad. Around 1915, it was banned in most countries, the temperance movement having convinced people that it was even more dangerous than regular booze.

Absinthe Robette
(1896) by Privat Livemont

In recent times, absinthe has taken on a romantic, outlaw image for several reasons. First, it's rumored to drive drinkers insane. This is mostly myth, although if you drank it by the truckload, as with most alcohol, you'd probably end up a wreck. And eating handfuls of wormwood isn't advisable, so ingesting gigantic doses via absinthe isn't too smart, either. The second alluring factor is that the Green Fairy was the drink of choice for the Impressionists, Decadents, Symbolists, and other renegade artists, writers, and poets, particularly those of
fin-de-siècle
France. Finally, the fact that it really is illegal in the US and almost all of Europe makes it all the more appealing.

1.
Charles Baudelaire

2.
Aleister Crowley

3.
Edgar Degas

4.
Havelock Ellis

5.
Paul Gauguin

6.
Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway mixed absinthe with champagne for a concoction he called “death in the afternoon.”

7.
Alfred Jarry

(the playwright who created the Absurdist movement)

8.
Jack London

9.
Edouard Manet

10.
Eugene O'Neill

11.
Pablo Picasso

12.
Edgar Allen Poe

Poe sometimes drank his absinthe mixed with brandy, which must've strained the liver of even a dedicated alcoholic.

13.
Pierre Auguste-Renoir

14.
Arthur Rimbaud

15.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

16.
Mark Twain

17.
Vincent Van Gogh

18.
Paul Verlaine

19.
Walt Whitman

20.
Oscar Wilde

Wilde penned the following lines on the successive stages of absinthe inebriation, which are quoted by everyone who writes about the Green Fairy: “The first stage is like ordinary drinking, the second when you begin to see monstrous and cruel things, but if you can persevere, you will enter in upon the third stage where you see things that you want to see, wonderful, curious things.”

Honorable Mentions

Absinthe is making a comeback of sorts. At least a dozen legal brands are available in Britain and Spain.
Johnny Depp
and
Marilyn Manson
are admitted contemporary devotees.
Hunter S. Thompson
and
Eminem
are reputed to have drunk it at least once. Although not known for sure, it's likely that
Trent Reznor
imbibes, as well. He's close to Manson, and the video for Nine Inch Nails' “The Perfect Drug” prominently features the green liquor. And what to make of the photograph showing then-First Lady
Hillary Clinton
in Prague, with a glass of absinthe in front of her? Was she drinking it, or did it just happen to be there?

1.
Michael Bloomberg
, Mayor of New York City

2.
Bill Clinton
, former President of the US

3.
Howard Dean
, former Governor of Vermont

4.
John Edwards
, Senator from North Carolina

5.
Newt Gingrich
, former Speaker of the House of Representatives

6.
Al Gore
, former Vice President of the US

7.
Gary Johnson
, former Governor of New Mexico

8.
John Kerry
, Senator from Massachusetts

9.
George Pataki
, Governor of New York

10.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
, Governor of California

11.
Clarence Thomas
, Supreme Court Justice

12.
Jesse Ventura
, former Governor of Minnesota

1.
Coca-Cola

From 1886 to 1902, Coke contained coke. John Pemberton, the Atlanta pharmacist who created it, first made a different drink. French Coca Wine was a knock-off of France's insanely successful Vin Mariani that added another pick-me-up—the kola nut. Pemberton's alcoholic cocaine-caffeine brew was selling well (no surprise there), but the temperance movement pressured Atlanta into banning booze starting July 1886. Scrambling madly, Pemberton came up with a drink that kept the coca and the kola, lost the wine, and added sugar, citric acid, and carbonation. Coca-Cola was born. The company's official history denies that Coke ever contained cocaine, but the drink's drug-induced beginnings are just too well documented. For instance, an 1896 ad for Coke begins:

It seems to be a law of nature that the more valuable and efficacious a drug is, the nastier and more unpleasant its taste. It is therefore quite a triumph over nature that the Coca-Cola Co. of Atlanta, Ga., have achieved in their success in robbing both coca leaves and the kola nut of the exceedingly nauseous and disagreeable taste while retaining their wonderful medicinal properties, and the power of restoring vitality and raising the spirits of the weary and debilitated.

By the early 1900s, though, a backlash against cocaine was storming society, so the company started phasing it out in 1901, and by 1903 the drink was blow-free.

2.
Atkinson's Infants' Preservatives

3.
Battley's Drops
(a brand of laudanum)

4.
Battley's Sedative Solution
(morphine)

5.
Bullard & Shedd's Wine of Coca

6.
Café-Coca Compound

7.
Cassebeer's Coca Calisaya
(cocaine, 42 percent alcohol)

8.
Coca-Bola

During the heyday of products containing cocaine, a doctor in Philadelphia marketed a gum called Coca-Bola. Each ounce contained a whopping 710 milligrams of nose candy, meaning that each stick was infused with the equivalent of several lines of snorted coke.

9.
Cocaine Tooth Drops

10.
Dope Cola

11.
Dover's Powder
(morphine)

12.
Dr. Don's Kola

13.
Dr. Fahrney's Teething Syrup
(morphine)

14.
Dr. James' Soothing Syrup
(heroin)

15.
Dr. Moffett's Teething Powder
(opium)

16.
Dr. Tucker's Asthma Specific
(420 mg/cocaine per ounce)

17.
Fraser's Antiasthmatic Tablets
(heroin)

18.
Glyco-Heroin

19.
Godfrey's Cordial
(sweetened laudanum for babies)

20.
Koca Nola

21.
Kola-Ade

22.
Kos Kola

23.
Maltine with Coca Wine

24.
Metcalf's Coca Wine

25.
Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup
(morphine)

26.
Rococola

27.
Street's Infants' Quietness

28.
Vapor-OL Treatment No. 6
(opium)

29.
Vélo-Coca

30.
Vin Mariani
(see the second list in this chapter)

31.
Wiseola