Who hasn’t taken an aspirin? For a headache, the flu, or a common cold, we have all swallowed a pill or sipped an effervescent aspirin at some point. This substance is so everyday and ubiquitous that few know its true name, and almost no one considers it a drug.
ASPIRIN BETTER THAN SALICIN?
As seen in the Bayer advertisement we reproduce in this article, aspirin was marketed with the subtitle: “The substitute for salicylates, pleasant to the taste, without unpleasant side effects.” The “pleasant to the taste” part is a matter of opinion, even if our mothers always gave us aspirin crushed and mixed with water and sugar. The truth is that all alkaloids (nitrogenous substances) are bitter, both aspirin and salicin, which is why willow bark tea is prepared with honey or sugar. As for the unpleasant side effects, the most impatient patients soon began to complain of stomach aches.
ASPIRIN IS MORE TOXIC THAN HEROIN
Aspirin can be fatal for adults starting at seven grams (Escohotado 1992)—that is, 14 aspirins in a row, since each contains half a gram of acetylsalicylic acid. The distance between a curative dose and a lethal dose is called the safety margin. If this margin is narrow, the substance is said to be highly toxic. The safety margin for aspirin is 1 to 20, while for pure heroin, it widens to 1 to 30. For those tempted to object by saying, “heroin is addictive, aspirin isn’t,” they should do their research first. There have been recorded cases of aspirin habituation since the mid-20th century, and I know people who swallow several aspirins every day to relieve their ailments, unable to stop using them. Both substances, aspirin and heroin, relieve chronic pain and suffering, which is why some patients find it impossible to stop their use.
UNPLEASANT SIDE EFFECTS
Every drug has its downside and its pleasant side; it is unscientific and childish to pretend that heroin is “bad” and aspirin is “good”—so good that it isn’t even a drug, but a “medicine” you can get at any bar. If it is as harmless as some believe, why do many users complain of stomach pain? Because aspirin causes the stomach to bleed, which is why it is contraindicated in cases of ulcers. According to the aspirin package insert, frequent adverse effects include: gastrointestinal disorders such as gastric ulcer, duodenal ulcer, gastrointestinal bleeding, abdominal pain, gastric discomfort, nausea, vomiting, and difficulty breathing. Gastric discomfort can affect up to 10–30% of patients at doses > 3.6 g/day, and up to 90% in patients with pre-existing peptic ulcers or hemorrhage. The incidence is lower if the drug is taken with food, milk, or anti-ulcer medications. Gastric hemorrhage is generally painless and can lead to anemia due to occult blood loss in the stool. Its severity is related to the dose of the drug and stomach pH (hipocrates.com).
On the other hand, the use of pure, pharmaceutical-grade heroin—while it was legal, pure, and “cheap”—did not cause any public order problems, crime, or health issues; its biggest drawback is that it causes annoying constipation (Escohotado 1992, Usó 1996, Ott 2000). Clinical studies showed that two-thirds of healthy volunteers given pure heroin did not feel the urge to repeat, while those suffering from pain or distress would cling to anything—be it aspirin, “aspiri-heroin,” or the warm arms of the neighbor (a healer neighbor, for example).
Official medicine has denied any therapeutic utility to heroin (=diacetylmorphine) since 1932 (when it was removed from Spanish pharmacies) for being “addictive and toxic,” while generously prescribing tons of codeine (=methylmorphine) for coughs. The Bayer ads were right to subtitle heroin as “the sedative for coughs”: 5 milligrams (0.005 g) is enough to suppress an acute coughing fit, whereas using methylmorphine (codeine) requires taking six times as much: 30 mg. For the sake of efficiency and to avoid flooding the body with unnecessary amounts of drugs, it would be better to use the most effective substance at the lowest possible dose: heroin is better than codeine, aspirin, acetaminophen, cafiaspirin, or mixtures of some of them.
Continuing with aspirin, besides causing bleeding in the stomach lining, the most dangerous aspect of this drug is Reye’s syndrome, a condition that usually appears in children between 4 and 12 years old with serious outcomes that can lead to fatal coma, intolerance, allergy, or hypersensitivity to acetylsalicylic acid, which has led to aspirin no longer being administered to children under 16 to mask flu symptoms. Aspirin can cause, in vitro, chromosomal breaks in lymphocytes (Ott 2000), as happens with caffeine and many other substances.
Faced with the disenchantment with this acid that promised to be the semi-synthetic substitute for the natural salicylates contained in willow bark, laboratories opted to change the formula of traditional aspirin and halve the acetylsalicylic acid content, from one gram to the half-gram of today’s aspirin. In some cases, they add 50 mg of caffeine, creating a kind of pharmaceutical “speedball”: cafiaspirin, a stimulant with a sedative-analgesic. Recently, traditional aspirin has changed its formula to a substance called acetaminophen. A vain attempt to make a healthier aspirin: acetaminophen hits the liver hard; it is a thousand times more hepatotoxic than alcohol (Ott 2000), which is saying a lot. Why don’t we go back to the natural willow bark tea?
WHITE WILLOW: NATURAL SALICIN
The white willow (Salix alba) is a tree up to 25 meters (82 feet) tall, with ascending branches forming a canopy. It is common in our lands and very cheap in herbal shops. Both the bark and the leaves contain salicin, which is very easy to extract: just boil it in water for 3 minutes and let it steep for twenty minutes (Vázquez 2002). Although they say salicin has less activity than aspirin (Font 2000), it has been enough for us to overcome more than one flu, and without damaging our delicate stomach as aspirin does. On the contrary, willow wine is drunk before lunch and dinner to calm stomach spasms, heartburn, and rheumatism. Its preparation is simple: leave 70 grams of willow bark in a liter of white wine, claret, or sherry for 15 to 90 days (depending on the author; Vázquez 2002; Font 2000), stirring the bottle often, then filter the wine and store it. Taking a small glass with meals is enough. Paradoxes of pharmacology: while aspirin often causes stomach pain, salicin relieves it. Willow bark tea, sweetened with rosemary honey, besides lowering fever and eliminating general flu malaise, cheers and warms the body, relieving neuralgia, rheumatism, diarrhea, fevers, painful periods, anxiety, and insomnia; there is no possible comparison to swallowing a sad pill. And yet, the lazy and those who cannot tolerate the taste of herbal teas will prefer—like astronauts and pill-popping gang members—pharmaceutical drugs: effervescent aspirin, cafiaspirin, acetaminophen… Give me a bit of opium and forget the pharmacies.
OPIUM: THREE IN ONE
If you have a cold, fever, general malaise, and a cough, you can fatten the pharmacist, who will give you aspirin or acetaminophen to lower the fever, and a syrup with codeine or DXM (dextromethorphan, a synthetic opiate) for the cough. In the end, they lower your fever but ruin your stomach; the cough disappears, but they make you swallow a “fake” syrup, and your body looks like a dumping ground for medicinal substances. The good way was the old way, when everyone grew opium poppies (Papaver somniferum) in their garden, which, when cut or scratched, oozes a milky liquid: opium. It stops coughs, fever, flu aches, general malaise, and almost any kind of pain or suffering. And it is enough to place a pea-sized ball of opium under the tongue. Given that opium is illegal and difficult to obtain, I usually resort to a natural, legal, cheap opiate very famous in the Netherlands: kratom in resin or dried leaves (Mitragyna speciosa), an Asian shrub we already discussed in issue #46 of SPANNABIS MAGAZINE (March 2008).
But do we have to get high every time we have a simple common cold or the flu? Not always, of course. I try not to take anything the first day; only if the cough prevents me from sleeping do I get high… therapeutically, of course. According to hygienists, drugs only mask symptoms; they do not cure the flu, which will last a couple of weeks whether you take anything or not. On the other hand, fever is a natural process of raising body temperature to kill pathogenic bacteria. Fever should only be lowered if it is very high, or in weakened people, the elderly, or small children (Landaburu 1989; Vázquez 2002). Dr. Eneko Landaburu’s equation seems like common sense (the least common of the senses): too much activity + insufficient rest = exhaustion. And this exhaustion lowers the body’s defenses to the soles of your shoes, and then someone next to you sneezes and you’ve caught the bug. The best thing is to rest, drink juices, plenty of water, and if the cough and fever are bothersome—if you’ll pardon the pun—a willow or poppy tea and… a light sleep: tomorrow you will be better. Heroin was prescribed in Spanish pharmacies for 34 years: from 1898 to 1932 without any problems. It was its prohibition that caused deaths by poisoning/adulteration, astronomical price hikes, gang wars, smuggling, police corruption, irrational abusive consumption, etc. Opium is the aspirin of a lifetime; acetylsalicylic acid is a fad that will pass.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Escohotado, Antonio. 1992. Para una fenomenología de las drogas. Mondadori. Madrid.
Font Quer, Pío. 2000. Plantas Medicinales. Península. Barcelona. Second edition.
http://hipocrates.com/ Interesting database on medicinal drugs.
Landaburu, Dr. Eneko. 1989. Curarse uno mismo sin los peligros de los medicamentos. Sumendi. Bilbao.
Ott, Jonathan. 2000. Pharmacotheon. Los libros de la liebre de marzo. Barcelona.
Usó, Juan C. 1996. Drogas y cultura de masas (España 1855-1995). Taurus. Madrid.
Vázquez Molina, G. 2002. Plantas Medicinales en el País Vasco. Txertoa. San Sebastián.
