Freud and cocaine
Freud was an early user and proponent of
cocaine as a stimulant as well as
analgesic. He wrote several articles on the
antidepressant qualities of the drug and he was influenced by his friend and confidant
Wilhelm Fliess, who recommended cocaine for the treatment of the "nasal reflex neurosis." Fliess operated on Freud and a number of Freud's patients whom he believed to be suffering from the disorder, including
Emma Eckstein, whose surgery proved disastrous.[
citation needed].
Freud felt that cocaine would work as a panacea for many disorders and wrote a well-received paper, "On Coca," explaining its virtues. He prescribed it to his friend
Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow to help him overcome a morphine
addiction he had acquired while treating a disease of the nervous system.[
citation needed] Freud also recommended it to many of his close family and friends. He narrowly missed out on obtaining
scientific priority for discovering cocaine's
anesthetic properties (of which Freud was aware but on which he had not written extensively), after
Karl Koller, a colleague of Freud's in Vienna, presented a report to a medical society in 1884 outlining the ways in which cocaine could be used for delicate
eye surgery. Freud was bruised by this, especially because this would turn out to be one of the few safe uses of cocaine, as reports of addiction and overdose began to filter in from many places in the world. Freud's medical reputation became somewhat tarnished because of this early ambition. Furthermore, Freud's friend Fleischl-Marxow developed an acute case of "cocaine psychosis" as a result of Freud's prescriptions and died a few years later. Freud felt great regret over these events, which later biographers have dubbed "The Cocaine Incident."[
citation needed] However, he managed to move on, and even continued to use cocaine.
Jurgen von Scheidt speculated that most of Freud's psychoanalytical theory was a byproduct of his
cocaine use.
I disagree with the last sentence, I think he was a brilliant man, but to use that quote by him to justify Cocaine as an ok drug is kind of insane.