Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria and Her Drug Use

Many drugs that are considered illegal or harmful for you today were viewed quite differently in the past. Victoria was no exception to this and is known to have taken some (completely acceptable at the time) substances to make living life a little easier.

Like in many Victorian households, opium (the main ingredient in heroin) was used by the Queen as a painkiller. She also used a variant of it called Laudanum, which is opium dissolved in alcohol.

She helped to popularise the use of chloroform in childbirth, which, as someone who produced eight children, she was quite fond of. She wrote in her journals that the drug was "delightful beyond measure!"

Nowadays when you think of marijuana, you might associate it with "stoners" and rappers. But, back in the day it was used by upper class women as medicine to treat menstrual cramps (period pains).

Another favourite drug of Queen Victoria's was cocaine. Now, Her Majesty was not sitting in her parlour snorting it up her nostrils and having a blast, she consumed it in the form of coke-laced chewing gum, which was marketed as "a powerful tonic to the muscular and nervous system." She is even said to have once shared her "coke gum" with a young Winston Churchill who was visiting Balmoral.

The Tudor Intruders (and more)

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Sources:

• "When Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill shared cocaine", Anecdotage Online.

• "Was Queen Victoria a drug addict?", Beardy History.