Chapter 11

Plants That Can Harm

When scraped, the seedpod of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) oozes the white goo used to make opium. I have heard the seedpod, innocent in itself, called a container for the “dreams of the damned.” (CREDIT: TEUN SPAANS; CUT AND PHOTO MADE FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES)

As I was thinking about this book, I began to ask people, “Which five plants do you think have had the biggest impacts on human history?” Most came up with the primary plants used in agriculture. But a surprising number said cannabis and quite a few mentioned tobacco. Of course they were right—those plants, along with the opium poppy, coca, and others, including plants used to make alcoholic beverages, have indeed impacted tens of millions of human lives around the world. And so I decided that I wanted to talk about the plants behind the addictions that can lead to so much antisocial and self-destructive behavior.

Most of these plants have rich and noble histories, having been used as healing medicines or as part of traditional sacred rituals. The medicines derived from these plants, when used responsibly, can have very positive human benefits. Unfortunately they have been and are most terribly misused. So that, in the minds of many, the plants themselves are associated with drug and alcohol abuse. Yet in and of themselves the plants are innocent.

It was not until the nineteenth century that addictive substances such as heroin, cocaine, and mescaline were extracted from these plants, and for a while they were completely unregulated. They were perceived as medicinal, were prescribed by physicians, and could be bought anywhere. During the American Civil War, for example, morphine was freely administered to wounded soldiers, who were provided with a supply and syringes. And then, increasingly, such substances were used for “recreational” purposes, and the ugly scenario of drug addiction arrived. But it grew slowly and quietly: not until the early 1900s, when there were thousands of addicts worldwide, did countries gradually realize what had happened and introduce laws to try to deal with the problem.

The “War on Drugs,” which began with President Nixon in 1971, continues to be fought relentlessly as the US government persecutes and fights illegal drug use and sales within its borders. And of course the United States also offers military aid to collaborating countries, trying to reduce illegal drug trafficking into the United States. In Mexico today, armed conflict between rival drug cartels—as well as between the cartels and the Mexican government—has escalated. The illegal cannabis and cocaine markets in the United States are now completely dominated by drug cartels in Mexico.

I have never in my life experimented with any drugs. The thought of becoming addicted—to drugs or anything else—has always horrified me. But as an adolescent I read a good deal of poetry, and I was intrigued by those Romantic poets, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley, who became hopelessly addicted to opium. I used to fantasize about the dimly lit opium dens where intellectual young men lay around smoking pipes and translating their extraordinary experiences into writing. I wondered whether my imagination, stimulated by opium, would produce wonderful and original poetry. It was purely academic curiosity—there was no way I could have got ahold of opium even had I wanted to. Nor were these young men smoking opium, of course—they were taking laudanum (an herbal tincture that contained about 10 percent opium), as I later discovered.

Marijuana, of course, is much easier to obtain, but I was never tempted to even try a “joint.” Nor, to my knowledge, have I eaten a laced cookie. But hundreds of people I know have used “weed” at one time in their lives. And I know of so many families that have been torn apart by drug addiction.

Marijuana, Weed, Pot—Cannabis sativa

Cannabis originated in Central and South Asia, possibly first in the mountainous region northwest of the Himalayas. It has a very ancient history of ritual and recreational use. Archaeologists even found charred cannabis seeds in a third-millennium burial site belonging to the Kurgan people of Romania. For thousands of years it has been used in religious ceremonies in India and Nepal. And in 450 BC, Herodotus, that renowned Greek historian, described how it was inhaled as a vapor in religious rituals and also for personal pleasure: “They have also discovered a kind of plant whose fruit they use when they meet in groups… they get intoxicated from the smoke, and then they throw more fruit onto the fire and get even more intoxicated, until they eventually stand up and dance, and burst into song.”

A leather basket of leaf fragments and seeds was recently uncovered beside a shaman who was buried in China 2,700 years ago. And it is certain that it was widely used by traditional healers in India and other Eastern countries during British colonial times, especially for nausea and vomiting, the control of muscle spasms, and as a sedative and relaxant. An Irish physician who was working in India took note of this and other medical usages, and took some samples back to the United Kingdom. As a result of this “discovery,” cannabis became widely prescribed by physicians and sold in pharmacies throughout the English-speaking world, including America, during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Cannabis arrived in France by a different route. French scientists and scholars who accompanied the French army during the Napoleonic conquest of Egypt in 1809 took note of its psychoactive effects. They collected, in 1878, samples to send back to France, where many studies were made of the effect on users of smoking the drug, particularly on a group of writers and poets who maintained that it was “a route to aestheticism and self-realization.” That was one hundred years before similar observations were documented in America.

Although the use of cannabis as a recreational drug spread far and wide, its use by physicians dropped. Newer drugs that had longer shelf lives and more consistent quality gradually began to displace cannabis. In the early twentieth century, as countries started cracking down on the use of recreational drugs in general, the growing, possession, and use of cannabis was criminalized in many parts of the world. And this included its use for medicinal purposes.

Today there is a great deal of controversy over cannabis. As soon as one study concludes that there are few harmful effects, another study is published that contradicts it. Some argue that cannabis does not cause addiction and does not lead to the use of “hard” drugs, while others maintain that in certain situations this is not true.

However, whatever one concludes about the use of cannabis as a recreational drug (and I have to say I personally am not in favor), there is some evidence that it is helpful in alleviating symptoms in a number of different medical conditions. Thus medical trials indicate that it reduces neuropathic as well as cancer pain, improves appetite and caloric intake, and may relieve spasticity and pain in multiple sclerosis.

The controversy about the use of cannabis, for both medical and recreational purposes, is ongoing, but in the United States and the United Kingdom there is mounting pressure on governments to legalize its use. Already several US states have legalized its medical use, and Colorado and Washington both legalized recreational marijuana in their November 2012 elections. Nonetheless, in most of the United States and throughout the United Kingdom, possession of marijuana is still a criminal act that can lead to serious legal consequences.

Meanwhile, cannabis has become a highly lucrative black-market cash crop. As a result of the frequent raids on marijuana crops in the United States, growers began to cultivate the plant indoors, where there was less likelihood of detection by the authorities. The renowned botanist Michael Pollan, who wrote the foreword to this book, vividly spells out the consequences of indoor cultivation in his book The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World. Suddenly marijuana growing was put into the hands of botanist types who were willing to monitor the plants obsessively while using advanced technology and state-of-the-art grow rooms to ensure the most optimal growing conditions and highest potency levels. And so, he concludes, “It stands out as one of the richer ironies of the drug war that the creation of a powerful new taboo against marijuana led directly to the creation of a powerful new plant.”

In the United Kingdom there was a recent exposé of the methods of illegal marijuana growers. They rent apartments in the less respectable areas of town, revamp the interiors so that, in essence, they become indoor greenhouses, and then, before they can be discovered, they move on, leaving no address and no way for the landlord to recover the cost of expensive reconstruction.

Before we leave the subject of cannabis, I want to emphasize the difference between hemp and recreational marijuana. The subspecies grown for industrial hemp contains between 0.3 and 1 percent of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—the psychoactive ingredient that makes marijuana appealing to users—whereas the species grown for recreational marijuana has as much as 2 to 60 percent THC. Moreover, the marijuana plant has low fiber content, whereas hemp is very rich in fiber content.

At one time hemp was grown widely in America and in other parts of the world, and for many different purposes. However, because of its association with cannabis, it became illegal to grow it in the United States—although recently certain states and individuals are working to change the law. This is because the often-maligned and even demonized hemp is, in fact, one of the most helpful of plants to humans, and can be used for many different products, such as rope, clothing, bricks, and oil extracts. It’s also one of the best of the “mop crops”—a kind of plant that actually absorbs toxins from the environment and can be used to clean up polluted areas.

The Opium Poppy—Papaver somniferum

Beautiful and dangerous, but with many healing gifts for us, the opium poppy originated in India. It is harvested when the seedpod has reached full size but is still green. When the pod is scraped, a white latex oozes out. This is removed and dried, and it is this final goo-like product that is known as opium. A friend of mine told me that he heard the seedpod described as a container for the “dreams of the damned.” Opium has up to 12 percent morphine, and it is from the morphine that heroin—with twice the potency of opium—has been produced. Codeine is another derivative of morphine.

The opium poppy has been cultivated—for medicinal, ritual, and food purposes—from Neolithic times. Opium poppy seeds dating from about 5500 BC have been found at archaeological sites in western and central Europe. The use of opium in ancient Egypt is mentioned in the Ebers and Smith Papyri of 1550 BC. The Egyptians used it, in very small doses, as a sedative for infants, especially during teething. They even made it into a wine for adult pleasure. According to the Venetian physician Prosper Alpinus, who traveled to Egypt in 1591, it was called “cretic wine” and was flavored with pepper and hot aromatics.

Opium was also used for medical purposes in Europe until the years of the Inquisition, in the twelfth century, when everything that came from “the Orient” was suspect, and the use of opium was discontinued for two hundred years. As it was the only anesthetic known at the time, this must have resulted in much suffering. When it was finally reintroduced into Europe, in 1527, for medicinal purposes, it was widely and enthusiastically prescribed for all manner of conditions, including sleeplessness, diarrhea, and pain relief, especially during surgery.

By the 1700s physicians in England began prescribing laudanum—an alcoholic herbal preparation containing varying amounts of opium (often cheaply imported from the East)—for almost every condition under the sun. It was mixed with just about everything, including coral, ground-up bits of Egyptian mummies, cloves, saffron, honey, licorice, and benzoic acid. Because it was prescribed so frequently, and for such a plethora of ailments, many people became addicted.

Among the many Romantic writers and musicians who became addicted to opium were Lord Byron, Shelley, Keats, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, and Brahms—the list is very long. And at least some of them acquired the habit after taking laudanum medicinally. Thomas De Quincey’s famous autobiographical book, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, was widely read. In it he explains how the drug, which had been prescribed for excruciating intestinal pains, became addictive and gradually destroyed him. I found it very harrowing to read.

In fact, the use of processed opium as a drug, in one form or another, predates written history. It was introduced to China, most likely by an Arab trader, probably in AD 400, but not used as a recreational drug until the fifteenth century. At first almost no one could afford it, but the British East India Company became active in the 1600s and eventually began to import opium from India. Soon it was being smoked in pipes, mixed with tobacco—the term pipe dream was first coined to refer to the fantasies that arose from smoking these pipes. Gradually more and more people became addicted, and during the late 1700s, the emperor of China tried to prohibit its import and use.

An opium den in Manila’s Chinatown somewhere between 1900 and 1920. The clothing and hairstyles of the smokers identify them as ethnic Chinese. Under their “bed” is a cache of equipment, including four opium pipes and two opium lamps. The horrors of opium addiction were not fully understood until the early twentieth century—and by then there were thousands of hopelessly addicted, lost souls throughout many parts of the world. (CREDIT: COURTESY OF THE STEVEN MARTIN COLLECTION/ASIAN AMERICAN COMPARATIVE COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO)

The British, however, were not prepared to give up such a profitable business, and found ways to smuggle the drug into the country. Eventually the emperor ordered all opium in the country destroyed. The British continued to bring in the drug, and relations between China and Britain became increasingly hostile. This led to the First Opium War, in 1839–42.

The conflict ended with the Chinese signing a treaty that was not at all to their benefit, and they found ways to ignore its terms. Eventually this led to the Second Opium War, 1856–60. The treaty that ended this second conflict plunged the Chinese into what has been described as “a century of humiliation.” By the 1880s, 6,500 metric tons of opium per year were being imported into China and countless hundreds of her citizens were addicted.

It never occurred to me, when I was learning about those wars at school, how utterly shocking and horrifying it all was. The British government was not only condoning the pushing and smuggling of drugs, it was actively engaged in the trade—a sort of monstrous nineteenth-century drug cartel operating proudly under the British flag. But, of course, the horrors of addiction were not realized—not until the early twentieth century was the true effect of addiction understood and laws put in place, in many countries, to regulate its use.

Now, as we all know, the main area of conflict is Afghanistan, but it’s a very different kind of conflict from those opium wars. The cultivation of opium poppies in the region provides income for hundreds of farmers. In 2000, the growing of opium poppies was banned by the Taliban, which led to a dramatic decline in opium production. But after their withdrawal, cultivation gradually increased, despite the efforts of America and the United Kingdom to encourage the growing of alternative crops.

It is grown in other countries too—legally and illegally. A friend of mine, Michael Watts, told me that recently he was with a group of people walking in the foothills of Mount Sinai on the Sinai Peninsula. They passed a field of beautiful flowers and some members of the group started walking in that direction, wanting to photograph them. Their guide became extremely agitated. “He caught my eye,” said Michael. “He wanted to stop everyone but didn’t know what to say. So I said, ‘Tell them!’ ” The guide then pointed out the men with guns guarding the field. It was a crop of opium poppies!

Coca—Erythroxylum coca

Coca is a small evergreen bush native to western South America. It was domesticated in pre-Columbian times and has been cultivated for its leaves for a thousand years. The leaves are picked for the first time when the plant is three years old, and from then on it is harvested, mostly by women, three times a year.

From pre-Inca times until the present, coca has played an important part in the religious ceremonies of the Andean tribes. The Incas believed that coca was of divine origin. Even after the decline of the Incas, it was still so highly revered that before planting their fields, farmers would invite a shaman to hold a ceremony, which involved chewing coca leaves and sometimes playing music.

A friend of mine, Christin Jones, was participating in an archaeology dig at a site called Tiwanaku in Bolivia. She told me, “Before we could break ground, a shaman had to come to perform a ceremony. He used coca leaves to predict the success of our dig.” Christin said she “sat around chewing coca leaves” along with the rest of the local community while the Aymara women spun yarn to wrap around a llama fetus, which was then burned as a sacrifice to Pachamama, Mother Earth.

Many people in Peru carry coca leaves with them, keeping them in little bags, often exquisitely woven. The leaves should be dried for at least three days before using. Leaves are chewed, sometimes with a little bicarbonate of soda to increase their stimulating effect. Or they may be made into an infusion of coca-leaf tea.

Initially the Spanish invaders forbade the use of coca, but then, realizing it would enable them to get more work out of their slaves, it was routinely issued to them. Coca can also be used as an anesthetic and for relieving the pain of headaches, wounds, and other ailments. Sharing leaves symbolizes solidarity among friends and partners—the Andean people sit around drinking coca tea just as we sit down for afternoon tea in England. Well, some of us still do.

In the mid-nineteenth century, soon after cocaine had been isolated from coca leaves in 1859, a variety of “coca wines” were produced in the United States and Europe and became very popular. They were sold as tonics and were appreciated by, among others, the actress Sarah Bernhardt, Queen Victoria, Thomas Edison, and Pope Leo XIII. The original Coca-Cola was among the early tonics. About this time the Dutch successfully developed coca plantations in Java, and the Japanese in Formosa (Taiwan), but efforts by other European countries to grow this plant in their colonies were not very successful.

With the isolation of cocaine from coca leaves, the story of the coca plant, once held sacred by the people of the land from which it originated, turned rather grim. The ensuing problems with drug addiction and drug smuggling caused coca to be viciously attacked (along with opium poppies and cannabis) in the War on Drugs. From 2000 on, fields of coca plants were sprayed repeatedly with toxic herbicides from planes. By 2004 the large-scale coca-growing fields had been more or less destroyed (except for those in northern Peru that produce coca leaves for the Coca-Cola company), but the overall cultivation of coca had not decreased. Instead farmers simply moved to harder-to-find places and planted again. They had few cash-crop alternatives, and they became increasingly desperate as their own food crops were eliminated along with the coca by the deadly rain of toxic chemicals. Which, of course, has had deadly consequences for the environment as a whole.

Meanwhile the violence between the government and FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the “People’s Army”) increased, as did the power of the drug traffickers and cartels. In 2008 the United Nations monitoring body, which is clearly influenced by United States policies, asked the governments of Bolivia and Peru to abolish all use of coca (including chewing leaves), and to make it a criminal offense to be in possession of coca leaves. This directive was not well received. In fact, one legislator in Peru stood up and defiantly chewed a handful of leaves during a session of Congress—dozens of politicians followed suit. I would love to have been a fly on the wall!

How ironic that these plants, used for healing during hundreds of years, should lead to so much violence, desperation, poverty, and death. And that a plant that in itself is incapable of harming people should be existing under a death sentence.

It is good news for the Andeans that President Evo Morales of Bolivia won a major victory when, in January 2013, the United Nations accepted coca-leaf chewing. Peru and Venezuela are also defending the traditional use of coca, and fighting orders from the UN’s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) to ban its cultivation and to destroy all wild plants. And it is good news also for Erythroxylum coca itself.

The Peyote Cactus—Lophophora williamsii

In 1956, during the year I spent working in London just before I went to Africa, I met an artist—a real Chelsea artist, who often wore a smock. Charles was always very neat, with artistically long hair in a pageboy bob. He confided to me that he was taking part in an “experiment” to learn about the effects of mescaline—a substance I now know is extracted from a cactus. He never told me for whom he worked. In his studio, and under supervision, he would take a dose of a specified strength, and the effect on his painting was subsequently analyzed.

He told me that once when he had been looking at a square box, it suddenly became completely flat, like a tablemat. Colors became extraordinarily vivid and intense, and he saw recurring patterns of stripes, spheres, and dots of many brilliant shades. It reminded me of a book I read by Aldous Huxley, who described what he experienced under the influence of mescaline as “animated stained glass illuminated from light coming through eyelids.”

Mescaline is a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid found in small amounts in some plants of the bean family, but mainly in several species of cactus—the San Pedro (Echinopsis pachanoi), the Peruvian Torch (E. peruviana), and especially peyote (Lophophora williamsii), which has been used by Mexico’s Native Americans in religious ceremonies for more than three thousand years.

When I was in Mexico, I was told how mescaline was extracted from the peyote cactus. First the cactus is cut down to ground level. The taproot then grows a new “head”—which is cut off and dried. I was shown one of the disk-shaped buttons. This head may be chewed, or soaked to make a drink. As it is very bitter, it is often ground into a powder and put into capsules so that you can get the effect without tasting it.

Peyote has been used medicinally in many different contexts by several Native American cultures. The Tarahumara of northwest Mexico held long-distance races from village to village, sometimes running fifty miles. They would chew peyote and rub it on their legs for the purpose of strengthening them and also protecting them from evil forces. The long-distance runners of northwest Mexico’s Tepehuán people did the same. The Kiowa people, who were indigenous to the Great Plains, used peyote to treat flu, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, and venereal diseases. And it has also been used to alleviate pain from toothache and in childbirth, and for treating skin disease, rheumatism, diabetes, and blindness.

Tobacco—Nicotiana spp.

Even though I have never smoked cigarettes, I have some very personal connections to tobacco. My first husband died of his addiction—from emphysema, which is a very unpleasant way to go. In the end he had to smoke—it made him cough and cough, the only way to rid his lungs of the nasty deposit of phlegm. Furthermore, the tobacco farming that began in Tanzania in 1984 has destroyed vast areas of open forest. To the south of Gombe I have seen the devastation, some of it in what was once prime chimpanzee habitat, and the same destruction of forests is true in other areas around the world.

The tobacco plant itself is, of course, as blameless as all the other plants in this chapter. Yet even though I know this, I somehow cannot help disliking it—the commercially grown version, that is. And it doesn’t help that this plant is in the nightshade family, since I instantly think of deadly nightshade. Poor, innocent tobacco plant—I’m sorry!

Let me hasten to add that my illogical feeling of disapproval definitely does not extend to the wild tobacco plants. Among the indigenous peoples of the Americas tobacco has, for hundreds of years, been used in sacred ceremonies—as it still is—for it is believed to have many healing properties. The natives of Central and South America sometimes used tobacco as snuff to “clear the head” or simply to chew. Of course tobacco was also smoked in elaborately decorated pipes of many sizes and shapes. It was also used as a panacea for all kinds of medical conditions, including fevers, skin burns, insect bites, “diseases of glands in the neck,” and eye soreness, and is even still used today as a paste for teeth whitening!

In North America the use of tobacco was similar. It was held sacred by many of the indigenous peoples and, in one way or another, played a role in most major life events, from birth to burial—as it does to this day. Some tribes planted it separately from other crops and there were special rituals for sowing and harvesting. It is thought to be a gift from the Creator and that the smoke takes thoughts and prayers to heaven.

An important ceremony for many North American tribes is the smoking of the peace pipe, sharing the smoke between the individual making the smoke and those receiving it. The smoking of a peace pipe would symbolically seal a treaty or pact to end war with another tribe.

Sometimes tobacco is given as an offering to Mother Earth, placed on the ground or beside sacred rocks or trees. And as we saw in the last chapter, a traditional healer may leave tobacco as an offering to the spirit of a plant before returning to take it, or part of it, for medicine.

A twist of tobacco is almost always a component of the medicine bag, a small leather pouch containing various sacred items. I have been gifted with a few of these pouches by Native American friends. I have been told that tobacco is the one object common to all medicine bags—but I cannot know for sure, because it is not permitted to look inside.

Legend has it that the very first person to bring tobacco to Europe, in 1493, was Ramón Pane, who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage. But the plant was named for Jean Nicot, a French ambassador to Portugal, who sent tobacco leaves back to the French court as medicine—and subsequently popularized it as snuff. Another story relates how Sir Walter Raleigh advocated the smoking of this “weed” in pipes in the British court. When he first began smoking, it is said that a manservant, entering the room and seeing his master wreathed in smoke, rushed for a pail of water with which he doused the unfortunate smoker! Soon, though, pipe smoking became fashionable at court—even Queen Elizabeth I was persuaded to try it.

Gradually, throughout the seventeenth century, the habit of smoking pipes spread through all of Europe. The demand increased, and this led to the proliferation of huge plantations in the southern United States.

The Arrival of “Cancer Sticks”

The commercial production of cigarettes, appropriately nicknamed “cancer sticks,” began in South America. In 1853 one Luis Susini designed a machine that could produce 3,600 “cigarets” per hour, and set up the very first factory in Cuba. By 1945 cigarettes were in mass production, with machines that could turn out eight thousand per minute. Thus the stage was set for the growth of a multibillion-dollar industry that would compromise the health of hundreds of thousands of people around the world. And, incidentally, that of the countless dogs used in unnecessary tests designed to prove that inhaled cigarette smoke can be harmful—as was abundantly clear from clinical observations of people.

Some recent statistics from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report reveal that tobacco causes more deaths each year in America than the combined deaths from motor-related injuries, murders, suicides, alcohol use, illegal drugs, and HIV infections. In fact, the CDC cites a startling statistic: each year one in every five deaths in the United States can be attributed to cigarette smoking. And, rather horribly, even the health of those who breathe in the smoke of others may be compromised.

One of the most vivid descriptions of the harmful nature of tobacco was written by Britain’s King James I in 1604:

In my opinion there cannot be a more base, and yet hurtfull, corruption in a Countrey, then is the vile vse (or other abuse) of taking Tobacco in this Kingdome… A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse.

How ironic that Jamestown, the birthplace of the New World tobacco plantations, was named for him.

Alcohol

Alcoholic beverages can be made out of many plants, though in the Western world we are most familiar with those made from hops, grains, and grapes. In Asia rice is often used, and in Africa it is millet, bananas, and the sap of palm trees. I have tried almost all of them.

My mother, Vanne, maintained that a little drink in the evening was medicinal: after a hard day’s work it served to change the mood, enable one to relax, and clear the mind of daytime worries. She could not drink wine—it simply did not agree with her. Her “poison” was whiskey—meaning Scottish whisky, or Scotch, as Americans call it—and she liked to have, each evening, a little “tot.” That is a “shot” in America, a “wee dram” in Scotland.

So it became a tradition: wherever I was in the world, at around seven p.m., I would try to get ahold of some kind of a drink (water would do, in a pinch!) and raise my glass to Vanne and the family. Thus, over the miles, we toasted one another, and each felt better. My sister and I kept up this family tradition even after Vanne’s death. We were fantasizing one evening, Judy and I, and imagining Vanne up on some beautiful white fluffy cloud, where angels played harps and everywhere beautiful flowers bloomed.

“And I bet,” said Judy, “that if there is any whisky up there, Mum will have got ahold of a glass.” Other family members have joined Vanne on the cloud, and friends and their loved ones, and of course my dog Rusty and my chimpanzee friend David Greybeard. And so, with a growing number of people around the world, I raise my glass each evening in a toast to “The Cloud Contingent.” Silly, perhaps, but somehow immensely comforting.

As for the therapeutic value of the little drink in the evening, several scientific studies have shown that people who drink lightly live longer than those who do not drink at all. The problem is that sometimes when people are under stress, one drink doesn’t do the trick. Better have another. Maybe the worries are still there, so why not a third? This is the path to alcoholism. And, alas, addiction to alcohol is only too common.

The Grapevine

At one time there were two large glass conservatories attached to the back of The Birches, leading onto the garden. One of them was a place to sit where all the sun’s rays were captured through walls and roof so that it was warm in winter. The other served as a sort of greenhouse—festooned with Uncle Eric’s grapevine. Alas, the grapes never developed into juicy, delicious fruits, but remained small, undeveloped, and far too sour to eat.

When bombs fell close by during World War II, the glass was cracked, and sadly both conservatories had to be dismantled. But Judy has planted a new grapevine, in memory of Uncle Eric. It is an outdoor plant and obtains its nourishment not from the poor Birches soil but from a richer and more suitable soil imported and placed in a tub. It is three years old now, and last year, Judy says, the fruits were large and sweet.

We know that wine was made in ancient Egypt—there are hieroglyphics that record the cultivation of the grape there. And the ancient Greeks, Phoenicians, and Romans all grew vines and drank wine. From there the cultivation of the grape spread throughout Europe. Grapes can be black, purple, crimson, dark blue, yellow, green, orange, or pink. They have been cultivated for winemaking all over the world where the conditions are right—they need warm, sunny days for the ripening, and sharp frosts in winter.

Until quite recently the wine snobs believed that the only wine worth drinking came from French vineyards. Gradually, though, the vineyards of other countries have built up their own reputations. The first sustainable vineyard in California was planted at a mission under the direction of the Franciscan Father Junípero Serra. Subsequently he established seven others at different missions, and became known as the Father of California Wine.

There are many species of grapes of the Vitis genus across North America, most of which, until recently, were not considered suitable for wine. But today many of these grapes are grown for wine throughout the United States.

Tanzania has been making efforts to cultivate grapes for good wine in the Dodoma region for many years. Benedictine monks were producing Bihawana wine by the 1970s. Derek and I used to buy it sometimes—it was more like port, but very good. But the Dodoma wines grown in the same region (both red and white) were hit-or-miss affairs. Sometimes one was lucky, but some bottles actually gave people hallucinations—and terrible hangovers. Perhaps the menu at a safari lodge, sometime in the seventies, sums it up best: “This Dodoma wine has all the subtlety of a charging rhino.” I am still puzzling about the meaning. And no—I did not try it! More recently Cetewico, another brand from the same region, has come onto the market and is apparently very good. I shall have to buy some and try for myself.

Hops—Humulus lupulus

My father didn’t really like wine, and he hated spirits—his drink was “bitter,” the English term for pale ale. He taught me to appreciate the British way of pouring the beer that resulted in a big “head” of foam. In 1956 I worked as a waitress at the Hawthorns Hotel in Bournemouth in order to save money for my fare to Africa. The doorman always used to offer me the opportunity to suck up this foam from the top of his lunchtime pint. I didn’t actually like it much, but never had the heart to tell him.

The British like their beer room temperature. My second husband, Derek, hated the American custom of cold beer and used to ask his host to warm it in the microwave!

Malt is an important ingredient in most beers, with the female flower clusters of hops (a member of the cannabis family) being an essential component. Hops are herbaceous perennial plants native to the Northern Hemisphere. Whenever I went to stay with a friend in Kent during my summer holidays, I used to pass field after field of hops, rows and rows of plants trained to climb posts and grow along rope lattices in precise green lines. In the autumn the plants retreat into rhizomes.

Hops originated in China, where they may have first been cultivated. In the eighth and ninth centuries AD they were being grown in Bavaria and other parts of Europe. The first documented use of the plant as a “bittering” agent in the making of beer is in the eleventh century—before the use of the hop, breweries used other plants, such as dandelions, burdock root, marigold, and heather, to counteract the sweetness of the malt.

Homemade Beverages

I used to stay with a friend in Kigoma who bought grapes grown around Dodoma in Tanzania, and fermented them in huge barrels in the guest room. I would hear strange noises of bubbling—rather like Macbeth’s witches—“bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.” I don’t remember, though, ever tasting the wine that resulted! Dodoma grapes are tiny, with a skin that is dark purple, very thick, and very sour—so I always bite a hole in it first and squish the fruit out into my mouth. The flesh itself is sweet and delicious, but it has very, very many seeds.

Of course, all kinds of other plants are used in East Africa to make alcoholic drinks, or “pombe”—it depends on the area and what grows there. In some places pombe is made from millet seeds. In the villages around Gombe in the Kigoma region of Tanzania, one kind of small, very sweet banana is the preferred ingredient—the fruits are fermented in great pits. And when I first arrived in Kenya back in 1957, the staff on my friend’s farm would make a potent brew from wheat, which was placed to ferment in bottles in the heat of the hay in the barn. Unfortunately, the brew sometimes overheated and exploded. If anyone heard it, the guys were in trouble, for making pombe was strictly illegal in those days. And I used to worry that the horses might swallow slivers of glass.

In many parts of Central and West Africa the local drink of choice is palm wine. This is often made from the wild date palm, but also from the fermented sap of the coconut palm—sap was taken from trees in our garden in Dar es Salaam for this purpose. And in the Republic of the Congo, where JGI has a sanctuary for orphan chimpanzees, it is made from the fermented sap of the oil palm.

As in all the African countries where we seek to conserve chimpanzees and their forests, it is important to improve the standard of living of villagers in the area and encourage them to start environmentally sustainable projects. And sometimes—as when we opened a small schoolroom in the village of Mpili—we join the villagers for a celebration. On that occasion everyone gathered together in a large clearing, the elders and “VIPs” sitting on benches under a thatched awning.

I was there with JGI project manager Victor de la Torre Sans and we sat, glasses of palm wine in hand, awaiting some words from the chief. He made a short speech thanking us for our contribution. I made a short speech thanking them for all their help. And then, very solemnly and before drinking, we poured a few drops of our palm wine onto the ground—for the ancestors. After that the party began. I had been warned that I would not like the local brew, but I found it quite delicious.

When the Sacred Gets Co-opted

Plants have played a major role in healing and in sacred ceremonies. But alas, the greed and commercialism of the modern world has changed everything. To become rich and powerful, the drug barons will go to any lengths to obtain and push their products, which today are often chemical compounds extracted from the original plants. The corporate greed machine uses any method to advertise and sell its goods, urging teenagers onto the wrong path with corrupting advertising and cheap, often harmful, alcoholic beverages. For years the cigarette was a sex symbol, the pipe a sign of tough manliness.

How tragic that people are killed in the drug wars by bullets as well as by overdose. That there are those who, like my first husband, Hugo, die coughing up their lungs. And how terribly unfortunate that the plants themselves are so often considered the “enemy”—to be eradicated whenever possible. Poor, innocent plants. And when they are uprooted and sprayed, the entire environment is damaged.

We must just hope that somehow the triple evils of drug addiction, alcohol addiction, and nicotine addiction can be tackled at their source and that the plants can be left in peace.