Re: Soma and Haoma.

From: Marc Verhaegen
Message: 323
Date: 1999-11-22

Soma
 
....

Mallory is very careful in his words, and leaves it to the reader to make the obvious conclusion. Soma was a mix of ephedrine and tetrahydrocannabinol (= THC = the active narcotic agent in marijuana). I don't know what kind of 'high' this mixture would produce. I suspect the Dutch medical literature covers this better than anything you'd find in English. As we have a Dutch/Vlams speaker on this forum -- one with considerably better qualifications than I to discuss this -- I am certain further details can and will be elicited from him.     Mark Odegard
 
I don't like the term Vlaams, at least not linguistically, since it's rather confusing. My dialect is called Brabants (ie, the dialect of Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Breda, +- the provinces of Brabant, Antwerpen & Oost-Vlaanderen in Belgium, and Noord-Brabant in the Netherlands).
 
I'm sorry to disappoint you. I don't know more about these things than you, I'm afraid. I'm a doctor in a rural village. Few problems with drug addicts (except alcohol & nicotine & tranquillizers).
 
Sherrat (see ref. in the other post I sent you) thinks cannabis was used on the Ukrainian steppes already in the 4th millennium BC.
 
Marc