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  • Article

Booze and bad behaviour

Our love of alcohol is like a party that’s lasted nine centuries. But there are signs that the demon drink is losing its appeal.

  • Article

Inhaling happiness and gasping for a high

The rapid, short-lived high we get from whippets, reefers and vapes can be accompanied by long-term health consequences. The search is on for safer ways to get stoned.

  • Article

Tripping for spiritualism and science

Getting high in the name of religion or creativity has been practised for centuries. Now it seems hallucinogenics could help treat mental illnesses too.

  • Article

Deadly doses and the hardest of hard drugs

The invention of the modern hypodermic syringe meant we could get high – or accidentally die – faster than before. Find out how this medical breakthrough was adapted for deadly uses.

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Images

  • An intoxicated man drinking beer; advertising Blauwe Week against alcohol. Lithograph (?), 1936, after A. van Dobbenburgh, 1935.
  • Professor Yandell Henderson testifying before a U.S. Senate subcommittee that beers containing 3-4% alcohol by volume were not intoxicating. Photograph, 1932.
  • Head of an intoxicated man raging against his wife, showing a reason for a week of opposition to alcohol. Lithograph by K. Kollwitz, 1923.
  • A naked man with motor neuron disease, walking. Collotype after Eadweard Muybridge, 1887.
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