Wherein popes knew cocaine wine tastes great, is less filling and gives you the energy you need to power through a really long church service.
The appeal of the whole Cocaine Bear phenomenon largely eluded me. Even ignoring the fact that the real story is both less exciting and far sadder than the movie, I just couldn’t get into the concept of a drug-crazed bear. Maybe if it had been another mammal: Cocaine Sloth…very, very slowly get in line. Of course, this may be a good example of why no one is paying me the big bucks to develop a movie franchise.
Despite an industry-wide disinterest in my ideas, I nonetheless would like to see a movie about a coke-crazed pontiff: Cocaine Pope…habemus cocaini papam! While I strongly disagree with his positions in the Catholic Modernist crisis, I am far less opposed to Pope Leo XIII than I am to his predecessor, Pius IX, whom I distinctly dislike but who neglected to add “laughing at the pope” to his execrable Syllabus of Errors, so I’m in the clear. Leo’s enthusiasm for a cocaine-enhanced product nonetheless opens the door for exciting cinema:
Pope: Dóminus vobíscum…RRRAARGHHH!
Priest: Deus meus! The Holy Father just ripped off an altar boy’s face with his teeth!
Leo XIII didn’t snort cocaine powder—although I can imagine a powerful scene of a pope snuffling blow like Tony Montana before shouting, “Say hello to my little papal bull!”—but instead enthusiastically slurped a coca-enhanced “tonic wine”…and so did a lot of other 19th-century bigwigs.
If You Want to Hang Out, You’ve Gotta Take Her Out, Cocaine
The snowy-white roots of cocaine wine can be found in the mid-19th century work of physician and anthropologist Paolo Mantegazza who, after testing the effects of coca on himself during a trip to South America in 1859, wrote,
I sneered at the poor mortals condemned to live in this valley of tears while I, carried on the wings of two leaves of coca, went flying through the spaces of 77,438 words, each more splendid than the one before…An hour later, I was sufficiently calm to write these words in a steady hand: God is unjust because he made man incapable of sustaining the effect of coca all life long. I would rather have a life span of ten years with coca than one of 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 centuries without coca.
This glowing description inspired French chemist Angelo Mariani to create in 1863 a tonic combining Bordeaux and coca leaf (with a ratio of six mg of coca leaf per one oz of wine; the version exported to the United States supersized the ratio to 7.2 mg of coca). The tonic, Vin Tonique Mariani à la Coca de Peroum, was promoted as “a digestif, apertif, energy booster, and general cure-all” with a recommended dosage of two–three glasses per day; children were encouraged to tipple only one glass or so because, you know, safety first.
How safe was this for kids and adults? Even though the medical establishment of the time loved the plonk, Atlas Obscura warns,
This was potent stuff. The ethanol in the wine operated as a solvent, extracting cocaine from the coca leaf. When cocaine and alcohol are imbibed together, a third chemical compound, called cocaethylene, forms as the intoxicants are metabolized in the liver. This intense psychoactive is more euphoric, powerful, and toxic than cocaine or alcohol alone.
This euphoria proved irresistible to political figures and celebrities who enthusiastically endorsed the product. United States presidents Grant and McKinley used it to get out the vote (at least in their livers), Queen Victoria found it put the hustle in her bustle, and actress Sandra Bernhardt even proclaimed, “When at times unable to proceed, a few drops give me new life” (much like in an advertisement where a recently-resurrected ghoul carries a tray of the wine because “the mummies themselves stand up and walk after drinking Vin Mariani”).
My favorite, though, is the afore-mentioned Pope Leo XIII, who not only liked the wine enough to plug it (see the advertisement above) but even awarded a gold medal to Mariani “in recognition of benefits received from Mariani Wine Tonic.” What benefits did His Holiness receive, you might well ask? According to one historian, Leo toted Vin Mariani around in a “personal hipflask to fortify himself in those moments when prayer was insufficient.” Yes, cocaine wine was just the thing for pulling through a spiritual dry spell: “I’m really not feeling the Spirit today. Well, just a wee nip from my little drinkie-flask and wwwwhhhhoooaaaa…”
If You Want to Get Down, Down on the Ground, Cocaine
Unfortunately for Mariani & Co. and coke-loving clerics everywhere, movements in the early 20th century to restrict narcotics caused the Vin Mariani ride to crash. Increased awareness of the dangers of cocaine, combined with the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act prohibiting the sale of food products with inaccurate labeling, reduced the demand for coca-enhanced products; the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act (regulating opiates and coca) finally killed it.
If you really want to live like a pope you can buy the current version of Vin Mariani but, since the manufacturing process removes the alkaloid from the coca leaves, you probably won’t find your prayers lifted up on the wings of coca angels. You can apparently enjoy its tonic flavor but “can only imaginatively fill in the missing onset of gentle euphoria—and regret its absence.”
And that, sadly, is uncinematic.
Image: Advertisement for Vin Mariani with Pope Leo XIII (Source).
