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d rug, for the time being consider themselves the equals of their fellowmen, and
thus develop the peculiar rudeness of speech and roughness of behaviour, which
figures in Indian medical accounts of the effects of hemp intoxication as one of
the worst and most marked symptoms of excessive use of hemp. As this same
blunting of the sense of relativity leads sometimes to ridiculous behaviour on
the part of the intoxicated person, Indian gentlemen have therefore both
sub j ective and objective reasons for disliking the habit.
The result, therefore, is that those of good position who indulge in the
practice, itself harmless, of taking siddhi as a refreshment, will not admit the im-
peachment. The custom is not ‘good form, ' and therefore is certain to disappear
from polite society. The disrepute of the habit is thus an accretive quality, as
its abandonment by the classes in whom up-bringing and education breed self-
restraint tends to confine it more and more to the dissolute and depraved by whom
it is naturally taken in excess and, almost of necessity, abused.
An intoxicant substance when abused is generally employed with one of two
objects, and has always one of two results. It produces, whether the substance
used be of stimulant or narcotic nature, a state of intoxication beyond control, or
one of intoxication under control. In the case of habitual users of the intoxicant,
it is extremely rare for the one state to pass into the other. In the case of alcohol,
for example, the class of people who drink ‘freely,' that is, who induce a state
of intoxication under control, may be separated with the greatest precision from
t he cl ass of peopl e who dri nk ‘hard, ' t hat i s, who i nduce a st at e of i nt oxi cat i on not
under control. And it is well known that the ‘free-drinking' class is precisely
the one from which the hard-drinking class receives fewest recruits. The same is
t r ue i n t he case of hemp; and j ust as i n t he case of al cohol , t her e i s a t hi r d cl ass
that may be spoken of as that of ‘careless drinkers, ' so in the case of hemp there
i s a cl ass composed of ‘ car el ess user s. ' Fr om t hi s l ast cl ass, i n t he one case, as
in the other, the class that develops the habit of becoming grossly intoxi-
cated is, to some extent, recruited although in hemp-use, just as in the use of
alcohol, most of the cases where intoxication is pushed to a condition over which
the subject has no control indicate less the development of a habit than the
result of a mental defect.
This parallel, however, which it is of advantage to draw, since it enables
us to understand the use of the substance under consideration, must not be
pushed too far. For alcohol is a stimulating intoxicant narcosis, indeed, may
be induced, but it cannot be considered a common effect, even of an overdose,
and it is not to induce narcosis that the substance is employed. Hemp, on the
other hand, though a stimulant and though, as we shall see, employed even in its
intoxicant use for its stimulant properties, is essentially a narcotic, and is deli-
berately consumed to obtain its sedative effect. And, finally, while ‘hard-
drinking ' is never deliberate, the use of hemp, so that its extreme effects are
manifested, is sometimes perfectly intentional. Excessive drinking, in the
alcohol-habit, is always the result of accidental, hereditary, or acquired
deficiency of mental or moral control. The corresponding abuse of hemp is
doubtless occasionally of the same nature, but it is much oftener purposely
indulged in for specific purposes and from definite motives.
The use of hemp-leaves as an intoxicant to excess (but evidently, from
their accounts of it, in the way that ‘free-drinkers,' rather than ‘hard-drinkers,'
use alcohol) was that which impressed early European visitors to the east.
This use obtained, as was natural, mostly among the dissolute soldiers of
the time. The habit now prevails among the idle and dissolute in towns, but is
of little moment, except from the fact that it is the only stimulant that those
who may be called respectable idlers (people whose occupation renders them
idle) indulge in ; the idlers who are not respectable unfortunately prefer stronger
and more obnoxious stimulants, like spirits. The harm that is done to the
constitutions of those who habitually use hemp in this way is mainly the result
of the substance having to be drunk instead of smoked. The digestive system
is overtaxed by the labour of eliminating the narcotic, and its effects intensify
those of the sedentary nature of the subject's life ; indigestion follows, and
with its characteristic symptoms, a condition of impaired nutrition and vitality
is induced.
The deliberate abuse of hemp by drinking is indulged in by religious
mendicants to induce a state of frenzy supposed by the onlookers and by the