Coca Wine

Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass

Coca Wine

Coca and its Therapeutic Application, Third Edition, by Angelo Mariani, audio version

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

January 20, 2024

ORDER Coca Wine here.

I have recently ordered a bottle of Vin Mariani from Paris. Surprisingly, the wine is legal in the States, despite the outrageous fact that braindead politicians have outlawed the coca leaf in America in violation of Natural Law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded our republic. The founding father was rolling in his grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello ¹ in 1987 and confiscated his poppy plants, a raid that the Jefferson Foundation, to this day, pretends never happened, thereby helping to normalize tyranny and so disgrace the legacy that they are presumably sworn to protect ².

Book open to title page. Left: Coca leaf, Right: 'Coca: Therapeutic Applications, Angelo Mariani — The Coca Wine of Angelo Mariani was the motivational drink of choice for such writers as HG Wells, Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas.

Here is a book on the subject of coca wine ³, rendered in audio for your listening convenience. The writer, I'm afraid, has some of the usual Drug War biases despite his enthusiasm for coca wine. He ignorantly disses the use of opium in China, about which he obviously knows nothing but the lies that were spread by the Anti-Opium Society, like the utter fabrication that millions of Chinese were killed by smoking opium , a Big Lie in the Nazi sense of the term spread by an American missionary. In fact, it was (tellingly enough) the protestant missionaries (thousands of miles away in Britain) who pushed for the outlawing of the opium trade for their own reasons -- chiefly because they knew that they could not get the Chinese attention without depriving them of their nightly opium pipe, whose time-honored use, as William Brereton points out, had infinitely less downsides than those associated with nightly glasses of beer and liquor, considering, for example, that opium ⁴ users do not beat their wives which is more than one can say for the nightly topers ⁵.

Enjoy the read - and watch this space for my description of the effects of coca wine as personally experienced by yours truly in the coming weeks.

By the way, you can listen to Mariani's book about coca on this website via this audio rendition that I have created for you as part of my essay about the author's famous Coca Wine. The wine actually is created from actual naughty coca leaves. Of course, the leaves themselves are illegal here in the United States of Prohibition -- except, of course, for the Coca-Cola company, which is the enormously hypocritical and "telling" exception thanks to which I am a Pepsi fan.

Coca and its Therapeutic Application

Third Edition, by Angelo Mariani

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Author's Follow-up: January 26, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up

Today I received and quaffed my first bottle of Vin Tonique Mariani direct from Paris. A big thumbs-up for the effects of this coca wine made from genuine Bolivian coca leaves. Most wine dulls my senses and puts me to sleep, but this one's invigorating, and without the jangled nerves produced by caffeine. My only qualm is that this wine is pricy, to put it mildly: close to $100 US per each smallish bottle. 50% of the cost goes toward delivery, of course, so I'm hoping that the corporate honchos on the Champs Elysees open a production facility in the States soon -- or barring that, that I strike it rich in some as-yet to be determined manner or other.

Author's Follow-up: January 27, 2024

I cannot say enough about my first Mariani Wine experience. It's got me thinking more seriously about the possibility of moving to Peru, where I can legally chew the coca leaf. Over the past 48 hours, it has dissipated my depression and given me a sort of calm energy. My depression has always been responsible for my failure to follow through on projects -- and this calming energy keeps me going "full speed ahead" in cases where I would otherwise have thrown in the towel.

Now, I do not want to get carried away. I am a moody person after all, and there is always a chance that at least some of my positive reaction to the wine is due to a random mood upswing that might have occurred in any case without the tonic. So I'll be ordering a new bottle soon to confirm these first super promising results.

Assuming that I am right about the wine, however, it is a real sin that this stuff is not used as a therapy for the depressed. I really believe that my depression would be over if I could drink the tonic daily, perhaps as a non-alcoholic beverage. My belief now, in fact, is that many cases of depression could be "cured" by such a daily drink in place of one's morning cup of coffee. But, of course, this is where greed and politics come into play -- because the big cola, wine and coffee companies would surely fight to prevent the widespread use of coca tonic, probably by funding biased studies designed to suggest (wrongly, of course) that there are all sorts of health concerns with coca wine.

I have read Tweets about coca teas that are apparently available in the States as well, but from what I've heard, they do not come close to the power of Coca Wine, probably because they do not use the right coca leaves and/or the right amount of coca leaves -- for all coca leaves are not created equal when it comes to potency and effect, as W. Golden Mortimer explains in "Coca: Divine Plant of the Incas." Moreover, this product dates back to 1863 and has the endorsement of such writers as Jules Verne, HG Wells, Henrik Ibsen and Alexandre Dumas -- such composers as Gounod, Faure, Ambrose Thomas, and Massenet -- and has even received the golden medal of ecclesiastical approval from Pope Leo XIII, who is said to have been "supported in his ascetic retirement by a preparation of Mariani's Coca, of which a flask constantly worn is, like the widow's cruse, never empty."

By the way, I drank the wine late in the day on Friday, and this turned out to be bad timing because I was up almost all night thanks to the calm energy that the drink provided-- and yet I was not tossing and turning in bed and did not have the angst that usually accompanies sleeplessness. I was, in fact, able to rest peacefully in bed last night despite not getting too much actual sleep. And today I was not tired! My friend dropped by and we went hiking and played music, and even my keyboard playing was better and easier than usual. I will be going to bed soon and yet I am still not excessively tired. It really seems true that coca increases one's endurance.

Author's Follow-up: January 29, 2024

I am convinced that this wine would be a blessing for many chronic depressives. As a chronic depressive myself, I find that the worst symptom is my inability to follow through on my goals, and this is precisely what Vin Mariani combats by somehow "upping" one's entire system to provide a feeling of basic natural endurance and well-being. For almost 48 hours after consuming this wine, I was a stronger and far less wishy-washy person. Don't get me wrong: I was by no means ecstatic "on" coca wine, however I had a kind of basic strength of purpose that allowed me to focus quite willingly on important tasks.

In a sane world, depressives would use such a coca tonic daily. It is really just common sense -- just as it's common sense to give laughing gas kits to the suicidal as we give epi pens to the allergic. But neither scientists nor Drug Warriors "do" common sense in the age of the Drug War ⁶.

That's why science pretends that the coca leaf does not exist and continues to plump instead for "modern" treatments for depression like shock therapy and the pill-popping paradigm. Science News, in fact, has launched a whole new series of articles about a new kind of shock therapy -- in articles which never mention the hundreds (if not thousands) of psychoactive substances that are off-limits these days thanks to the War on Drugs ⁷. If you confront them with the issue, they'll tell you that using coca (or laughing gas or MDMA ) is not scientific. To which I say, then so much the worse for science -- because these substances WORK as far as users are concerned, and they should not be withheld from Americans just because materialist scientists have yet to wrap their heads around that fact. And why not? Partly because of the Drug War ideology of substance demonization and partly because of a dogmatic insistence that all proofs of efficacy must refer to biochemical minutiae and not to mere user reports. It's not enough that a substance has been successfully used for millennia and generated countless positive user reports. That's all subjective stuff in the final analysis, at least in the jaundiced eyes of modern scientists, who refuse to believe that human beings are even qualified to know what makes them happy.

That's why Dr. Robert Glatter can ask the incredibly naive question in his 2021 article in Forbes magazine: "Can laughing gas help those with treatment-resistant depression?"⁸ He has to ask because he is not interested in the fact that N20 merely makes people laugh: he wants to find a REAL cure for depression (which, by the way, is a fool's errand based on a raft of false philosophical presumptions, but that is a topic for another essay, if not for an entire book). He fails to realize that the search for such a holy grail, i.e., a "real" cure for depression, has already resulted in the greatest mass dependency of all time: the fact that one in four women are now addicted to Big Pharma meds for life, especially those SSRIs that we were told were "scientific" and would REALLY cure our depression - and keep us from relying on those nasty drugs of Mother Nature, which only tribal peoples believe in, the ones that we have yet to wipe out, at least. But I would like to know how materialist scientists are even qualified to tell us precisely what the variegated condition called human depression is, let alone what would constitute a one-size-fits-all "cure" for that condition. One thing's for sure, however: they did not have the Jack Kerouacs and the Robin Williams of the world in mind when the Big Pharma drug researchers decided what should count as a satisfactory cure for depression ⁹.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should admit that I kind of gulped my first (smallish) bottle of coca wine. This was because I was cynically doubting the ability of the wine to work the wonders that I had read about, and so I figured, even if the reports were true, such extraordinary benefits would probably only kick in after a very high level of consumption. Well, I paid for my cynicism with a sleepless night - because the wine not only worked as promised, but it gave me so much calm and good-natured energy that I could not sleep a wink for the next 12 hours at least. The interesting thing, however, is that this sleeplessness did not bother me as it usually would do, because I found that I was able to rest comfortably without greatly regretting the fact that I could not get to "board-certified" sleep, so to speak. I may have nodded off briefly once or twice, but I basically spent the night "resting" - and it was a true period of rest, rather than the tossing and turning that usually afflicts the insomniac.

And despite this wine gulping, there was no sign of hangover in the morning, to the contrary, I felt normal - in fact, surreally normal. I felt ready to greet the day with the same calm, steady energy of the night before. Again, there was no ecstasy, merely the feeling that I would imagine many non-depressed persons might have on a sunny weekend morning when they're looking forward to the day's events. And this sense of empowered well-being remained with me throughout the day, which I spent with a friend of mine, hiking, throwing darts, and playing backup for his guitar riffs on my Korg Krome keyboard -- without ever experiencing those symptoms of sluggishness which would ordinarily remind me that my body needed more sleep. And I kid you not, I was more comfortable and proficient than usual with my keyboard playing. (Somebody call the police, right? How dare I improve my mental outlook like that without the express written consent of the healthcare industry?!)

By the way, when I read exuberant testimonials of this kind, there's always a point where I start to wonder if the author might not have some undisclosed financial interest in the product that he is praising. So let me assure you that this is not the case, although I certainly wish I did have a financial interest in the Vin Mariani commercial enterprise. My knowledge of the tonic first came from reading two books, the one featured on this page by Angelo Mariani himself, namely "Coca and Its therapeutic Application," and the book by W. Golden Mortimer entitled "Coca: the Divine Plant of the Incas"¹⁰. I found the user reports in both of these books to be perfectly true when it comes to the increased energy and improved mental outlook that the coca leaf affords - so much so that I have already ordered my second and third bottles of Mariani's wine - although this time I plan to consume it in a slightly less frantic fashion.

Author's Follow-up: January 31, 2024

When I first heard about Coca Wine, I assumed that it was either not legal in the States or else it was legal only in some vitiated form very different to the original wine. I could not believe that I could legally buy the same coca-based wine that authors like HG Wells and Jules Verne had raved about. Of course, I assumed this for a very good reason: namely, that the DEA has a long history of outlawing anything that makes us feel good. They are clearly our puritan police force. If it were about health, then they would never outlaw the use of MDMA or shrooms, both of which are many times safer than horseback riding or driving an automobile. Now that I know about coca wine, I am torn: I would like to tell the world about it, but then I don't want it to become so popular that the DEA decides to keep me from buying it -- especially since I feel sure they already have the wine on their hit list.

Author's Follow-up: February 8, 2024

Okay, so I received three new bottles of coca wine yesterday, at which point, to be honest, I was rather depressed. This latter fact is important because I was in a good mood during my consumption of my first bottle of coca wine some weeks back, so I was concerned that I might respond less favorably to consuming coca wine in my new somewhat maudlin state of being. Well, I am pleased to point out that the tonic once again induced an unmistakably buoyant feeling. I am not talking about ecstasy here, but it is as if my baseline mood had been cranked up a notch once again by the consumption of coca wine. The difference is that the first bottle had lifted me from a "half-decent mood" to a mood that was "very good indeed," whereas this latter bottle lifted me from (to be honest) a mood of "borderline gloom" to a "half-decent mood." Yes, but how important that latter lifting is, right? especially for the suicidal -- among whom, have faith, gentle reader, one does not count oneself. Speaking of which, please bear in mind that this emotional candor of mine is not meant to solicit unwanted pity from the reader, but that such autobiographical disclosures are necessary in such reports if I am to evaluate the therapeutic value of Vin Mariani dispassionately, at least for its efficacy in improving the mood of a chronic depressive like myself.

Now a word about dosage, which is very important indeed, considering that this wine sets me back $80 a bottle, more than half of that going to shipping costs from France to the USA. Of course, the more bottles that you order, the smaller the delivery price tag becomes as a percentage of overall cost, but most of us are not going to have the luxury of downing an entire two-cup bottle of coca wine every day. So my hope is that a large daily consumption of the wine will not be necessary in order to derive significant long-term benefits therefrom.

Fortunately, there's some relatively good news on this topic, however.

The first two cups of wine that I drank from this new bottle yesterday seem, in my estimation, to have "set me up" nicely. It's 24 hours after consumption and I still can clearly feel that my baseline emotional state is decidedly "notched up a peg" such that I am modestly optimistic about life, which, of course, is a marked improvement from the sullen moping that I was prey to yesterday prior to my consumption of the tonic. (I had always heard about a stiff glass of liquor "setting one up" in westerns, but alcohol never "sets me up" -- if anything, it sets me DOWN on the couch and makes me want to sleep. But I can now empathize with the guys who get "set up" by liquor, because coca wine shows me what that term means, how a drink can really "set one up," psychologically speaking.)

This leads me to speculate that I might be able to keep this improved baseline by the daily consumption of a half a glass of tonic after dinners. That's my hypothesis based on what I've read and experienced when it comes to coca wine. Stay tuned to this page to find out if my guess is correct.

A quick note about legality. I hate to discuss such things because my site is not, nor has ever purported to be, a place where one can find such information, and once I put myself in charge of the decision-making of my readers, I assume a huge and unnecessary burden. This is how the Drug Warrior shuts down honest discussion about drugs, by telling us that it is irresponsible to even mention drugs, for in doing so we somehow then become responsible for the well-being of any of our substance-using readers who might subsequently encounter drug-related problems - bearing in mind that the biggest drug-related problems that they're likely to encounter are the many legal snares that have been carefully laid for them by these Drug Warriors themselves.

Such reasoning is spurious, of course. Are those who write about horses responsible for the injuries and deaths caused by horseback riding? Are those who write about cars responsible for the injuries and deaths caused by cars? Are those who write about alcohol - and glorify it, in fact - responsible for the existence of alcoholics? What about those who glorify gun use?¹¹

The only people responsible for drug deaths and arrests are the prohibitionists whose very policy is to discourage honest talk about substances: the fact is, they would prefer people to die than to use drugs: That's why laughing gas is demonized when its wise use should be promoted among the suicidal; that's why MDMA ¹² is demonized when its wise use should be promoted among ethnic and racial groups that might otherwise be disposed to hate one another.

So I hate to discuss legal matters in any detail. I will point out, however, that Coca Wine -- and specifically Vin Tonique Mariani from Paris -- is the only coca-leaf based tonic that is legal in the States. At least the friendly sales rep at the time-honored company itself tells me so. Naturally, the DEA is not going to go on record as saying, "Yes, Americans, feel free to buy this delicious tonic! We promise not to interfere!" So there is no 100% guarantee. So perhaps I should put it this way: the Vin Tonique Mariani company is very well-known in the coca wine business and dates back to 1863. So if the DEA decided to run interference between myself and coca wine, at least they would not be able to portray me as a drug dealer - which is precisely what they could do if I was ordering coca leaves from South America for making tea - and for all I know, this may even happen were I to order coca powder from overseas. A statesider (or a European or Brit for that matter) should also bear in mind that the companies that sell such substances will go out of their way to assure you there are no legal problems with delivery of their product. But remember that they have a financial interest in convincing you of that claim. So as always, caveat emptor.

But I am not being paid at all - let alone paid enough to dispense legal advice. So I will say not only caveat emptor, but caveat lector as well. For this is a website devoted to providing philosophical insights about the hateful War on Drugs - not a website devoted to giving legal advice, implied or otherwise.

A final note about coca wine. There is increasing evidence that coca is an obvious antidepressant, and a non-addictive one "into the bargain." It really tees me off that I've been set up on Big Pharma ¹³ ¹⁴ meds for life in a country that outlaws a damn plant that could have done a better job and does not even create a chemical dependency. This is why I tell otherwise sane folks like Rick Doblin, Carl Hart and DJ Nutt that antidepressants ¹⁵ do not make sense. They simply cannot be morally justified in a world where plants like coca are outlawed. In fact, how dare you sit back and tell me to "take my meds" when you are simultaneously telling me that I cannot benefit from the bounty of Mother Nature! That's why the pill mill is pure evil. And why don't Rick and company understand this? Because, ironically enough, they themselves reckon without the Drug War! Their defense of SSRIs & SNRIs would only make sense to me in a world wherein there are no medical godsends in Mother Nature. And you'll never convince me of that, let alone use that lie to convince me that I need to become a patient for life on modern antidepressants! This goes twice for Carl Hart, whose otherwise great book ("Drug Use for Grown-Ups"¹⁶) essentially tells pill-heads like myself to "keep taking their meds" and to not even think about using other psychoactive substances for pathologies like depression. Carl seems to think much more of psychiatrists than he does of Mother Nature. But he'll never convince me that it's better to become an eternal patient (with all the massive disempowerment that this implies) than to use the medicines that grow at my very feet!

Author's Follow-up: February 10, 2024

I have now consumed coca wine in a wide variety of circumstances, and the benefits remain absolutely clear. It buoys one's mood -- without giving one the feeling that they are "on" anything. Instead, it's as if you are simply the same person, but with a different baseline of anxiety and depression. You're an emotionally stronger person. Let's say, for instance, that my baseline depression level is typically a 7 out of 10 (meaning pretty dang gloomy). After some decent tugs on a bottle of Mariani's tonic, I seem to become a person with a baseline depression level of, say, 3 out of 10 at most, and as little as 1 or 2 out of 10, especially when circumstances have permitted of me downing a whole 86 centiliter bottle (just over two full cups).

I do not, of course, seek to establish a recommended dosage for anybody but myself; however, I find that one half-glass of tonic a day controls depression, but two full-sized glasses really give depression the absolute K-O, at least for the following ten hours or so. In fact, after two cups, the upbeat feeling can last 48 hours in some cases.

The downside is, this is wine we're talking about here, as well as coca. And although the wine does not strike me as particularly strong, I do not like to drink wine before 6 p.m. Yet if I drink two cups of coca wine after 6 p.m., it's a good bet that I am not going to be able to sleep that night. This is why I've asked the Mariani company to consider making an alcohol-free tonic, which they say they are investigating, by the way. I've also told them that I'd be glad to help them establish a production facility in the States -- though I wonder if I shouldn't leave well enough alone. Both the DEA and the Coca-Cola company have a vested interest in keeping coca-infused products out of the USA, and the golden goose might get roasted if it squawks too loudly.

Finally, in case anyone's wondering: wine never elevates my mood, but to the contrary tends to depress me. I mention this in case anyone might attribute the buoyancy I mention to the wine itself rather than the coca leaves used in its preparation. I am satisfied that the Bolivian coca leaves are at work, based not just on my personal experiences with the drink but the fact that those experiences match the results that were reportedly obtained by such 19th-century Mariani fans as HG Wells, Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas, not to mention his holiness, Pope Leo XIII, who is said to have kept a bottle handy everywhere he went.

I'll either have to strike it rich or become an ex-pat to keep the medicine coming however. The wine alone is 33 Euros. Add in the delivery cost to the states from Paris and that's over $80 a bottle. If I moved to Lima or Cusco, I could buy a lot of coca leaves with that money and then benefit from alcohol-free leaf chewing.

By the way, if you have voice problems of any kind, this tonic is reported to have curative properties for you, which is an effect that I can vouch for now from my own experience. That's another one of those benefits about which America is dogmatically ignorant -- because, as we all know, coca leaves do not even exist in the minds of modern science. That's why they're pursuing new forms of shock therapy for the depressed ¹⁷ -- because substances like laughing gas ¹⁸ and coca leaf have been "damned" by modern science ¹⁹ -- under the influence of America's anti-scientific war on psychoactive medicine.

Author's Follow-up: February 14, 2024

In his cryptically titled autobiography "Pikhal" (aka "Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved"")²⁰, the late psychopharmacologist Alexander Shulgin recounts his experience with hand surgery during World War II. Prior to the operation, he noticed a white substance at the bottom of a glass of orange juice that he had been drinking. He immediately assumed that this was a sedative that was being administered "on the sly" by the nurses in order to help him get through what promised to be some painful bone surgery. And sure enough, he soon became unconscious after making this observation, despite his previous resolution to stay awake during the entire procedure in order to flaunt his stoic personality in front of the doctors. After his successful surgery, however, he was informed by the hospital staff that the substance at the bottom of his glass of orange juice had been nothing but undissolved sugar. This unexpected demonstration of the power of the human mind was what convinced Shulgin to commit his life to the study of psychopharmacology, from which he was eventually to conclude that "the mind is the major factor in defining a psychoactive drug's action."

With this story in mind, I am trying to be as self-critical as possible about my accounts of coca wine and its antidepressant qualities, but I keep returning to what I consider to be undeniable proof of its efficacy - and not its efficacy "in general," but rather its efficacy for myself given my life history and my psychological makeup, etc. Take yesterday for instance. I noticed that I was feeling somewhat "lower" than usual - bearing in mind that vast mood swings have always been a part of this psychological makeup of which I speak. So I played the devil's advocate for a moment, thinking: maybe this drug is not really improving my situation after all, at least not today (for at least some of the upbeat effects that I have felt previously still seemed to me to be all but undeniable).

But then I realized that I had had to stop working for a moment in order to make these observations. In other words, I was fully involved in a new drug-war-related project and I had to, at least to some extent, pry myself away from that task in order to address these concerns. Now, the reader has to understand at this point that the typical effect of my negative mood swings is to cause me to abandon all personal projects - and yet here I was plowing through this work of mine with a single-minded sense of purpose. I was even a little perturbed that I had to interrupt my work in order to note down these "objective" observations that I was trying to make about my experience "on" coca wine. This convinced me that coca wine was, indeed, "working" as an antidepressant, at least in the way that really matters for me: it was helping me get important work done.

True, the "dosage" I was using had not rendered me ecstatic by any means, and yet it had rendered me productive - and productivity, at least for myself, is the exact opposite of depression. To put this another way, depression for me is manifested in a lack of productivity, particularly when it comes to achieving one's most desired goals in life.

This is why I have come to the conclusion after 40 years of "therapy" that there's no point in asking a person if they are depressed: what we should be asking them instead is: how are you coming on achieving your most important goals in life? If they have heartfelt goals upon which they never work, they are likely depressed (even if, as is often the case, they do not even realize this themselves, for the depressed cannot compare their baseline blahs to the kinds of upbeat feelings that they have never had in their life). Take me, for instance. This project that I am currently working on is the kind of thing that I would have started and stopped in the past, thanks to fits in which I basically ask myself: "What's the point of all this? Why am I even bothering?" Whereas, my experience "on" coca wine is that I have a baseline of ambition that silences such concerns - at least to the point that they are no longer "deal breakers."

Of course, the scientists will tell you that we need endless studies before such stories can "mean anything," much less justify the re-legalization ²¹ of the coca leaf. But this is absurd. The coca leaf is a time-honored antidepressant dating back millennia and has been used daily by the long-lived Peruvian Indians for both the endurance and the good feeling that its consumption inspires. We do not need endless studies to verify that such plant medicine is good. In fact, science needs to "butt out" entirely, because psychoactive medicine is used for moral, religious and psychological reasons, and this is not an area in which the scientist qua scientist has any expertise whatsoever. It is the individual who has to decide the relevance of such substances given their views about what constitutes "the good life," as Plato would use that term. Is the good life one in which you deal directly with all sorrows without using any psychoactive substances to help you cope (with, of course, the hypocritical exceptions of socially accepted drugs like tobacco, liquor and antidepressants)? Or is the good life one in which you maximize your personal potential while freely making use of the medicines of Mother Nature (which, after all, God himself told us were good)? These are NOT scientific questions, and so we do not need endless studies. We need to let the experts decide about whether to "use" psychoactive drugs or not - and make no mistake: the relevant experts in such cases are the would-be users themselves!

Author's Follow-up: March 13, 2024

I am now ready to give a more or less definitive report of how coca wine has affected my mood over the last two months, now that I have had time to let my sky-high preconceptions cool and for my rational self to chime in with its own more objective observations. I am now almost embarrassed by the initial enthusiasm I displayed two months ago. I could not "say enough" about coca wine back in January. You would almost think that the wine was liquid cocaine . It was as if my belief in the wine had combined with the tonic effects to really give me an extraordinary "high" on the occasion of my initial use.

Subsequent use, unfortunately, has produced less dramatic results. That said, however, I am a very moody person and so objectivity is hard to come by. In fact, complete objectivity is impossible to come by when discussing psychoactive substances. Moreover, the wine is very expensive and so my use has been limited to small doses, with the exception of my initial consumption of one full bottle in one night, or the equivalent of just over two full cups of wine. I would be interested in seeing what the daily ongoing consumption of one or two glasses could do by way of buoying my overall mood, but this is an experiment that I cannot afford to undertake without a grant from the Ford Foundation, so expensive is it to import Vin Mariani from Paris.

My conclusion then: coca wine is definitely a mood-boosting tonic, but results will vary, not just between individuals, but between occasions of use by the same individual, especially if, like myself, your manic-depressive propensities give Dr. Henry Jekyll himself a run for his schizophrenic money.

That said, my experience with coca wine leads me to speculate that the chewing of the coca leaf will have a positive effect on my chronic depression, and so I am planning to travel to Peru in the next few months to put that theory to the test -- especially since neither psychiatrists nor psychologists in America seem to be in any hurry to investigate that possibility on my behalf ²².

Author's Follow-up: March 20, 2024

Trying to get a handle on just how much help coca leaf chewing might be for the depressed. Variables to consider: where is the leaf sourced? What are the alkaloid contents? Is the leaf chewed non-stop or used simply as a morning tea? I'll be flying to Peru soon to investigate.

Cocaine

Notes for essay entitled Coca Wine: Coca and its Therapeutic Application, Third Edition, by Angelo Mariani, audio version:

1: The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation DWP (up)
2: How the Jefferson Foundation Betrayed Thomas Jefferson DWP (up)
3: Rossen, Jake. 2021. “Vin Mariani: The Cocaine-Infused Wine Beloved by Popes and Presidents.” Mental Floss. March 26, 2021. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/644226/vin-mariani-cocaine-wine-history. (up)
4: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
5: “The Truth about Opium, by William H. Brereton—a Project Gutenberg EBook.” 2024. Gutenberg.org. 2024. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44043/44043-h/44043-h.htm. (up)
6: How the Drug War Makes Americans Stupid DWP (up)
7: Science News Unveils Shock Therapy II DWP (up)
8: Glatter, Robert. 2021. “Can Laughing Gas (Nitrous Oxide) Help People with Treatment-Resistant Depression?” Forbes, June 9, 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglatter/2021/06/09/can-laughing-gas-nitrous-oxide-help-people-with-treatmentresistant-depre (up)
9: Treating the REAL problem DWP (up)
10: Scribd.com: Coca: Divine Plant of the Incas Mortimer MD, W. Golden, Ronin Publishing, Berkeley, California, 2017 (up)
11: Horses Kill The Partnership for a Death Free America (up)
12: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
13: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
14: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
15: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
16: Drug Use for Grownups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear Hart, Carl (up)
17: Science News Unveils Shock Therapy II DWP (up)
18: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
19: Charles, Fort. 2025. “The Book of the Damned.” Gutenberg.Org. 2025. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/22472/pg22472-images.html. (up)
20: Shulgin, Alexander T, and Ann Shulgin. 2019. Pihkal : A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley, Ca: Transform Press. (up)
21: “National Coalition for Drug Legalization.” n.d. National Coalition for Drug Legalization. https://www.nationalcoalitionfordruglegalization.org/. (up)
22: How psychologists gaslight us about beneficial drug use DWP (up)

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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

It is folly to put bureaucrats in charge of second-guessing drug prescriptions: what such bureaucrats are really doing is second-guessing the various philosophies of life which are presupposed by the way we use psychoactive drugs.

The Drug War is the most important evil to protest, precisely because almost everybody is afraid to do so. That's a clear sign that it is a cancer on the body politic.

For those who want to understand what's going on with the drug war from a philosophical point of view, I recommend chapter six of "Eugenics and Other Evils" by GK Chesterton.

It's a category error to say that scientists can tell us if psychoactive drugs "really work." It's like asking Dr. Spock of Star Trek if hugging "really works." ("Hugging is highly illogical, Captain.")

The addiction gene should be called the prohibition gene: it renders one vulnerable to prohibition lies and limitations: like the lack of safe supply, the lack of choices, and the lack of information. We should pathologize the prohibitionists, not their victims.

Mad in America solicits personal stories about people trying to get off of antidepressants, but they will not publish your story if you want to use entheogenic medicines to help you. They're afraid their readers can't handle the truth.

Do drug warriors realize that they are responsible for the deaths of young people on America's streets? Look in the mirror, folks. People were not dying en masse from opium overdoses when opiates were legal. It took your prohibition to accomplish that! Stop arresting, start teaching safe use!

Addiction thrives BECAUSE of prohibition, which limits drug choice and discourages education about psychoactive substances and how to use them wisely.

New article in Scientific American: "New hope for pain relief," that ignores the fact that we have outlawed the time-honored panacea. Scientists want a drug that won't run the risk of inspiring us.

I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.

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Coca Wine

Coca and its Therapeutic Application, Third Edition, by Angelo Mariani, audio version

Coca and its Therapeutic Application

Third Edition, by Angelo Mariani

Author's Follow-up: January 26, 2024

Author's Follow-up: January 27, 2024

Author's Follow-up: January 29, 2024

Author's Follow-up: January 31, 2024

Author's Follow-up: February 8, 2024

Author's Follow-up: February 10, 2024

Author's Follow-up: February 14, 2024

Author's Follow-up: March 13, 2024

Author's Follow-up: March 20, 2024

Cocaine

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend