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| Via Alexander Bassano/Spencer Arnold—Getty Images |
Time - Queen Victoria was a huge fan of drugs. That’s probably not what you’d expect from a stodgy old queen, but that’s a popular misconception. People tend to think of Queen Victoria as being super old, but in reality, she was only 18 when she ascended the throne, and she routinely enjoyed using a wide variety of pharmaceuticals.
Opium was one of her favorites—but she didn’t smoke it in a pipe. In 19th-century Britain, the more fashionable way to ingest opium was to drink it in the form of laudanum. This heady one-two punch of opium and alcohol was widely used to knock out pain or discomfort, whatever the cause. It was sort of like aspirin before there was aspirin—respectable doctors even recommended it for toddlers who were teething. Queen Victoria drank a big swig of laudanum every morning, believing it was the perfect way for a royal teenager to start her day
Cocaine was another of her darlings. It wasn’t illegal; it was brand-new, and Europeans were just starting to experiment with it. There were plenty of fun and exciting ways to consume cocaine back in the 1800s, but Queen Victoria’s personal preferences were chewing gum and wine. Cocaine chewing gum was perfect for soothing toothaches and sore gums from horrendous 19th-century British dentistry, plus it gave the chewer a powerful blast of self-confidence, which was great if you were a young, inexperienced queen trying hard to project a strong, assertive image.
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