Use of Opioid and Stimulant Medications in the Czech Socialist Republic before the "Discovery" of the Clandestine Manufacturing of Locally-specific Stimulants and Opiates
Abstrakt
Apart from cannabis, methamphetamine (known locally as "pervitin") and heroin (or buprenorphine) are currently the most commonly used illegal drugs in the Czech Republic. Stimulants and opioids were used even before 1989, under the specific conditions of what was then Czechoslovakia ruled by a communist regime.
With hindsight, the "discovery" of the methods used for the clandestine manufacturing of pervitin (methamphetamine) and "brown" (a substance containing hydrocodone) in the mid-1970s, associated with a distinctive subculture of problem users, was a significant milestone. Nevertheless, both of these groups of substances were used before this landmark period.
Since the 1960s, as the pharmaceutical industry advanced, psychoactive medicinal products had become a significant part of the lifestyleof all strata of the population, similarly to the "traditional" alcohol. For the sake of simplification, this may be attributed to long-term replacement trends involving the quest for available substitutes for other drugs with the desired effects which were hard to get at the time (because of changes in legislation, for example).
This development followed both the imaginary stimulant (cocaine-Psychoton (R)-Yastyl(R)-Phenmetrazine(R)-pervitin) and opioid (Alnagon(R)/codeine-brown-heroin/buprenorphine) lines. Presenting the constituting developmental characteristics of the "pill" (and "alcohol") culture, we seek to point out that the sometimes narrowly conceived issue of (illicit) drug use should be approached in more contextual terms.
