Yes, that's true, during late XIX - early XX century drugs like cocaine and opium were in (relatively) common use. But that raises the question whether most of the XX century was an aberration in that respect, a temporary victory of puritans...
Psychedelics are a bit of a special case though, in that they became known and widespread quite late. I am sure there were some Victorian gentlemen who tried magic mushrooms and such, but it took LSD (and cheap LSD) to get psychedelics to the masses. And that happened in the West -- I don't know if East Asia ever had a wave of people experimenting with psychedelics. China was too poor and Japan was too conformist.
So Scott Alexander's post at http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/01/2016-nootropics-survey-results/ shows that the most "effective" "nootropics" have still been the ones that have existed for a long time. What do these results really mean, though? Is it possible that people are just worse at noticing the subtler effects of the other drugs, or are just much worse at disciplining themselves enough to correctly use the racetams or noopept (as in, with choline)?
How much potential is there in innovation in nootropics? What is holding this innovation back, if anything? It feels like there hasn't been any real progress over the last 15 years (other than massively increased awareness), but could targeted drug discovery (along with people willing to be super-liberal with their experimentation) finally lead to some real breakthroughs?