Markel (2011) An anatomy of additction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted and the miracle drug cocaine.

Freud began to use cocaine primarily mixed in water and also Vin Mariani (cocaine wine)

Then wrote his monograph Uber Coca. Freud’s (1885) account of cocaine as having benefits of clarity of thought and stamina, spurred on other writers and practitioners, including William Halsted the great American Surgeon.

During the 1880’s several pharmaceutical companies (Merck, Parke Davis) began wholesale import of cocaine and began to produce medicinal grade cocaine which Carl Koller (1884) had discovered was a great anesthetic for eye surgery.

During these “cocaine years” Freud also developed his close friendship with Wilhelm Fliess which began in 1887.

“Freud also dropped clues about a possible physical relationship. In a few letters, he referred to himself as a young woman; in another, when the two were about to meet for a “congress,” he remarked that his ‘temporal lobe [was] lubricated for reception’ and that he looked forward to the ‘introduction of a fertilizing stream.’ In another still, he eagerly awaited the ‘thrusts and pushes’ of their conversations but worried, ‘God alone knows the date of the next thrust’” (Markel, 2011, p. 170).