A working class drug, laudanum, was cheaper than a bottle of gin or wine, because it was treated as a medication for legal purposes and not taxed as an alcoholic beverage. Those were the days!

Literary figures of note who used laudanum include: Lord Byron, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft , Kate Chopin , Samuel Taylor Coleridge , Thomas de Quincey , Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Charles Dickens