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 Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was once one of cocaine’s leading medical advocates.
July 22nd, 2011
03:32 PM ET
Sigmund Freud's cocaine problemEditor's note: Nearly 130 years ago, cocaine was the world’s newest wonder drug - touted as a cure for everything from morphine addiction to tuberculosis. And its biggest supporter was Sigmund Freud. Dr. Sanjay Gupta has the fascinating history and what it means for us today on "Sanjay Gupta M.D." at 7:30 a.m. ET Saturday and Sunday. Whenever Big Pharma unfurls its latest “blockbuster” drug, I am carried back to the era when the biggest wonder drug on the market was cocaine. Yes, cocaine! In the early 1880s, pharmaceutical houses touted it as a cure for everything from morphine addiction and depression to dyspepsia and fatigue. It was widely available in tonics, powders, wines and soft drinks before its mass consumption created a cadre of raging addicts demanding medical attention. The evolution of the once 'wonder drug' Initially, Sigmund was eager to employ cocaine as an antidote for his best friend’s morphine addiction. Ernst Fleischl-Marxow was a brilliant physiologist who injured his thumb while dissecting a cadaver, resulting in chronic pain tamed only by large doses of morphine. Substituting one addictive drug for another was a common means of treating substance abuse in the late 19th century. What all these well-intentioned games of medical musical chairs did most reliably was to create “new and improved” addicts. Freud, in essence, transformed his highly functioning, albeit opiate-dependent, friend into an addled cocaine and morphine addict who was dead seven years later at age 45. One would think that this episode would have soured Freud on the drug. Yet like most humans ensnared by cocaine’s addictive grip, for the next 12 years, he continued to sing its praises and consumed a great deal of cocaine to quell his physical aches and mental anxieties. In a perverse way, Freud loved how cocaine made him talk endlessly about memories and experiences he previously thought were locked in his brain for no one to hear, let alone judge. Freud’s most haunting encounter with the drug occurred in 1895 after he and a colleague named Wilhelm Fleiss nearly killed a patient named Emma Eckstein with a botched operation and too much cocaine. Several nights later, he had a disturbing dream about a party where Eckstein blamed Freud for his gross negligence. Today, Eckstein is better known as “Irma," the pseudonym Freud gave her in his masterpiece, "The Interpretation of Dreams." When writing about his dream, Freud glossed over his obvious malpractice, an act that today would have resulted in disgrace, loss of medical license, lawsuits and even jail time. Instead, Freud explained the dream meant he was a caring doctor who was, if anything, overly concerned about his patient, “Irma." Like so many others, Freud suffered from the most maddening symptom of addiction: the stealthy process by which the addict’s mind conspires to convince that nothing, nothing at all, is askew or dangerous about something that most decidedly is. Indeed, if one set out to design addiction as an implacable disease, he would be hard pressed to come up with a more diabolical symptom than denial, the need to lead a double life - feeding the addiction in private while struggling to starve, or at least conceal, it in public for long periods of time. Until, that is, the addiction completely takes over with disastrous results and public masquerade is no longer possible. One assumes that his clinical experiences with Eckstein, if not Fleischl-Marxow, taught him that cocaine was far too dangerous for any therapeutic application. In the fall of 1896, the day after his father’s funeral, Freud claimed to have put his “cocaine brush” aside. No documentary evidence exists to refute his testimony. But for the remaining days of his life, Freud had far greater difficulty in fully comprehending the dangerous consequences of his substance abuse. He decidedly, and repeatedly, misinterpreted his famous dream of cocaine. Instead, he chose to elaborate a far more flattering and positive analysis that epitomizes an addiction’s power of subterfuge. The man who invented psychoanalysis, a revolutionary pursuit for self-truth, succumbed to the same “big lie” most every practicing addict tells himself every day. Dr. Howard Markel, a professor of the history of medicine at the University of Michigan, is the author of "An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine" (Pantheon). Follow @CNNHealth on Twitter Watch Sanjay Gupta MD Saturday at 4:30pm and Sunday at 7:30am ET. For the latest from Sanjay Gupta MD click here.
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Get a behind-the-scenes look at the latest stories from CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen and the CNN Medical Unit producers. They'll share news and views on health and medical trends - info that will help you take better care of yourself and the people you love. Recent Comments
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Summary of article – Sigmund Freud was nothing but a worthless drug addict.
Nice.
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The history of drug abuse and addiction is quite interesting. Fortunately today we live in an age when much more is understood about the science of addiction and many treatment facilities exist to help those who have acknowledged their own drug addiction and are seeking recovery from it.
I find it ironic that Carl Jung, a contemporary of Freud was in an oblique way, the father of modern day 12 step programs. In the book Alcoholics Anonymous, Jung is referred to in the book as the "great swiss psychiatrist" and an account is given concerning Jung's meeting with Rowland Hazard, who taking Jung's advice sought a spiritual experience in order to re arrange his thinking.
Jung told Hazard that he could no longer work with him, because Jung's methods were not producing the necessary spiritual experience needed to overcome an addiction. Leaving Jung a defeated man, beyond human aid, Hazard discovered the Oxford Group and got sober!
At that time the Oxford Group had a 4-step recovery process known as "The Four Absolutes", which evolved later into a six, and then 12 Step program, discovered by AA founder Bill Wilson. Biil Wilson was a drunk who was approached by life long friend and former drinking companion Ebby Thatcher, who became sober after talking with Hazard, also a life long friend.
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Now that Dexatrim which is readily available at major drug stores can be considered synthetic, I highly doubt regular dosage and accurate ingredients are still a problem. I believe once Freund found that cocaine was addictive, he quit putting it his high end water and still had the audacity to prescribe the substance to women going through what was then called hysteria.
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I guess the reason Freud never really decisively stated it was futile, or A death sentence is the pure stuff that he was doing was possibly safe to intake whereas now it would kill you. What would have been a scuba tank for him as in quality would be to average Joe back then just a snorkel in quality.