You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News - Writers of Cracked dot Com [39]
Before you go trying it . . .
While Crick never officially wore a tinfoil hat, he was known to argue that life was seeded on earth by a race of prehistoric aliens, a theory that has yet to gain widespread acceptance among the scientific community or really anyone who isn’t a character on The X-Files or a member of the Church of Scientology.
3. FREUD AND COCAINE INVENT PSYCHOANALYSIS
Freudian psychoanalysis is one of the most influential and controversial theories of the twentieth century. While you can argue its merits all day, you can’t deny that it created an entire branch of medicine and, more important, gave us the two best seasons of The Sopranos.
The drug: cocaine
The first ten years of Sigmund Freud’s career were like a roving cocaine pep rally. He wrote cocaine prescriptions for his friends with headaches, nasal ailments, or just to “give [their] cheeks a red color.” He wrote cocaine-fueled love letters to his wife in which he referred to himself as a “wild man with cocaine in his blood.” Oh, and he also published a paper called On Coca, wherein the basic thesis was: Cocaine is freaking awesome. You should really think about trying some.
After one of his friends overdosed on the drug, Freud quietly folded up his cocaine pom-poms and sweater-skirt combo, and went on to found the theory that bears his name. But according to Freud biographer Louis Berger, it may also have played a part in the less-embarrassing second act of his career.
Why it makes sense
Apparently, before cocaine Freud was an emotionally sterile, socially awkward lab rat. Flash forward to a series of all-night cocaine benders in which Freud and his friend Fleischel stayed up all night discussing their “profoundest despair.”
Scarfreud 2: Freudface
This probably sounds familiar to anyone who’s been around people on the drug or has at least seen the movie Boogie Nights. Cocaine gives you a preternatural ability to talk about yourself, and according to Berger (who is a professor emeritus of psychoanalytic studies at the California Institute of Technology), it was responsible for Freud’s enthusiasm for discussing how you feel about your mother.
Before you go trying it . . .
Fleischel, the friend who sent Freud on the path toward psychoanalysis, was also the friend the drug ended up killing.
2. A COKE ADDICT MAKES A COKE-FLAVORED COLA AND CALLS IT COKE
Coca-Cola is the biggest brand in the history of the world. Sure, it’s mostly just soda water and sugar, but they sell about 400 billion cans of the stuff a year, an average of more than sixty cans to every single human being on the planet.
The drug: Coke has it right there in the name
When Coca-Cola was invented in the summer of 1885, sodas were advertised for their health benefits. Dr. Pepper got its name from the Texas physician who marketed it as a cure for impotence. Coca-Cola was able to stand out in the crowded market because its purported side effects weren’t total and utter bullshit.
John Pemberton, the Atlanta pharmacist who invented Coca-Cola, named it after the coca leaf, one of the ingredients he claimed cured everything from depression and nervousness to morphine addiction. If that sales pitch sounds familiar, congratulations, you could beat a chimpanzee in a game of memory. Coca is the leaf that produces cocaine, and like Freud, John Pemberton was a big fan.
Why it makes sense
Pemberton said he was convinced from “actual experiments that coca is the very best substitute for opium addicts.” Of course, he was speaking from personal experience, since he himself was a junky who used cocaine to kick