Most people know that Sigmund Freud was the father of modern psychoanalysis, but did you know that he was also the adoptive father of Coca Cola? There is no strong evidence that psychoanalysis can cure serious mood or thinking disorders, such as severe depression or schizophrenia. Modern psychiatry relies on the use of medications to change the brain’s levels of neurotransmitters, and psychotherapy in conjunction with medication is more effective than medication alone. The only scientific article that Sigmund Freud wrote was not on psychotherapy. It was cocaine.

In 1881, Sigmund Freud began experimenting with cocaine. His first and only rigorous scientific article was on cocaine, not psychoanalysis. The German army used cocaine to prevent burnout, and Freud thought it might help some of his patients suffering from nervous disorders. He sent some cocaine to his fiancee, Martha Bernays, who lived a few miles away, saying, “In my last major depression I went back to taking cocaine and a small dose took me to the heights in a wonderful way. praise to this magical substance. ” Freud desperately wanted to marry Martha, but his parents were rich and skeptical of this young upstart who bragged about asking for their daughter’s hand. So when Freud discovered cocaine, he had high hopes of impressing them with his discovery that cocaine could cure hunger, thirst, and depression and even make people feel good. He couldn’t wait to announce this wonderful new drug to the scientific community, publishing “On Coca” in June 1884.

Shortly after publishing his article, Freud met an ophthalmology intern named Carl Koller. Freud and Koller began using cocaine themselves. Realizing that cocaine made his lips numb when he drank it, Koller wanted to see what would happen when he put a cocaine solution in his patients’ eyes before surgery. It showed that cocaine can be instilled into the eye to block pain during eye surgery. But, at the time, Freud was out of town visiting Martha. When he returned, he was distraught when he learned that Koller had published his new discovery, and now Koller was known as the discoverer of the first local anesthetic for eye surgery. Another doctor had stolen his great discovery from Freud.

At that time in the United States, John Styth Pemberton put out his own version of a drink that contained cocaine in alcohol. People bought his drink and loved what he did to them, but in 1885, the city of Atlanta banned the sale of alcohol. So Pemberton had to change the recipe. He removed the alcohol from his drink and sold his new drink under the name Coca-Cola. People didn’t buy this new concoction so much as their drink containing cocaine in alcohol, so they thought their drink had failed and sold their patent to Asa Griggs Candler for a measly $ 2,300. However, that was a lot of money in 1890, and the drink tasted horrible. Asa Grigg Candler added carbon dioxide bubbles to the drink that had both the cocaine and alcohol removed, and it was an instant hit. Now you know that Sigmund Freud, who today is known as the father of psychoanalysis, should also be known as the adoptive father of Coca Cola.