Where did this term come from? The earliest mention I can find was Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821 ) an autobiographical account written by Thomas de Quincey. This mention was in wikipedia and at some other sources.
Did Quincey coin this phrase, or did it rise out of the opium dens of China and the New World (San Francisco)? Or where?
there were opium dens in 19th century London, opened by Chinese or Indian immigrants. One such is mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes story “The Man with the Twisted Lip”.
Since some addicts did in fact eat opium as opposed to smoking it, why not call them “eaters”?
Cited back to at least 1785.
I suspect that De Quincey was consciously playing on the expression “lotus eater,” which goes back to the Odyssey. Odysseus visits the land of the lotus eaters who eat the plant, and consequently live in a drugged haze. I don’t know whether the Homeric “lotus” was really the opium poppy (they do naturally grow in what is now Turkey, I believe), but its effects seem to have been similar.
An educated 19th century Englishman like De Quincey would certainly have known his Homer.
I don’t know, but I must stop by here to recommend the wonderfully entertaining Poppies: Odyssey of an Opium Eater. Give it to your mom for Christmas, get a copy for your local clergyman, and be sure to read it yourself. You’ll never want to become an opium eater after reading it (if you value the ability to make bowel movements, that is).
This question brought to mind the opening chapters of The Golden Compass (AKA Northern Lights), the first book in Philip Pullman’s excellent His Dark Materials trilogy. In one passage, the book describes a group of alternate-universe Oxford scholars serving poppy heads fried in butter because it “clarified the mind and stimulated the tongue.” I assumed the poppy heads were meant to be eaten, but I never found any other references to eating fried poppies. I think I even asked about it here.
BTW, I just spent an hour or so reading a really amazing article on the blurry legalities surrounding poppy cultivation: Opium Made Easy by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dillema. Apparently the difference between a legal poppy and an illegal one in your garden depends entirely on whether you know what you can do with it!
Seriously, it is a frightening article. All commercially available poppy seeds and plants are varieties of Papaver somniferum, but many are sold under different botanical names such as Papaver paeoniflorum and P. rhoeas (names which actually refer to specific cultivars of the same species as P. somniferum). Knowingly growing P. somniferum is a felony, but the same DEA agent spearheading a crackdown on home poppy cultivation will tell you to grow the botanically identical P. giganteum, because as long as you don’t know it’s the same species (and one might hope the leading DEA officer on the poppy task force does know) you’re free and clear. Unless you piss the wrong person off, of course, or read the wrong library book. :eek:
They’re a familiar sight in an English garden. We put the seeds on bread rolls.
Papaver rhoes is not a cultivar of P somniferum. It is a completely different species.
I’m not sure if it’s illegal to grow P. somniferum anyway. I’ve seen it growing in the Dallas Arboretum and Botanic Garden, and in fact, one of my neighbors has it growing in his front yard.
Poppy seeds, as on bagels, will show a tickle for opiates on a piss test.
Sorry, you’re correct. I misread the article. Papaver paeoniflorum is identical to P. Somniferum; P. rhoes is not (although the article doesn’t specify this). One of the points the article makes is that it is very confusing, since there is no clear distinction between opium poppies and non-opium poppies, and seed companies and florists sell botanically identical poppies under a variety of names and identifiers.
Did you read the article? Or Wikipedia? In fact, you can see here that opium poppies are classified as a Schedule II narcotic, alongside PCP and cocaine. Yes, the same ones that gardeners and flower shops grow and display. The same ones at the Dallas Arboretum.
Tell your neighbor not to piss you off, because you could easily destroy his life. Read the article.
I don’t have a cite, but remember reading some article about opium poppies. A DEA officer was quoted to the effect that “they wouldn’t even go around the corner” [to prosecute someone for a couple of poppy plants].
sigh Did you read the article either?
That’s pretty much what the DEA says to Michael Pollan. At the same time that they are pursuing a case against one of Pollan’s acquaintances for having store-bought poppies in his house and sending threatening letters to florists’ associations and seed catalog publishers.
The entire point of the article is that they generally don’t enforce the laws against poppy growing, but can and do when a busy-body neighbor or houseguest complains or when an overzealous DEA agent decides he doesn’t like something you’ve published.
If your neighbor pisses you off and you lie to the DEA and say that she is growing marijuana in her closet, there is a good chance DEA will come bust up your neighbor’s house, dig through her garden, make threatening noises at her, and then leave when they don’t find anything. They may then come and make threatening noises at you over false reporting.
If you instead say truthfully that your neighbor is growing poppies and further claim falsely that she is growing them to make opium tea for her rheumatism and showing others how to do the same, then the DEA will very possibly bust up her house, confiscate her ornamental poppies, seize her house or encourage her landlord to evict her, file charges against her, and ruin her life forever. If any of her gardening books make mention of the fact that she could extract opium from her flowers, she may even be convicted of manufacturing drugs.
This is pretty much exactly what happened to the man Michael Pollen met. He got in an argument with a house guest, who told the feds that the man had a drug lab. What he had was a few dried poppy heads from a florist and a book he had written about how to produce opium. No actual opium, no poppies with slits for extracting the opium, no evidence of harvesting them, just some dried flowers that most florists sell for making dried arrangements and a book. The book was evidence that he knew that the poppies you buy from floral shops are opium poppies, and that made possessing them a crime.
Seriously, read the fucking article.
We Americans are also no strangers to poppy seeds, which can be bought from the grocery store spice rack, just like poppyseed bagels.
I have read the article.
[Mod hat on]
You tone down the snark.
[/MHO]
Exactly. I don’t like the intrusive nature of these laws any more than you apparently do, but if a violator gets in bad with someone else who knows about it, and is the sort of person who likes to meddle and make trouble, the laws provide an obvious way of exacting revenge. However, my point stands that if you don’t aggravate your neighbors or advertise your activities, it’s very unlikely they’ll come after you.
At least it’s nice to hear they don’t take false reports too well.
This sort of bullshit is why we have hydroponics. 
You have the same problem with shrooms - you can buy the spores (at least that used to be true, not sure about now), but you can’t grow them.
Or nitrous. You can buy nitrous for whipped cream (lots and lots of whipped cream), but you can’t inhale.
The thing is, that you can buy powdered Mimosa root that has a high concentration of DMT and extract it very easily. There are even varieties of wild grass that can be used. All legal until you do the extraction.
And to cap things off, have a taste for some scheduled drug? Just order from overseas. If it gets stopped at customs, the worst that happens is they send you a letter saying that your (allegedly yours - of course) shipment was seized. Oops. Time to reorder.
In that case we agree, but it wasn’t at all clear that that was the point you were making. And it’s not just the intrusive nature of the laws I don’t like but the way they can be used to trap people and the way they make knowledge a crime. You can’t grow cannabis plants and claim that you didn’t know that they were the same variety you could smoke, but the DEA will tell you you can grow P. giganteum because you can’t make opium from it, and then arrest you if you find out that you can make opium out of it. Even if you don’t actually make opium from it, but merely write something indicating that you know it is possible.
I apologize if I came off too strong, but surely you can see why I thought you hadn’t read the article.
A spin-off question - why did opium smokers lay on their side?
I assume for the same reason heroin users lay on their side- so they don’t choke if they vomit in their drugged sleep.
Because the method requires it.
