Ether addiction

Addiction to ether consumption, or etheromania, is the

During the second half of the 19th century, ether was in vogue as a recreational drug in some places, becoming especially popular in Ireland, as Irish temperance campaigners thought it was an acceptable alternative to alcohol.^[2][3]

Addiction to ether consumption had posed a serious

Ether came primarily from Germany, smuggled across the border with Germany, sometimes also from Czechoslovakia. Local authorities had estimated the smugglings to amount to thousands of kilograms per year.^[4] Ether was primarily carried across the border by inhabitants living close to the border. Also, specially trained dogs were used to smuggle the ether. Both people and dogs had transported the goods in protruding metal containers which lay very close to the body and were attached to it with straps (termed blachany in local smuggler parlance, from the Polish word blacha meaning "steel sheets", from which they were made). Sometimes special compartments in cars were used, and attempts recorded include transporting ether via cable cars stretched across a border river.^{[citation needed]}

Ether was distributed among the villages by wagons transporting straw, as well as by travelling salesmen, organ grinders, and beggars. Within the villages themselves, ether was distributed in designated places, termed kapliczki ("chapels" in Polish). These were places both of sale and consumption. Many accidents caused by improper handling of fire were recorded at such places.

Consumption

Drinking ether is challenging as it boils below body temperature and is not miscible with water, requiring precautions:

There is an art in swallowing the ether. The drinker first washes out his mouth with water “to cool it;” next he swallows a little water to cool his throat; then he tosses down the glass of ether; finally, he closes in with another draught of water to keep the ether from rising, or, in other words, to cool his stomach, so that the volatile ether may not be lost by eructation of its vapour. In a little time the "trick” is easily acquired by members of both sexes.^[6]

Another recorded means of consumption was by inhalation of vapor, which develops at room temperature due to ether's volatility. The risks to the gastric system inherent in imbibing ether are avoided by using inhalation, and the effects are significantly shorter lasting.^{[citation needed]}

Legislation

In 1923, the

In the second half of the 1930s, media as well as government institutions had focused on the problem. In May 1936 a special conference in Katowice was called by the Polish National Committee for Drugs and Prevention of Drug Addictions functioning within the Ministry of Employment and Social Policy.

Effects

The effects of ether intoxication are similar to those of

Ether is still sometimes consumed in border areas of Poland, Slovakia, Lithuania and Estonia (Setomaa).^[7]

Literature

• In
  Tolstoy's War and Peace
  (set in 1812 and published in 1869) Countess Rostova's sitting-room is described as having a strong smell of Hoffman's drops (Book 3, part 3, chapter 13).
• In an autobiographical work French author
  L'Ombre chinoise
  (English: Maigret Mystified).
• Ether is referred to in Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for its drug effects, pointedly describing it as having the most powerful and depraved of possessions on men who take it. Thompson's descriptions of ether's effects in his novel are exaggerated and somewhat fictional. In fact it is seen in one of the book's most infamous quotes:

We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls... Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.^[9]

• Dr. Wilbur Larch, in John Irving's novel The Cider House Rules, is an ether addict.
• Dr. Foster—Ruth's father, and Milkman Dead's grandfather—is described as an ether addict in Toni Morrison’s novel Song of Solomon.
• In the second season of the television series
  sweet oil of vitriol (a 16th-century name for diethyl ether
  ). Delusions, paranoia, and hallucinations plague the pope as he falls deeper into his addiction.
• Dr. Charles Montgomery, in the first season of American Horror Story
  , is shown to have acquired an ether addiction.
• In the sixth season of the television adaptation of Outlander, Claire Fraser temporarily develops an addiction to ether while self-medicating for her PTSD-induced insomnia and nightmares. Her use of ether was driven by auditory and visual hallucinations.
• İsmail Abi, a character from the Turkish TV series Leyla and Mecnun consumes ether by drinking directly. Ether's effects were over-exaggerated in the series.