Status Updates From Voluptuous Panic: The Eroti...

In postwar Paris, a traveler could engage the services of a streetwalker for five or six dollars; but during the Inflation in Berlin, five dollars could buy a month’s worth of carnal delights. The most exquisite blowjob or kinky dalliance with a 15-year-old never cost more than 30 cents, or 65 million 1923 marks.

Cocaine powder, morphine solution in vials and opium balls were hawked on street corners. Chinese entrepreneurs installed a string of opium dens in Friedrichstadt cellars, but these were far too claustrophobic for German tastes. Invented sedatives—like chloroform and ether—seemed more modern and daring. (The C-and-E cocktail was ingested by swirling white roses in the potion and then biting off the frozen petals).