The Great Binge is a 21st-century neologism, coined by amateur historian Gradus Protus van den Belt, describing the period in history covering roughly 1870 to 1914.
[1] During this period these drugs were widely available and incredibly popular among both men and women of many social classes in many parts of the world.
[1] Holmes is described as having a particular penchant for overt injections of a 7% solution of cocaine, though only when lacking adequate mental stimulation.
As well as its use by Bryars and Harper cited above, it was used by British author and comedian Stephen Fry to describe this period in "More Fool Me"[4] and by academic Nicholas J. Saunders in 'The Poppy: A History of Conflict, Loss, Remembrance, and Redemption',[5] speaking primarily of the US, to describe a 19th-century "characterised by various narcotics that were legal, widely available, widely consumed and deeply embedded in popular culture".
Esquire Magazine used it in this context in 2009:[6] Dracula "appeared right in the middle of what historians call the Great Binge, a period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when cocaine and heroin use ran rampant".