I forgot

There has been another interesting thread on C-18L. Nepenthe pops up a lot in romantic period poetry. It's also the name of an online journal. The transition of meaning for this particular word is fairly interesting. I'd always read it as a sort of "forgetfulness" drug, which seemed like an interesting idea. However, now I know the real scoop. In Greece, Napenthes was used to mean sex, or having sex: Paris made Helen forget her woes by taking her to bed and having sex with her. Ah ha! The connection with sex and drugs is firmly established. It's a distortion of a Homeric passage, thinking of it as a quantifiable substance rather than an act causing. . . something. I don't remember.