If you saw "euphorigum" and thought "that's just a portmaneau of euphoria and gum," well, you aren't wrong. If you saw it and thought to yourself "I bet this is just fantasy!opium," well, you're not _entirely_ wrong. Gum, in the botanical sense, is a sap or resinous material that comes from under bark or inside the coating of a seed. In broader terms, gums polysaccharides that can increase a solution's viscosity. They're usually used as thickeners or binders. Opium gum is one of the most well-known natural gums. It's derived from opium poppies, which probably grew wild in the Mediterranean region as far back as the 6th millennium BCE. It spread west in short order, presumably thanks to humans, because it's super useful. It's probably the only crop to be domesticated in western Europe. An acre of poppies yields about thirteen pounds of raw opium. A guy I used to live across the street from when I was growing up grew it in his garden; if you've never seen the poppy fields in _the Wizard of Oz_, they're quite pretty. I like to use Neolithic drugs and technology to inform the realism of my stories, and opium gum certainly qualifies. It's a bit more labor-intensive to harvest than marijuana, but processing the gum into a useful drug is pretty easy. Even modern versions like heroin aren't that challenging; you basically slice the poppy plant, let it ooze all day, scrape it, add water, add chemicals, dry, heat, add more chemicals and them maybe purify it. Heroin, in case you aren't aware, generally makes its users [experience euphoria](https://www.verywellmind.com/what-heroin-effects-feel-like-22047). That said, based on what I know (and one of my ex-boyfriends turned out to be an addict, so I do know a bit, unfortunately) heroin is generally taken more for the painkilling aspect than the rush. Euphorigum is modeled more on nepenthe than opium, though. Nepenthe is a (probably) fictional potion used to induce forgetfulness of pain or sorrow. It's mentioned a few times in Greek literature and myth; the Greeks evidently thought the Egyptians knew how to make it. It shows up in the Odyssey when an Egyptian queen gives it to Helen of Troy. It also shows up in Spenser's _The Faerie Queene_. I first came across it in Edgar Allen Poe's _The Raven,_ a poem I am basically required to know as a native Baltimorean. In point of fact, I have the line _quaff this kind nepenthe_ tattooed across my left ribs; I got the tattoo after my first breakup, about three years after a suicide attempt (I met my first boyfriend during my first outing after coming home from inpatient psychiatric care, and in retrospect would have been better off staying home that night). Avyaan isn't experiencing a breakup in the traditional sense, but euphorigum — originally cultivated by the winged priests of Eheu Isle — _is_ meant to help people deal with the pain of exile, loss of home, loss of opportunity, loss of love, and the stress of an unfamiliar new life. It was bioengineered by Savali, the protagonist of last week's story, for that specific purpose, in fact. Whether it's necessarily _good_ for Avyaan is a question I leave up to the reader... and the comments section of the [[2022-06-06 Love]] edition. ## Further Reading - [[Massive Poppy Bust Why Home-Grown Opium Is Rare by Stephanie Pappas]] - [[Direct Dating Reveals the Early History of Opium Poppy in Western Europe by Scientific Reports]]