After Islam, I would say intoxication from various herbs was tolerated more than alcohol. There are many muslim scholars, who for example, would not consider hashish haram, but no muslim scholar can say that alcohol is not haram.
e.g hadith (maybe the word hashishah means something else, I'm not a scholar)
Hadith - Book of General Behavior (Kitab Al-Adab) - Sunan Abi Dawud - Sunnah.com - Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه و سلم)
"The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: Come with us to the house of Aisha. So we went and he said: Give us food, Aisha. She brought hashishah and we ate..."
It probably depended on the region of the Muslim world and the local practices. As I wrote, you seem to agree, Muslims of that time were more lenient towards drug use (cannabis, opium and khat especially) rather than alcohol although alcohol was consumed occasionally by the upper classes. You have accurate descriptions of that by envoys from abroad (China, Europe etc.) and from art of the time.
Certain alcoholic beverages are also consumed to this day in various parts of the Arab world even by Muslims although mostly Arab Christians or Atheists do that obviously.
I have never seen that hadith before and neither am I a scholar so don't know what to say other than what I know already and that's that "khamr" (intoxicants like alcohol an drugs etc.) are forbidden otter than for medical purposes as they are harmful for your body and soul, thus they have been discouraged.
Regarding your hadith:
Narrated Tikhfat al-Ghifari:
Ya'ish ibn Tikhfat al-Ghifari said: My father was one of the people in the Suffah.
The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: Come with us to the house of Aisha. So we went and he said: Give us food, Aisha. She brought hashishah and we ate. He then said: Give us food, Aisha.
She then brought haysah as small in quantity as a pigeon and we ate. He then said: Give us something to drink, Aisha. So she brought a bowl of milk, and we drank. Again he said: Give us something to drink, Aisha. She then brought a small cup and we drank. He then said: If you wish, you may spend the night (here), or if you wish, you may go to the mosque.
He said: While I was lying on my stomach because of pain in the lung, a man began to shake me with his foot and then said: This is a method of lying which Allah hates. I looked and saw that he was the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ).
Hadith - Book of General Behavior (Kitab Al-Adab) - Sunan Abi Dawud - Sunnah.com - Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه و سلم)
I can't actually.. Opium was popular with Arabs in certain time periods though.
By the way, home-made wine can be of very high quality if one has the right knowledge and tools.
What an eloquent thing to say
But yeah, you basically described the process of it accurately.
Of course it can but I am just saying that most people can do it easily with the right tools at hand. It's a rather simple process.
Of course high quality wines etc. is a totally different story here.
Regarding drugs, I don't recall how many times I have been approached by petty Moroccan drug dealers (you know the street kid) asking whether I would be interested to buy some cannabis in Paris and Europe in general. They are a menace and something should be done to stop their polluting of society.
Yemen is pretty much ruined due to the idiotic qat consumption. I got it, it's a pretty harmless leaf overall (compared to pretty much all intoxicants even in relatively big quantities) and a cultural/social practice several millenniums old but come on. Almost half the nation is high on qat each single day. Not only that the plant needs a hell lot of water so instead of growing it, the coffee production that made Yemen famous across the world (among many other agricultural products) could be produced at a greater rate.
I now hear that the qat plant is grown in Southern Europe too and that the demand is increasing.
It's mostly a Yemeni + Horn of Africa practice. In the UK and Scandinavia it's mostly the Somali community who smuggle it into those countries.
