People who have a boring and painful life are more likely to want to change their mental state than people who are busy and satisfied. Captive animals are also far more likely to eat anesthetics than free animals in the wild. Actually, civilization

People who have a boring and painful life are more likely to want to change their mental state than people who are busy and satisfied. Captive animals are also far more likely to eat anesthetics than free animals in the wild.

In fact, civilized society can also be regarded as a state of captivity. Humans were originally small groups of people hunting, gathering, and living a life without a fixed place to live. After entering the Neolithic Age, most people engaged in farming and lived in crowded, oppressed, and diseased communities.

At a time when 90 percent of the population was suffering and impoverished in the early modern period, it was an important time for new addictions such as tobacco to become mass consumables. These things are unexpected weapons against embarrassing situations, new means of escaping the shackles of reality.

Crane argues: "Such an escape from the 'self that has lived too hard' is exchanged for a sense of happiness at any cost—even if it is only a temporary experience." There is no greater way to understand the evolution of history more deeply than to look at it from this perspective. ”

— David Courtlight, Five Hundred Years of Addiction: A History of Tobacco, Alcohol, Coffee, and Opium