I got into an argument at a university party with someone who would not be convinced Lewis Carroll wasn’t on LSD, even though the stuff wasn’t discovered until 1949.
Was he like “or the historically accurate equivalent?”
I don’t believe he even tried for that.
I mean he could maybe have argued for opium, but I believe most users in Victorian England were people taking laudanum for pain, not recreational opium-smokers, whatever pulp fiction may have to say about it (I believe this partly because I can’t recall any Victorian equivalent of “4-20” jokes; most of their favourite-vice humour seems to be about tobacco or various alcoholic beverages, not opium.)