h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Very good stuff, I'm impressed.

Just one little quibble. As a chemist I'm a bit concerned with the line 'diluted morphine with acetyls'. What is that supposed to mean? It bears no relation to chemical reality

I think he means the reaction of morphine with acetic anhydride, which of course would give heroin.

Just an observation: codeine is converted to morphine in the body by an enzyme which 10% of people lack. That is why when I get one of my 'orrible 'eads, I take a couple of 'aspirates' instead of relying upon paracetamol/codeine mixtures. I am almost certainly one of the 10%, unfortunately


FM

Hello - good article, if a bit short. The problem with recreational drugs is, of course, that they work - they make people feel really, really good. We live in a really s**tty world though. Because these drugs offer such a sure-fire way of escaping from s**tty reality, they carry such a high risk of addiction. If your life sucks, as the lives of most people in our society do, would you not jump at every opportunity to escape from it? Escaping from the horrors of real life may in itself not be that bad, but a strategy of constant escapism only leads in the long run to real life becoming even worse, with reduced abilities to ameliorate and/or tolerate it, and that creates an even greater need for escapism, and so it goes. The people who manufacture and sell drugs of course capitalise as much as they can on this situation. From all of this escapism and degradation, some people in the world are becoming incredibly wealthy and powerful. I suspect that law enforcement will never be quite able to deal with this problem. I think education might work better, and if people in general had more constructive options available to them to improve their happiness. In many of the modern messes the only way 'out' is by using drugs. I include alcohol. I wonder if early death from the overconsumption of alcohol is counted as a form of suicide, how many suicides we would count in our world? Is it not suicide to retreat in an alcohol- or drug-induced bliss that terminates in an early death? How many people who 'fail', or are rejected, in our society end up like that?

Oh well ... I'm a bit of an idealist. I would really enjoy it if everybody in the world had sense in their heads. Such is not the case though... what makes sense to me does not make sense to others. Who's right? Who knows? I just wish we could have a world in which everybody could be healthy and happy.

Soothsaya.

Good posting, that. I especially agree with the bit about people really cashing in on other people's misery/addiction.

Oh, well. It behoves us all, then, to keep us and everybody else on their toes so we can watch out for the cash-grabbing baddies...

I still think that line should be changed to 'they acetylated morphine' as this is actually accurate and means something - the sentence I moaned about really is cobblers - chemistry wise.

I *do* like the article though.

OK, I've fixed this line now (I think). Can you just check it to see if it makes more sense?

Cheers.

That's fine now

Actually having read it I'm guessing that the term 'diluted with acetyls' may have been the term used in 1895 - they didn't know as much about it then as we do now.

Thanks for all the feedback, people.