Part 1: Ancient potions. The Oracle of Delphi was huffing fumes -- Pharoah Ramesses II wanted ganja -- Alexander the Great was a sloppy drunk -- Qin Shi Huangdi's recipe for immortality backfired -- St. John the Revelator was tripping on shrooms -- Marcus Aurelius's sleepy-time medicine -- Part 2: Medieval highs. The Hashashin, the devout killer potheads -- William Shakespeare was a stoner -- Part 3: Colonial chaos. George Washington's terrible teeth -- Andrew Jackson was a mean, crazy, racist, murderous drunk -- Andrew Johnson was blackout drunk -- Part 4: Victorian decadence. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's trip wore off -- Queen Victoria was the biggest drug dealer of all time -- The pope who loved cocaine wine -- Friedrich Nietzsche thought he was Jesus -- Vincent van Gogh ate yellow paint -- Sigmund Freud was wrong about cocaine -- Part 5: Wartime fogginess. Adolf Hitler was tweaked out of his mind -- Bill W. took LSD to see God -- Jean-Paul Sartre's really long bad trip -- Richard Nixon wanted to nuke everyone -- John F. Kennedy was on all sorts of drugs -- Audie Murphy was the real-life Captain America -- Part 6: Showbiz blues. Howard Hughes, the drug-addled billionaire -- Judy Garland was drugged by grown-ups -- Andy Warhol was really fond of meth -- Philip K. Dick wrote amphetamine-fueled science fiction -- Johnny Cash was battling demons -- Elvis Presley was a narc -- Part 7: Counterculture mayhem. Albert Hofmann invented LSD by accident -- Aldous Huxley's shortcut to enlightenment -- How the CIA accidentally created the Unabomber -- Ken Kesey and the electric Kool-Aid acid test -- Timothy Leary was the most dangerous man in America -- Alexander Shulgin, the DEA employee who invented 230 psychedelics -- Sgt. Pothead's loaded hard-drug band (a.k.a. the Beatles) -- Part 8: Modern mystics. Carl Sagan got astronomically high -- Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter while tripping on acid -- John McAfee was the world's biggest troll -- Steve Jobs loved LSD and soaking his feet in the toilet

"A lively, hilarious, and entirely truthful look at the druggie side of history's most famous figures, including Shakespeare, Queen Victoria, and the Beatles, from debut author (and viral historical TikToker with nearly 100K followers) Sam Kelly Did you know that Alexander the Great was a sloppy drunk, William Shakespeare was a stoner, and George Washington drank a spoonful of opium every night to staunch the pain from his fake teeth? Or how about the fact that China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, ingested liquid mercury in an (ironic) attempt to live forever, or that Alexander Shulgin, inventor of no less than 230 new psychedelic drugs, was an employee of the DEA? In Human History on Drugs, historian Sam Kelly introduces us to the history we weren't taught in school, offering up irreverent and hysterical commentary as he sheds light on some truly shocking aspects of the historical characters we only thought we knew. With chapters spanning from Ancient Greece ('The Oracle of Delphi Was Huffing Fumes') and the Victorian Era ('Vincent van Gogh Ate Yellow Paint') to Hollywood's Golden Age ('Judy Garland Was Drugged by Grown-Ups') and modern times ('Carl Sagan Got Astronomically High'), Kelly's research spans all manner of eras, places, and, of course, drugs. History is rife with drug use and drug users, and Human History on Drugs takes us through those highs (pun intended) and lows on a wittily entertaining ride that uncovers their seriously unexpected impact on our past"-- Provided by publisher