Author: Alexandra Rusu
During the interwar, the people of Bucharest lived every moment with intensity. Caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, they sometimes forgot to separate the good from the evil. In the gallery of self-imposed evil, we distinguish the consumption of psychotropic substances, a practice associated with the tensions and mirages of the capital city. Both in terms of drug use and other socio-cultural realities, interwar Bucharest was a laboratory of experiments, announcing the “new age.”
Among the primary causes of drug use, especially those of therapeutic origin, such as morphine or opiates, was the prolonged exposure to these substances during medical treatments. During the First World War, in Romanian hospitals, morphine and other narcotics were used, both for anesthesia and pain relief. Some patients cross the line between the benign remedy and the dangerous drug, addiction sets in and continues after discharge. At the same time, as Andrei Oișteanu points out, “some habits, more or less new, were introduced in Romania through the presence of many officers from foreign armies,” setting a trend among the Bucharest elite, which gradually extended to other social strata. The world of narcotics and drug addicts becomes inspiration for renowned writers, their works developing themes such as drug smuggling, the stereotypical image of the “artificial paradise,” suicide by overdose or the metaphor of the narcotic lover: Panait Istrati (Chira Chiralina, 1923), Cezar Petrescu ( Calea Victoriei, 1930), Mateiu Caragiale (Craii de Curtea-veche, 1929), Sanda Movilă (Disfigurations, 1935), Max Blecher (Scarred Hearts, 1937), Henriette Yvonne Stahl (Between Day and Night, 1942), Ioana Postelnicu ( Bogdana, 1939), etc. The use of therapeutic drugs was hardly curbed by law enforcement because the practice was supported by a network of pharmacists and doctors- “insiders” from whom the user could easily obtained the prescription or drug.
Among the addictions, “opium drunkenness” (morphine) was the most common, the worrying situation coming to the attention of the authorities and the media. Newspapers were constantly reporting on the police fight againts traffickers. Unfortunately, the raids failed to stop the spread of drugs, making them even more expensive.
In several issues of the Romanian Illustration magazine, from June 1931, Ion Tic writes a report dedicated to the “morphine addicts of the capital,” infiltrating the circles of morphine users. Thus, he wanted to show young people “the danger that hides under the most innocent pleasures.” From his conversation with a victim of the “artificial paradise” we find out about the isolation and financial problems she was facing, the physical and mental misery or the difficulties of procuring morphine on the black market. Promising the young woman the next dose, he also gets a description of the “cold drunkenness” hours: “Between the dream that prepares you such a terrible grave and life with its endless tumult and pain, there is aa apathy in which you lay hours with a heavy head, as after a terrible drunkenness, with torn, crushed nerves, with blinded eyes, without a bit of will, judgment, human ambitions – a kind of living corpse, between life and death. In the end, when you come to your senses, you are tired of everyone and everything, ashamed of yourself, of the body you are mocking; you would like to escape, to run away, to face the danger, but you feel that a demonic power controls you beyond your will, defeated…”
The suffering of withdrawal appears in the work of the writer Henriette Yvonne Stahl, through the voice of the (real) character Zoe Mihalcea-Vrânceanu, a young morphine addict from Bucharest in the 1920s: “If you tried morphine just once, the lack of it is so excruciating, that no one could endure that slow, abject death. Every minute has its torment. You feel how the heart beats less and less, how the air enters the lungs with difficulty, how the blood becomes heavy with poison without being able to stop. A painful dizziness that shakes the whole world, a rush of blood that deafens you, your eyes become cloudy, you can no longer see. A sticky sweat, a thick urine…, an intolerable pain in the whole body…” (Between Day and Night, 1942)
Another substance with narcotic properties popular in interwar Bucharest was ether (diethyl ether). Originally used as a general anesthetic, ether consumption caused a form of drug addiction called etheromania, which consisted of repeatedly consuming increasing amounts of ether in order to achieve a state of psychic excitement. The users came from different socio-professional backgrounds: landlords, artists, music-hall artists, waiters, piccolos, dressers, etc. “The effect of ether intoxication is different, depending on the dose inhaled or drunk: from the superficial stimulating effect, which causes clairvoyant optimism, to the depth of total narcosis.” Since addiction followed you everywhere, gentlemen had invented ingenious devices to secure their doses under any circumstances. “The tie pin is connected by a thin rubber tube to a bladder full of ether, which he keeps in his trouser pocket. At the slightest pressure, the needle sprays fine drops of ether, which the etherman inhales.” On the other hand, the ladies- if they didn’t drink ether champagne or “inhale the vapors of tampons soaked with this medicine”-preferred the discreet ether candies.
Almost as much as pain, the pursuit of pleasure can trigger and sustain drug use. Narcotics, such as cocaine, begin to spread in prostitution circles-thus the capital of drugs overlaps with that of paid sex, with pimps becoming increasingly interested in drug trafficking. Through the vector of prostitution, the city builds a new drug market, especially in the secret clubs, where both narcotics and orgies were consumed: “a house on Batiște Street, another on Ștefan cel Mare Road, the third at the end of Izvor Street and finally one, in the center of the Capital, behind a well-known nightclub…”
Moreover, among the social and artistic elite there was a category of drug addicts, for whom using drugs was a sophisticated pleasure, inherent to the status. The typology portrayed “a Bucharestian par excellence, rebellious and casual, eager for novelties and disdainful of common delights”.
Interwar people knew their evils, identifyed and took action against them. In 1928, against the background of the increase in narcotic consumption, the “Law for combating the abuse of narcotic drugs” was promulgated (Law no. 58). A few years later, by High Royal Decree no. 2111 (July 1933), the “Regulation of the state monopoly of narcotics” was approved. The regulation identifies all natural and synthetic products with narcotic content and grants the Romanian state a monopoly on the “import, storage, manufacture, debiting, circulation and trade throughout the country of all narcotic products and substances”, making narcophilia illegal.
Text: Alexandra Rusu
Photos:
1. „Morphine user R: her debut in the deceiving pleasure paradise”. Ilustrațiunea română, No.23 (Year III), June 3, 1931.
2. “Between dream and life, Mrs. W.M. finds the struggle of remorse and torments that make life hell on earth”, “In the grip of the destructive vice, the morphine addict emptied the deluding poison-a terrible picture of physical and moral degradation”. Ilustrațiunea română, No.24 (Year III), June 10, 1931.
3. “After enjoying the ‘artificial paradise’, cocaine addict Marta S. looks at her decomposed face in horror”. Ilustrațiunea română, No.25 (Year III), June 17, 1931.
Bibliography:
Andrei Oișteanu, Narcotice în cultura română, Polirom, București, 2019.
Ilustrațiunea română, Nr.23 (Anul III), 3 iunie 1931.
Ilustrațiunea română, Nr.24 (Anul III), 10 iunie 1931.
Ilustrațiunea română, Nr.25 (Anul III), 17 iunie 1931.
