To understand how Pablo flourished as a trafficker, it's necessary to look at the history of cocaine. For thousands of years, the indigenous people of South America have chewed coca leaves, just like the British enjoy drinking tea. A coca leaf in the mouth combined with a small amount of an alkaline substance is sucked for up to forty-five minutes. The stimulant effect is similar to a boost of energy from coffee. Ancient Andean tribes cherished the coca leaf as a gift from the gods, reserving its use for royalty and high priests. Over time, the masses discovered that it helped them to suppress appetite, increase stamina and overcome altitude fatigue in the Andes Mountains. It was thought to cure everything from stomach complaints to snow blindness. The Incas used it as an anaesthetic for primitive brain surgery performed on injured warriors.
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In the nineteenth century, European chemists focussed on coca leaves in the hope of developing new drugs. Using leaves imported to Germany, Albert Niemann extracted the primary alkaloid in 1859 and named the crystalline substance cocaine. Having stripped the leaf of its moderating substance he'd unwittingly unleashed an addictive drug.
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In 1863, cocaine made its way to America as an anonymous ingredient in Vin Mariani, a tonic wine named after the Corsican chemist behind the concoction. It consisted of ground-up coca leaves with red Bordeaux wine, at the rate of six milligrams of coca per ounce of wine. The label claimed it, "Fortifies Strengthens Stimulates & Refreshes the Body & Brain. Hastens Convalescence especially after Influenza." The recommended dose was two to three glassfuls per day, taken before or after meals, and half of that for children.
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Helped along by Vin Marian's advertising genius, the wine became a worldwide sensation. He had 3,000 physicians endorse it, and countless monarchs, politicians, actors, writers and religious leaders, including Queen Victoria, Thomas Edison, Alexander Dumas, Emile Zola and President William McKinley. It was said that Pope Leo XIII never left the Vatican without a flask of Vin Mariani under his
robes, and that he'd awarded Vin Mariani a gold medal. When Ulysses Grant was dying from throat cancer, struggling to write his memoirs, Mark Twain sent him Vin Mariani, which revived him sufficiently for him to pick up his fountain pen.
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An American pharmacist, John Pemberton, made a non-alcoholic health drink, a mineral-water beverage laced with cocaine, which soft-ened his morphine addiction. It became so popular that Pemberton received an offer of $2,300 from Asa Candler for the rights and recipe. Thirty-eight years later, Candler's $2,300 investment was worth $50 million. The name of the health drink was Coca-Cola. It was advertised as a tonic that gave you energy and cured headaches. People would enter a drugstore, sit on a high stool, hand over a couple of pennies and receive a glass of Coca-Cola. Popular amongst members of the temperance movement, it pepped them up to protest against alcohol.
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Viewed as a miracle cure, cocaine Was widely adopted in self-administered medicines. The Hay Fever Association latched onto cocaine because it constricted blood vessels. Many asthma preparations contained coca or cocaine. By 1890, it was everywhere, with quacks claiming it cured everything from impotence to baldness and dandruff. As it boosted work performance, it was used by all sections of society, ranging from baseball players to dockworkers. White business owners doled it out to black employees, to squeeze more work out of them. An anti-opium crusader, Dr Hamilton Wright, advocated its distribution to black dockworkers and labourers to increase their productivity. In literature, it was heralded by Sherlock Holmes, who eagerly injected it every day, as described in The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle:
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Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long white fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his shirt cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.
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"Which is it today," I asked, "morphine or cocaine?"
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He raised his eyes languidly from the old black letter volume which he had opened.
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"It is cocaine," he said, "a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?"
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Cocaine was used to treat Civil War veterans addicted to morphine and alcohol. This did not go unnoticed by an Austrian neurologist called Sigmund Freud.
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Born in 1856 in the Moravian town of Pribor now a historic town in the Czech Republic - Freud developed an unnatural interest in reading at an early age. He stacked his bedroom with books, where he remained cloistered even during mealtimes. In 1873, he joined the medical faculty at the University of Vienna, where his studies included physiology, philosophy and zoology. He dissected hundreds of male eels in a quest to find their genitals. In 1882, he started work at the Vienna General Hospital, where his research included cerebral anatomy. He also fell in love with Martha, a petite and intelligent friend of his sisters. Two months later they were engaged. Her family responded by sending her to live near Hamburg. On April 21, 1884, Freud wrote to Martha:
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I have been reading about cocaine, the essential constituent of coca leaves which some Indian tribes chew to enable them to resist privations and hardships. A German has been employing it with soldiers and has reported that it increases their energy and capacity to endure. I am procuring some myself and will try it with cases of heart disease and also of nervous exhaustion, particularly in the miserable condition after the withdrawal of morphism Perhaps others are working at it; perhaps nothing will come of it. But I shall certainly try it, and you know that when one perseveres, sooner or later one succeeds. We do not need more than one such lucky hit to be able to think of setting up house. But don't be too sure that it must succeed this time. You know, the temperament of an investigator needs two fundamental qualities: he must be sanguine in the attempt, and critical in the work.
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Hoping to make a breakthrough in medicine to generate the resources to marry Martha, Freud purchased a gram of cocaine from a pharmacy, supplied by Merck of Germany. He tried one twentieth himself. With his mood elevated and appetite suppressed, he wondered about its application for depression and stomach problems. His enthusiasm for cocaine increased after it provided relief for a patient suffering from gastritis. Freud ordered more, which he shared with his friends, associates and Martha, "to make her strong and give her cheeks a red colour." Using it throughout the day, he documented its effects, including his shifts in emotion, body temperature and muscular strength. Pining for Martha, who he hadn't seen in over a year, Freud experienced
depression, which he increasingly self-medicated with cocaine. High on the substance, he wrote to Martha in the summer of 1884:
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