I really hate the sentiment that you must be under the influence of something to reach a certain level of creativity. Some artists have found success with this and that's fine, but it is not a requirement. Not even for the most surreal and otherworldly art.
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Hemp was very common back then for many uses. Cannabis does not automatically mean THC.
It does mean that though, even low potency stuff like the plants they grow specifically to make rope still have varying levels of cannabinoids in them including THC, also that's literally the only reason to bother smoking it, might as well pack a bowl with hay otherwise
Well, in the context of a clay pipe, the evidence suggest mary Jane, not hemp cloth.
Ignoramus here: what's the difference?
The cannabis plant when left to itself doesn't create much THC (which is what gets you high), but it is very useful for making rope and clothing, as well as oil and other products. Only when you make sure that you only have female plants (and take care of them in a certain way) do they produce lots of THC.
So just because the plant is growing somewhere doesn't mean that someone is smoking it.
The active drug part of the plant is the resin found at the flowers of the female hemp plant, created during pollination season. There is neglible amounts of THC in the rest of the plant, as in basically nothing. So you would only get high if you smoked that particular part of the plant, not the rest. So sailors could have saved on tobacco by using the dried leaves of the harvested hemp plants they imported for rope, but it wouldn't have made them stoned in the slightest.
Yes but it was found in clay pipes. I.e. smoking pipes. For whatever reason it was being smoked there.
Your sailor analogy is a possible explanation, but it doesn't make as much sense in a home or domestic setting.
It was in a pipe though?
I always hated Shakespeare, mostly because of how it’s taught.
Imagine reading about Quinten Tarantino in the future, they study his methods, his dialogue and cinematography, but they hand you his screenplays and ask you to analyze them. Not once actually showing you one of his movies.
In high school they tried to make me read all that nonsense and I had no idea what any of it meant. As an adult i saw a play as it was meant, and it gave me much more context and visual understanding. I still don’t get why he wrote like that, I prefer clear language over poetry, but I at least appreciated it way more than i did as a kid being forced to read
Reading Shakespeare is torture. That is why we make actors do it for us.
It was written in prose so it could be memorized and to hide injendos and jokes.
Do you think the future teachers will have a section dedicated to feet in Tarantino movies??? 🤨
Tarantino screenplays are good fun to read though
Drugs were always very common through all the history, Cannabis was used until the 20th century as "tobaco for the poor", apart of Cannabis also funghi and other psycho active plants known in Europe in the middle age and before, eg by artists as inspiration.

Cannabis was used until the 20th century as “tobaco for the poor”
No, it wasn't.
Yeah before people in America made a big stink about it and said it'lll turn you crazy or into a mexican, or whatever racist unscientific garbage excuse they made to start a moral panic to make it illegal, people smoked or otherwise consumed cannabis. It was just normal. The same way people consume drugs like coffee today, yes coffee is a drug.
Here's the paper for anyone interested. TLDR: In 2001 cocain residue was found alongside tobacco and hemp residue. There were also refrences to drugs in art and poems that the author supposes are cocain and cannabis. Fastwarward to 2023 when traces of cocain THC & CBD were found in bones from Milan. Today the author of the 2001 study is using the 2023 results to support his findings. As far as I can tell no one else has tried to test the pipe fragments.
Wait, how can that be right? Shakespeare had access to coca leaves and was smoking them? I know it's not literally impossible but it seems unlikely...
Francis Thackeray, in his 2025 article, suggests Sir Francis Drake could have acquired it when sailing in the area. Since traces of it were also discovered in 1600s Milan its possible that the spanish were circulating it. This 2024 study discusses how the Spanish at least knew of it as early as 1499.
As a former poet, this is 10000% accurate
i'm not what you'd call a poet, i handle the instruments, but i have this thing where for example the word for cat gets stuck between your brain and your tongue so you say claws cuddler or something like that (sorry, coffee is brewing you don't get a good one yet) and when a good one pops out you get good poetry. i blame the drugs.
Pot isn't like opium. Most people can use pot occasionally and be sober most of the time, it's probably less common for someone to become a pothead than for a drinker to become dependant on booze
Many people in all walks of life and all social statuses enjoy getting stoned occasionally
How many millions of brilliant people have been executed over the drug war? Depending on how you classify "drug war" (like the wars over opium, or chocolate for that matter), they have been murdering people over this for centuries (whether to push or pull).
... and they still do today. It's an abomination, our modern version of the witch hunt.
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