Today I found out that the soft drink 7 UP used to include a psychiatric medication as one of its ingredients.The lemon-lime flavored soda, 7 UP was created by Charles Grigg of the Howdy Corporation in 1929 and first launched two weeks before the stock market crash that spurred the Great Depression… Timing! It was originally named “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda”, and included lithium citrate in its formula.Lithium citrate is a mood-stabilizing drug that was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is still used sometimes today for people with bipolar disorder, among others.Many of the first sodas to be produced included drugs or metals and were often touted as health drinks. For instance, Coca Cola originally included coca leaves hence contained a small amount of cocaine in its formula and was intended to be a coca-wine cure-all, specifically targeted at curing impotence, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headaches, nausea, and morphine addiction, the latter of which was a problem the inventor of Coca Cola, Dr. John Pemberton, suffered from.
