# Sherlock Holmes movie **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 19, 2009, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sherlock-holmes-movie/496984 "2009-05-19T17:26:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sherlock-holmes-movie/496984/61 "2009-05-27T05:42:12Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > I wonder if they’ll mention his cocaine habit. Wasn’t he doing cocaine in the scene where Watson mentions all of Holmes’ flaws that he never mentions? ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sherlock-holmes-movie/496984/62 "2009-05-27T14:09:06Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > :: scribbles note on list :: > > That’s one, **Bmalion**. You get three. I’ve still got two left? Cool! ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sherlock-holmes-movie/496984/63 "2009-05-27T14:53:39Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > Wasn’t he doing cocaine in the scene where Watson mentions all of Holmes’ flaws that he never mentions? It looked like snuff to me. But maybe it was coke, I missed it on the first viewing. Tony Stark, Sherlock Holmes, I wonder if Robert Downey is going to get typecast playing action heroes with substance abuse problems. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sherlock-holmes-movie/496984/64 "2009-05-27T17:26:04Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > It looked like snuff to me. But maybe it was coke, I missed it on the first viewing. Well, if it was coke then they’re doing it wrong for the Holmes canon (again–not like they seem to care too much in this film). Holmes didn’t sniff cocaine, he injected it–in the infamous “seven percent solution.” ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sherlock-holmes-movie/496984/65 "2009-05-27T17:36:50Z")
> [@winterhawk11](#): > > Well, if it was coke then they’re doing it wrong for the Holmes canon (again–not like they seem to care too much in this film). Holmes didn’t sniff cocaine, he injected it–in the infamous “seven percent solution.” _The Seven Percent Solution_ isn’t Holmes canon, either, as far as I’m aware. The novel of that name was written in the '70s, and the idea that Holmes used cocaine was original with that book. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sherlock-holmes-movie/496984/66 "2009-05-27T17:39:15Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > _The Seven Percent Solution_ isn’t Holmes canon, either, as far as I’m aware. The novel of that name was written in the '70s, and the idea that Holmes used cocaine was original with that book. Not so. Holmes used cocaine in the original stories written by Conan Doyle. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sherlock-holmes-movie/496984/67 "2009-05-27T17:44:11Z")
Did he? My mistake, then. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sherlock-holmes-movie/496984/68 "2009-05-27T17:45:28Z")
… notably in The Sign of Four and A Scandal in Bohemia. Unusually for the time, Watson warned of the dangers of the habit. > **[Sherlock Holmes's Cocaine Habit](http://bakerstreetdozen.com/coca.html)** From The Sign of Four: > [@](#): > > But consider! Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process, which involves increased tissue change, and may at least leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another, but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable” ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sherlock-holmes-movie/496984/69 "2009-05-27T20:10:01Z")
> [@](#): > > The Seven Percent Solution isn’t Holmes canon, either, as far as I’m aware. The novel of that name was written in the '70s, and the idea that Holmes used cocaine was original with that book. As noted already, Doyle had Holmes using cocaine – and Doyle has Holmes note that it was “a seven per cent solution”, whence the title of Nicholas Meyer’s book. Meyer’s book doesn’t even make sense unless you realize that the canonical Holmes originally was an abuser of drugs (others besides cocaine – morphine, too, and almoast certainly opium), and that in the later books he had reformed. Doyle never explained how – that’s the point of Meyer’s story. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sherlock-holmes-movie/496984.md?page=3)