Louisa May Alcott and psychotropic drugs

Thanks, Ben, for suggesting Keef: A Story of Intoxication, Love & Death, interesting that LMA was a frequent user of drugs, evidently from nursing civil war casualties (from Stephen J. Gertz foreward). Hard to imagine 'little women' smoking hash and opium!

I've the opposite feeling. Find it hard to imagine how any woman in the past managed WITHOUT drugs. God knows the assholes of the present times are hard enough to bear--high, drunk, or sober...

>2 LolaWalser: Indeed. Easier to dissemble their use as well: Nodding out? The prolonged swoon of one with a delicate constitution. Eyes pinned? Nearly overcome by the crush in the crowded parlour and the glare of the unshaded gas lamps, she lapsed into that inward-looking trance peculiar to those of a refined nature. I'm going to the bedroom, where I'll ingest a fashionable over-the-counter narcotic: I suffer at present from an indisposition known to all daughters of Eve and so shall retire.

>3 bluepiano:

I don't remember the stats now, but apparently some shocking percentage of the middle/upper class ladies were hooked on laudanum, (ab)using valerian and similar. As for alcohol... well. Chugging eau de Cologne wasn't invented by desperate Soviet lushes.

>1 tros: I first saw the suggestion in your den! Evidently, it is a rarity. I was unable to find a copy of the original text for sale anywhere.

I have some collections of LMA's "pulp fiction":

*Glimpses of Louisa
*The Feminist Alcott
*A Double Life: Newly Discovered Thrillers by Louisa May Alcott

foreword mentions Perilous Play, short story and A Modern Mephistopheles, "a character employs hashish to enhance her singing voice, while another employs hashish to'violate the sanctity of the human soul'."