Intoxication And Society

Intoxicants, substances that alter a person's mental and physiological state, are a continuing obsession. In their effect on the mind and body, intoxicants go to the heart of what it means to be human. In the tensions between 'free' and uninhibited consumption on the one hand, and the pressures of social regulation and personal responsibility on the other, they also illuminate the daily paradoxes, and sheer complexity, of living in modern Western societies. Yet this complexity, and the rich history that underpins it, is often lost in the current debates over public policy. Intoxication and Society sets out to supplement the contemporary discourse surrounding intoxication with a more nuanced appreciation of the history and nature of what is very much a multidimensional problem. It does so by employing an interdisciplinary framework that includes contributions from leading academics in law, sociology, anthropology, history, literature, neuroscience and social psychology. The result is a subtle historical and contemporary rereading of the social construction of intoxication that will provide a secure basis for analysis as society continues to respond to the problematic pleasures of intoxication.

"Drugs and intoxication have been facts of human life for millennia. Across the world, many people use illicit drugs, smoke, and drink alcohol. Yet very little has been written about their experiences. Academics, politicians and media reporting on the topic tend only to consider intoxication when it manifests as a social problem. This book takes a more nuanced view, and examines drug and alcohol use from a wider number of perspectives. It discusses issues such as the history of drug and alcohol use, the attractions of intoxication to individuals, and the control and regulation of drugs and their users. It also examines evidence for the rise of the so-called 'pharmaceutical society', and asks whether society is on the cusp of a revolution in psychoactive substance use." --Book Jacket.

What images come to mind when you read the word ‘intoxication’? What behaviour do you associate with the word ‘drunk’? When you hear the word ‘drug’, what images do you recall? This textbook provides an essential and thorough grounding in debates about the role of intoxication in contemporary society, from social and cultural perspectives. It examines intoxication in the broadest sense as including both legal and illegal substances and both culturally accepted and socially stigmatised practices. Given the pace of recent changes in policy and practice – from the increasingly common legalisation of cannabis, to the recent trend of sobriety amongst adolescents and young adults – this book stands out by offering both a through historical and theoretical overview and a topical and forward looking exploration of current debates. It adopts a multi-scale approach to examine wider patterns of change so it considers the subjective experiences of the role intoxication plays in the lives of individuals and groups, in the construction of diverse identities and how this differs by age, gender and ethnicity. The authors play particular attention to the way in which the state justifies interventions based on moral, health and criminal justice discourses and also consider the role played by other individuals and institutions, not least the mass media and the alcohol industry, in propagating and challenging common sense explanations of intoxication. It speaks to undergraduates, master's students and above, with a range of pedagogic features, and offers insights into policy and practice.

This book considers the global discourses and debates about ‘intoxication’, engaging in critical academic discussion around this concept. The problems in defining intoxication are considered, alongside the meanings of intoxication and how these meanings often differ across diverse drug using populations. The way that intoxication has been engaged with over the centuries has affected how particular groups are perceived and responded to, resulting in punitive responses such as drug prohibition, alongside harsh treatment of those who are seen to transgress societal norms and values. Therefore, this collection seeks to unsettle dominant discourses about intoxication and to consider this concept in new, critical ways. Ways of being intoxicated are also defined in this book in their broadest sense; from ‘energy drinks’ and other legal drugs, to recreational use of illicit drugs such as ecstasy, to ‘problematic’ drug use.

An "entertaining and enlightening" deep dive into the alcohol-soaked origins of civilization—and the evolutionary roots of humanity's appetite for intoxication (Daniel E. Lieberman, author of Exercised). While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol and other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place. Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically-grounded explanation for our love of alcohol. Drawing on evidence from archaeology, history, cognitive neuroscience, psychopharmacology, social psychology, literature, and genetics, Drunk shows that our taste for chemical intoxicants is not an evolutionary mistake, as we are so often told. In fact, intoxication helps solve a number of distinctively human challenges: enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, and pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers. Our desire to get drunk, along with the individual and social benefits provided by drunkenness, played a crucial role in sparking the rise of the first large-scale societies. We would not have civilization without intoxication. From marauding Vikings and bacchanalian orgies to sex-starved fruit flies, blind cave fish, and problem-solving crows, Drunk is packed with fascinating case studies and engaging science, as well as practical takeaways for individuals and communities. The result is a captivating and long overdue investigation into humanity's oldest indulgence—one that explains not only why we want to get drunk, but also how it might actually be good for us to tie one on now and then.

Psychopharmacologist Ronald K. Siegel draws on 20 years of groundbreaking research to provide countless examples of the intoxication urge in humans and animals. Presenting his conclusions on the biological and cultural reasons for the pursuit of intoxication, Siegel offers recommendations for curbing the negative effects of drug use in Western culture by designing safe intoxicants.

An illustrated cultural history of drug use from its roots in animal intoxication to its future in designer neurochemicals • Featuring artwork from the upcoming High Society exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London, one of the world’s greatest medical history collections • Explores the roles drugs play in different cultures as medicines, religious sacraments, status symbols, and coveted trade goods • Reveals how drugs drove the global trade and cultural exchange that made the modern world • Examines the causes of drug prohibitions a century ago and the current “war on drugs” Every society is a high society. Every day people drink coffee on European terraces and kava in Pacific villages; chew betel nut in Indonesian markets and coca leaf on Andean mountainsides; swallow ecstasy tablets in the clubs of Amsterdam and opium pills in the deserts of Rajastan; smoke hashish in Himalayan temples and tobacco and marijuana in every nation on earth. Exploring the spectrum of drug use throughout history--from its roots in animal intoxication to its future in designer neurochemicals--High Society paints vivid portraits of the roles drugs play in different cultures as medicines, religious sacraments, status symbols, and coveted trade goods. From the botanicals of the classical world through the mind-bending self-experiments of 18th- and 19th-century scientists to the synthetic molecules that have transformed our understanding of the brain, Mike Jay reveals how drugs such as tobacco, tea, and opium drove the global trade and cultural exchange that created the modern world and examines the forces that led to the prohibition of opium and cocaine a century ago and the “war on drugs” that rages today.

Eating the flesh of an Egyptian mummy prevents the plague. Distilled poppies reduce melancholy. A Turkish drink called coffee increases alertness. Tobacco cures cancer. Such beliefs circulated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an era when the term "drug" encompassed everything from herbs and spices—like nutmeg, cinnamon, and chamomile—to such deadly poisons as lead, mercury, and arsenic. In The Age of Intoxication, Benjamin Breen offers a window into a time when drugs were not yet separated into categories—illicit and licit, recreational and medicinal, modern and traditional—and there was no barrier between the drug dealer and the pharmacist. Focusing on the Portuguese colonies in Brazil and Angola and on the imperial capital of Lisbon, Breen examines the process by which novel drugs were located, commodified, and consumed. He then turns his attention to the British Empire, arguing that it owed much of its success in this period to its usurpation of the Portuguese drug networks. From the sickly sweet tobacco that helped finance the Atlantic slave trade to the cannabis that an East Indies merchant sold to the natural philosopher Robert Hooke in one of the earliest European coffeehouses, Breen shows how drugs have been entangled with science and empire from the very beginning. Featuring numerous illuminating anecdotes and a cast of characters that includes merchants, slaves, shamans, prophets, inquisitors, and alchemists, The Age of Intoxication rethinks a history of drugs and the early drug trade that has too often been framed as opposites—between medicinal and recreational, legal and illegal, good and evil. Breen argues that, in order to guide drug policy toward a fairer and more informed course, we first need to understand who and what set the global drug trade in motion.