The Ancient Greeks and Romans used opium, marijuana, and other narcotics to relieve pain and induce sleep. They may have also enhanced rituals and enlivened banquets with hallucinogens.
Further Reading
Theodore F. Brunner, “Marijuana in Ancient Greece and Rome?” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 47 (1973), 344-55
D. C. A. Hillman, The Chemical Muse: Drug Use and the Roots of Western Civilization (New York: Thomas Dunne, 2008)
M. D. Merlin, On the Trail of the Ancient Opium Poppy (Rutherford, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson Press, 1984)
M. D. Merlin, “Archaeological Evidence for the Tradition of Psychoactive Plant Use in the Old World” Economic Botany 57 (2003), 295-323
Alan Sumler, “Ingesting Magic: Ingredients and Ecstatic Outcomes in the Greek and Demotic Magical Papyri” Arion 25 (2017): 99-126
R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, Carl A. P. Ruck, The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978)