"Freud on Cocaine" offers up a piece of history and reminds us that we are all human and we all make mistakes. We don’t have to let that be what defines us.
Freud on Cocaine follows the great Sigmund Freud during the 10 or so years that he ran an active experiment researching the benefits of cocaine on not just patients, but himself and his family as well. Freud is a respected intellectual of the 1800’s and considered the father of psychoanalysis and dream interpretation today.
In the early 1880’s, Freud learned of what was being hailed a miracle drug—cocaine. He believed cocaine was a miracle drug and thought it could be used to treat ailments as made up as hysteria and as real as morphine or heroine addiction.
In fact, he prescribed his best friend Ernst cocaine as a way to treat the man’s rampant heroine and morphine addiction. A few years later, Ernst informed his friend that the cocaine had not in fact treated his dependence on either heroine or morphine and he had indeed also become addicted to the cocaine. The addition of the third drug no doubt led to his friend's untimely death.
The grief shook Freud and, alongside an intervention of sorts from his wife Martha, eventually stopped taking cocaine himself and dramatically reduced giving it to his patients, reserving prescriptions for only cases he deemed could benefit in some way. This choice was also partly fueled by a dream that became the first Freud truly psychoanalyzed which ultimately launched him into the career he would be known for centuries later.
Left: Martha Bernays-Freud (Sara Maraffino) and Signmund Freud (Jonathan Slavin). Right: Ernst von Fleischl-Marxos (Aaron LaPlante)
This is through and through a comedy, based on a book written by Freud himself and notated by his daughter Anna, who followed in her fathers academic footsteps called The Cocaine Papers, and was overly exaggerated through dramatic line delivery and over-the-top physical comedy to relay the hilarity of a very dark situation.
This play challenges the conception of what a ‘successful’ person looks like and reminds us that every one of us is human at our core. We each carry various aspects of ourself as we move through our lives and no single aspect can define the entirety of our existence.
There is also a sinister undertone relating to the bad faith practices of the two of the largest pharmaceutical companies of the time (Merck and Parke Davies) who, unknown to each other, had both employed Freud (and no doubt others) to talk up the benefits of their cocaine brands based on positive scientific findings that they had paid researches to submit to publications that the companies owned and operated.
This play offers up a piece of history in a way that we can relate to in the common era and reminds all of us, even the billionaires and super wealthy, that we are all human and we all make mistakes. We don’t have to let that be what defines us.
Freud on Cocaine is playing at Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks, located at: 13500 Ventura Blvd.. Sherman Oaks, California 91423.
The show will run through October 4th on Saturdays at 8pm (The show will be dark on Saturday, October 21st). We hope you see it and laugh as much as we did!
Until next time!
