Is Widespread Drug Use to Thank for the Inventions of the Classical World?

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But what does all of this mean, if anything? The basic history and ideas based on texts from the ancient world are the same, whether we agree that drug use was widespread at the time or not. But, Hillman argues, drugs may have had  something to do with the incredible creativity we associate with the classical world:

The early Greek philosophers who inspired the mental revolution that influenced the birth of democracy were the biggest drug-using lunatics of them all. Seriously, they were much more like medicine men than philosophers. So not only did democracy spring up in a drug-using culture, but its roots lie in a drug-using, shamanistic, intellectual movement. I think it’s perfectly safe to say: “No drugs, no democracy.”

Sometimes the classical world seems overwhelming. The realization that they developed representative democracy and geometry and Christianity and cement and flush toilets thousands of years ago is astounding. How did they do it? Well, we don’t really know, but a lot of them were probably high.