The French psychiatrist Pierre Maréschal presented a paper on “Heroin Abuse in Tunisia” at the 1937 Congress of Psychiatrists and Neurologists of France and Francophone Countries in Nancy. In this paper, Maréschal compared all Tunisians with European addicts and stated that Tunisians excessively consumed all substances, from hashish and tobacco to alcohol, from opium to coffee and tea: “The native is indeed a born addict, but so far he has not yet found his true poison […]”. This “racial” predilection towards overconsumption was described through the alleged “primitive mentality” of all North Africans. Many colonial psychiatric sources claimed that, when it came to alcohol, for example, Muslims either remained abstinent or became dangerous alcoholics; moderate consumption was believed to be impossible among them. While historical research has been conducted on the larger field of French colonial psychiatry in the Maghreb in the past twenty years, the topic of addictions among the colonised has so far been largely neglected. This paper is based on original research of French psychiatric conference papers, dissertations, monographs and journal articles and analyses the psychiatric theory, proposed by French colonial psychiatrists in the first half of the twentieth century, that “normal” colonised North Africans were closer to European addicts than to “normal” Europeans. The paper will give an overview over the history of the “lost” diagnoses of “absinthism”, “teaism” and “coffeeism”, as well as the more conventional hashish, opium and cocaine addictions. The theory of North Africans being “born addicts” will be contrasted with descriptions of the behaviour and consumption of European settlers. From the beginning of the military conquest of Algeria, alcoholism posed serious problems for France, as, much to the chagrin of most psychiatric experts, French soldiers developed a taste for absinthe and other strong liquors. As colonisation progressed, European settler society in Algeria was soon perceived in the Métropole as consisting practically only of alcoholics. French colonial psychiatrists additionally believed that some of the addictions they observed among the North African colonised were new and a direct result of French colonisation. French colonial psychiatrists usually interpreted the French presence in North Africa as a positive force, with colonial psychiatry saving lives and improving the health of the colonised, just as North African civilisation was allegedly saved and improved by the French mission civilisatrice. This worldview was brought into question when the Muslim colonised “started” to drink alcohol or to consume opium and cocaine.