Sherlock Holmes and Cocaine

[malignantdaisy]

I just finished re-reading Subcutaneously, My Dear Watson by Jack Tracy and Jim Berkey (1978), a great book I picked up at a used book store back when I first discovered and devoured the Holmes canon about 13 years ago.

With BBC's Sherlock on my mind lately, re-reading this book brought up some interesting points about the portrayal of Holmes's

Comments

[eleanorb]

More significantly, the Sherlock of Sherlock using cocaine would be 1) illegal (or at least the purchase of it, I expect - I don't know what exactly the law currently states in the UK regarding possession or usage), 2) expensive, and 3) perceived entirely differently by the people around him (and the audience) than would have been the case for his canonical counterpart 100+ years previously.
However, the situation and attitudes in many parts of UK society are still the same as for the Victorians. Though cocaine is illegal it's not socially stigmatised in many places, it isn't particularly expensive in comparison to other, even legal, drugs, and probably as many people have used it or seen it being used as in Victorian times

[malignantdaisy]

However, the situation and attitudes in many parts of UK society are still the same as for the Victorians. Though cocaine is illegal it's not socially stigmatised in many places, it isn't particularly expensive in comparison to other, even legal, drugs, and probably as many people have used it or seen it being used as in Victorian times.

This is interesting! (Obviously I can only go so far with a book written in the 70s by people who appear to be American.)

Do you think the connotations of a cocaine user are pretty much the same now as then? I'd think the illegality of it would still change things slightly, but that may be splitting hairs.

While cocaine is seen as a party drug in the States, I think it also suggests a lush lifestyle (Hollywood celebrities, rock stars, rich businessmen in the 80s and their offspring today) - hence the idea of it being expensive rather than an "average person's drug" (I admit that I have absolutely know idea how much cocaine actually costs on the street or who is most likely to use it). It also

[penguineggs]

Yes, lattes at Starbucks are ludicrously expensive.

Sherlock in Sign of the Four injects cocaine three times a day for several months, which strikes me as rather a lot; I think it dies off very quickly, though.

[malignantdaisy]

Yes, lattes at Starbucks are ludicrously expensive.

*grin*

I hadn't thought of it that way, even though I couldn't afford to buy a latte every day. You can't get a pack of cigarettes around here for less than a latte, though, and I had assumed illegal drugs would be more expensive than cigarettes or beer.

Three cocaine injections a day were what Subcutaneously, My Dear Watson suggests was Holmes's usual dose, which struck me as a lot, too, but the authors go on to state this was "light use" and wasn't enough to interfere with his work except maybe after toxins had started to accumulate in his system.

[goldvermilion87]

First: random observation re the Ritchie film. I assumed that when Watson says, "Do you know that this is for eye surgery" that is a sneaky cocaine allusion. I don't really know anyhting about cocaine, and I don't know if there is a way to drink it, BUT I do know that my mom had an eye procedure that involved cocaine. That is the only fact I actually have, so I could just be sort of reading that into the quotation, but that's how I took it

[neadods]

Sherlock is definitely made more of a Jerk/messed up person in Sherlock than in ACD's books. ... I think Moffat and Gatiss take it farther than just showing what Holmes would look like now. They actually make him a worse person, because they (unlike ACD) are interested in then making him a better person. They care about his moral status in a way that Doyle did not, so they have to make him a little more clearly morally lacking, so they can show him growing.I was about to post something along these lines but you said it much better. Modern Sherlock is a very messed up person - FAR more than he is in canon

[eleanorb]

Sherlock is an ex-junkie hooked on an illegal drug because it gives him that much more to rise above as he is inspired by John to be a better person.

We have no evidence for that in Sherlock at all. We have evidence for recreational use and possibly manufacture but nothing for him being an ex-junkie.

[goldvermilion87]

The evidence of any kind is rather thin, but what John says is "Him? A junkie?" and Sherlock tells him to shut up... so it's just as likely that he is an ex-junkie as it is that he manufatured/used recreationally.

(I think an ex-junkie, but that is just my headcanon. :-) )

[penguineggs]

I agree with eleanorb about the status and frequency of cocaine use in 21st century Britain - after all, the newspapers were discussing fairly frankly whether Tara Palmer-Tompkinson would get her (cocaine-destroyed) nose repaired in time for the Royal wedding.

Sebastian, in TBB, completely fits the stereotype of the modern British cocaine user (right the way down to the shitty personality); it's seen as the celebration drug of choice in high pressure environments such as the City, the media and the law - the enormously popular BBC series This Life which aired in the 1990s and featured a bunch of London-based 20-something lawyers who used enough Class A drugs (the technical term for the British classification of the allegedly hardest and most dangerous group of illegal drugs) to float several aircraft carriers

[eleanorb]

I'm currently reading a report in New Scientist that shows drug use in Europe is thirty times that of Australia. I think that gives an idea of just how common it is. Cocaine use in the UK is very high by international standards too.

[darthhellokitty]

Paregoric was widely available when I was a kid, it only became a Class III substance in 1970. I remember my mother criticizing somebody we knew for "doping up" her kids with it for a long car trip. (As a result, I always thought that was what it was FOR.)

[penguineggs]

Well, you can still buy kaolin and morphine mixture over the counter, come to think of it.

When I was researching for the Victorian detective story I wrote, one of the startling things was how common opium overdose was as a cause of death. Mistaking laudanum for paregoric was a reasonably well-known risk for accidental overdoses, and one I used in the book.

[foxtoast]

I always thought the way it's modernized in House (vicodin addiction) is about the best modern analogue. Prescription opiates aren't a perfect analogy, but in the contemporary context they're not perceived like street drugs and or like alcohol addiction; they're legal in certain circumstances and considered useful drugs, but we recognize the capacity for abuse or dependence.

The way he's been modernized in the BBC production, though, recreational cocaine use is probably more fitting. He's been made a bit edgier and stripped of the Victorian patina of manners, and a little illicit drug use doesn't seem so out of place. It would seem off for him to be stoned off his gourd all the time, however, which is presumably why they mix a reference to off-screen recreational drug use with tobacco dependence. Neither is quite perfect, but it's a reasonable way to transplant that aspect of the character to the present.

[eleanorb]

It would seem off for him to be stoned off his gourd all the time

And that's of course not what you'd get from cocaine use anyway. I've worked in companies where drug use even during the working day was, lets say, not unusual - mostly in finance tbh. It's almost impossible to tell if the pushy, mouthy overconfidence is due to drugs or just a personality trait encouraged by the management. BBC Sherlock comes across in just the same way in some scenes.

[penguineggs]

Exactly, I more-or-less expected there to be a line next to the sink in the restaurant loos where John and Sherlock encountered Sebastian, tbh.

There's a now defunct law firm where the rumour was that the only way the corporate finance fee-earners could make their hours and fees targets was to use cocaine to keep them up for the all-nighters and various forms of downers to cope during the day. No-one who had ever encountered the firm in question ever showed any difficulty in believing it.

[vsee]

There are two scenes in the 2009 movie where Holmes is shown taking drugs, though they seem intentionally to be played down. After the fight scene, he grabs a full bottle without a label, clearly to go up to his rented room and make a night of it. Not only is the bottle gone by the next morning when Watson arrives, but he's drinking from a small unmarked vial as well. He's been up for at least six hours (i.e. probably all night) in a sort of frenzied focus, capturing flies one by one and putting them in a jar, to test whether or not he can induce them to fly in a formation by plucking random notes on his violin. If this wasn't enough to signal "stimulant use" to the audience without showing a needle which would offend the eyes of a modern audience, Watson picks up the unmarked vial and makes a comment that "You know what you're drinking is meant for eye surgery

[penguineggs]

I really can't see Moffatt and Gatis doing a Very Special Episode and if they do I don't think I'll be the only person vowing never to watch another thing they produce.

[vsee]

No, of course not. I was being tongue in cheek, there. But I do think it's very tricky to try to make drug use and smoking signify the same thing in a Victorian setting and a modern setting, because you really can't avoid the baggage of modern culture.

[f_m_r_l]

I think the nicotine was only supposed to signify all of the heavy smoking Holmes did in canon. He used it to think, referring at one point to a "three pipe problem". Now, since the smoking of a pipe is an entire process - a ritual that takes time - it's largely unlike applying a patch. So that doesn't work so well for me. Holmes was always discovering clues in the type of ash from a cigarette, the suspect's tabaccoist, etc.! Even his "last note" at the falls is pinned down by his cigarette case.