tell me something about the origion of opium?

Answer 1

History of Opium

http://opioids.com/timeline/index.html

Hope that helps...

Answer 2

Raw opium is the dried sap that collects on the surface of a poppy pod when the pod is cut or otherwise injured. It has been used as a pain reducer and to induce sleep for millennia.

As to mythic/folkloric background, it is associated with Demeter, who was given a tea of poppy heads so she could rest from searching for her daughter Persephone, who had been abducted by Pluto.

As to who first used it and where, the earliest written record is from Sumer, some 4000 years ago.

Answer 3

Opium comes from the seeds of the opium poppy. The family of chemicals called "opiates" include the class A drug heroin, and the drug codeine - often used in painkillers.

Answer 4

It's a base made of the seeds of a specific poppy flower.
( we call it sleep-poppies, don't know what the right therm
in English is) used in Asia. It's highly addictive. But also it's also the source for the whole group of morphine, the most efficient painkillers still on the market ( very addictive as well).

Answer 5

It's made from poppies. Morphine and Diamorphine (aka Heroin) are derived from it.

Answer 6

The image of the poppy capsule was an attribute of deities, long before opium was extracted from its milky latex. At the Metropolitan Museum's Assyrian relief gallery, a winged deity in a bas-relief from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud, dedicated in 879 BC, bears a bouquet of poppy capsules on long stems, described by the museum as "pomegranates".[citation needed]

In De Medicina (ca. 30 AD), Aulus Cornelius Celsus detailed many uses for "poppy tears", as an emollient for painful joints and anal fissures, in anodynes (pills promoting relief of pain through sleep), in antidotes for poisoning (including the Mithridatium), for use in colic and to promote micturation. [6] He also recommended the juice of boiled poppy heads for procuring sleep, treating earaches, intestinal gripings, inflammation of the womb, and to reduce the flow of phlegm into the eyes. However, Celsus did not treat the poppy as uniquely powerful, but described it as one of many emollient herbs and minerals, used as an ingredient in some formulations for pain but not others.
Until the practice of smoking was introduced to Europe and Asia after tobacco smoking in the Americas was observed and copied, opium was mostly either eaten or drunk. An early form of opium smoking involved the consumption of madak, a blend of tobacco and opium that became common in Asia in the 17th and 18th centuries. By the 19th century, in part because of a ban on madak in China, smoking of pure opium became more common. By this time, opium use had become widespread across much of the world, although consumption patterns and routes of administration varied.

Beginning with territorial conquest in India (in 1757), the British East India Company pursued a monopoly on opium production and export in India. This was met with varying degrees of success, but had a serious impact on the peasant cultivators (ryots) who were often coerced or offered cash advances on their crops to encourage cultivation. This was something that was not done for any other crops, save for indigo. The product was sold by the chest in auctions in Calcutta and then smuggled into China. The British East India Company used the profit to purchase teas which were in high demand in Britain.

Due to the growing British demand for Chinese tea, and the Chinese refusal to accept payment other than silver bullion, the British sought to substitute another commodity for which China was not self sufficient to alleviate the silver drain, which was beginning to cause a burden on the British economy. Opium was successfully used by the British traders to replace silver in exchange for Chinese tea for a period of decades. Many Chinese became addicted to opium, wreaking havoc among much of China's population. In response, the Imperial Qing Dynasty halted the import of opium, demanding silver be traded instead. This response led to the Opium Wars, the British not willing to replace the cheap opium with costly silver. The first opium war led to Britain seizing Hong Kong and to what the Chinese term the "century of shame". This illegal trade became one of the world's most valuable single commodity trades. Many large American fortunes were built in the opium trade, including those of John Jacob Astor (partially and briefly), John Kerry (from his grandfather, James Grant Forbes), and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (from his grandfather).

Opium consumption throughout nineteenth-century Britain was common, since it could be obtained legally for the purpose of killing pain. Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is one of the first literary accounts of opium addiction written from the point of view of an addict. De Quincey writes about the great English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another famous literary opium addict. Towards the end of the century, references to opium and opium addiction abound in English literature, as can be seen, for example, in the opening few paragraphs of Charles Dickens's unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Oscar Wilde's only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short-story "The Man with the Twisted Lip" offer further examples.

Later, opium smoking became associated with immigrant Chinese communities around the world, with "opium dens" being run by Lascars and becoming notorious fixtures of many Chinatowns. As is evident from, for example, the above mentioned Sherlock Holmes story, while such places were associated with crime, the smoking of opium in itself was not illegal. (In the story, officers of the 1890s London police enter into an opium den to investigate another issue, and the owner feels no need to hide from them his drug-dealing activities).


[edit] Modern prohibition
The Qing Dynasty officially prohibited the import of Opium at least in 1729 by Emperor Yongzheng, but failed to win the Opium wars which lead to spate of Opium and other drugs.

There were no legal restrictions on the importation or use of opium in the United States until a San Francisco, California ordinance which banned the smoking of opium in opium dens in 1875. The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909 prohibited its importation. Other important legislation included the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. Before this time, medicines often contained opium without any warning label. U.S president William Henry Harrison was treated with opium in 1841. Today, there are numerous national and international laws governing the production and distribution of opium derived substances. In particular, morphine Article 23 of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs requires opium-producing nations to designate a government agency to take physical possession of licit opium crops as soon as possible after harvest and conduct all wholesaling and exporting through that agency. Opium's pharmaceutical use is strictly controlled worldwide and non-pharmaceutical uses are generally prohibited.

Opium poppies are popular and attractive garden plants, whose flowers vary greatly in colour, size and form. A modest amount of domestic cultivation in private gardens is not usually subject to legal controls. The dried seed cases are often used for decorations, and the small seeds themselves—which contain negligible amounts of any opioid alkaloids—are a common and flavoursome topping for breads and cakes.


[edit] Medicinal uses
Opium has been a major item of trade for centuries, and has long been used as a painkiller and sedative. Many patent medicines of the 19th century were based around laudanum (known as "tincture of opium", a solution of opium in ethyl alcohol). As a result of this substance being branded a miracle cure for many common illnesses (ranging from colds to alcoholism), the substance developed a very large number of addicts at the time. Fortunately for these addicts, they did not lose their jobs or much of their respectability as a result of this, and an opium addiction was considered more similar to a gambling or alcohol addiction.[citation needed] Also, since a man could remain an opium addict on 5 cents a day, it did not cause undue financial strain, and therefore no damage to the person was caused that one living under an 'addict' lifestyle in the modern sense would risk suffering.[citation needed] Tincture of opium is prescribed in modern times, among other reasons, for ongoing, severe diarrhea caused, for example, by the creation of an ileostomy. A 10% tincture of opium solution (10% opium, 90% ethyl alcohol) taken 30 minutes prior to meals will significantly slow intestinal motility, giving the intestines greater time to absorb fluid in the stool.


[edit] Literature
There is a rich and longstanding literature by and about opium users. Perhaps the most famous work of this kind is Thomas De Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," a work which details both the pleasures and the dangers of the drug. Other works from nineteenth century Britain include "The Lotus-Eaters" by Alfred Lord Tennyson and (some would argue) "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti[citation needed], which depicts thinly-veiled experiences of addiction and withdrawal. Oftentimes, characters in Edgar Allan Poe works are opium users (see "The Oval Portrait"), and sometimes the usage of drugs and its corresponding hallucinations or experiences are depicted. Poe himself is not believed to have used opium. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan" is also widely considered to be a poem of the opium experience. In 1957 the physician Douglas Hubble wrote an article called "Opium Addiction and English Literature" that chronicles the use of opium by prominent English writers, and its influence on their works [7]. The sleep-inducing properties of opium are presented in the book and subsequent movie, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. At one point in the story, Dorothy and her friends are drawn by the wicked witch into a field of poppies, in which they fall asleep. In the Sherlock Holmes short story The Man with the Twisted Lip, Holmes visits an opium den in order to pursue his investigations, but his lucidity upon shedding his disguise outside the den suggests that he did not partake of the drug. Jack Black's memoir You Can't Win chronicles one man's experience both as an onlooker in the opium dens of San Francisco, and later as a "hop fiend" himself. In the House of the Scorpions, Mexico becomes a place where Opium is planted. Oscar Wilde also wrote of opium use in The Picture of Dorian Gray when the main character visits a den to alleviate his chronic thinking and to add to the dark reputation of the lead character develops. Also, in the The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, one of the main characters, Lotus, is addicted to opium and becomes fat.