HISTORY TALKING by HELEN McANULTY.     

We’ll order now what we ordered then.

‘Cause everything old is new again.

Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager: Everything Old is New Again (1974) 

According to research, mankind has been experimenting with mind altering drugs like opium, alcohol and magic mushrooms since prehistoric times.

The earliest evidence of alcoholic drink is estimated to be from 7,000 BC. Residues consisting of rice, honey and fermented grapes having been found in pottery shards in ancient villages in China.

Primitive pipes dating back to 2,000 BC have been uncovered in Argentina, although it is unclear whether they were used for smoking tobacco or other hallucinogenic plants. Nevertheless, the use of tobacco has been traced to as early as 300 BC.

With this knowledge at our fingertips, the Oral History Group launched its own investigation into these social issues which have had such an influence in our lives. We were fortunate to have Peter Smith, a well-known Orange pharmacist, to help us.

On the goldfields in the 1870s it was quite legal for doctors to prescribe laudanum for women, which contained opium, for hysteria. It remained readily available even without prescription until the 1920s.

In our childhoods the legal drugs of choice seem to have been Bex and Vincent’s APC powders and tablets. These contained aspirin, phenacetin and caffeine.

“I knew a drover in the back country who would take twelve Bex tablets in the morning,” Reg told us. “Of course, kidney failure got him in the end,” he added reflectively.

Jan agreed. “My aunt was the same. She couldn’t get out of bed before she had her APC.”

“In the old days Australia had the highest rate of kidney disease in the world,” Peter said. “In those days WD & HO Wills held Christmas parties for pharmacists and on each table would be glass bowls full of Bex APC packets for us to enjoy.”

John brought to our notice the medicinal qualities of Chlorodyne which contained morphine and cannabis and was freely available up until the 1950s.

“When I was nursing, if we had a ward of patients which found it hard to settle for the night, we would give them all a dose of chlorodyne and that quietened them down considerably,” Rosemary told us.

But we also had other ways to relax:

“When I was a young apprentice it was part of our social system to go down to the pub after work,” said Dick. “If you didn’t drink you were left out.”

John agreed. “In the bush, men could get together with their mates and talk about and share their worries. Now they can’t drink and drive the long distances they need to travel.”

Men used to get together but what about the women?

“Not only did girls have to put up with young men arriving at dances smelling of alcohol when the pubs closed but we also had to go to the Ladies Lounge if we wanted a drink,” said Doreen. “These were mostly unattractive places lacking any warmth or welcome and generally shunned by the men.”

Peter added that when visiting the Singapore Cricket Club some years ago he saw a notice which read:

WOMEN, CHILDREN and DOGS not allowed past this point.

Sometimes there were some other problems with alcohol.

John attended communion in a small country church when it was discovered there was no wine. A parishioner went home and arrived back with watered down cherry brandy to the delight of one of the communicants who found it the best communion wine she had ever tasted.

Rhyl’s husband was warned as a small boy never to drink the ginger beer his grandmother, a strict teetotaller, offered him. “It will blow your head off”, his father told him.

Peter recalled his apprenticeship days when the pharmacy where he worked in Bondi Junction traded on Sunday morning. “We sold tonic wines which were mostly port wine with a dash of vitamin B and a touch of iron. It was a great favourite,” he said.

Tobacco also played a big part in the young lives of the Oral History Group.

“I was in the Islands in the war and every third day we lined up to be given our ration of tobacco. I hate it now although I smoked for years,” said Tom.

Smoking was considered not only safe but beneficial, doctors were said to recommend it, and you were even considered a bit odd if you didn’t smoke.

Much has changed since our youth, but the Oral History Group concluded that the majority of people today have not given up enjoying these things; they have just changed the method in which they do it.

As Peter Allen suggested in his song, everything old is new again, and we have been taking drugs, drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco almost since the world began.