Alcohol and Drugs History Society

Alcohol abuse in antebellum Philadelphia (article)

Matthew Warner Osborn, "A Detestable Shrine: Alcohol Abuse in Antebellum Philadelphia," Journal of the Early Republic 29/1 (2009): 101-190.  Osborn also wrote a Roy Porter Memorial Essay, "Diseased Imaginations: Constructing Delerium Tremens in Philadelphia, 1813-1832,"Social History of Medicine 19/2 (August, 2006): 191-208.

Digitized 1884-1901 Proceedings of the Society for the Study and Cure of Inebriety

The Society for the Study of Addiction has made available online these proceedings of it's progenitor. Here is the link.

Alcoholism and the search for morality in Jamaica (article)

Brian L. Moore and Michle A. Johnson, "'Drunk and Disorderly': Alcoholism and the Search for 'Morality' in Jamaica, 1865-1920," Journal of Caribbean History 42/2 (2008): 155-186. 

Novelists who sober up

Instead of looking at hard-drinking novelists, this article looks at novelists who have sobered up.  moreintelligentlife.com/content/tom-shone/when-novelists-sober

1830's Temperance Rally, 1pm, Sunday, August 2, 2009, at the Historic Village at Allaire, NJ

About an hour south of NYC, and east of Philadelphia, just outside of Farmingdale, NJ, there will be a full scale temperance rally that includes a meeting of the Howell [Iron] Works Temperance Society, a Ladies' Temperance Tea and Social, and rousing speeches. Everyone is invited to this free event (parking $5). 

And, yes, that indefatigable Pledge is making its comeback in the public eye. Everyone will be given an opportunity to join in "the taking of the Temperance oath" and make history via history while improving their lives at the same time.  Here is the link. (repeated at 2:30pm)

Cultural history of the recovery movement (book)

Trysh Travis, The Language of the Heart: a Cultural History of the Recovery Movement from Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey (University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming 2009).

Product Description
In The Language of the Heart Trysh Travis explores the rich cultural history of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and its offshoots and the larger "recovery movement" that has grown out of them. Moving from AA's beginnings in the mid-1930s as a men's fellowship that met in church basements to the thoroughly commercialized addiction treatment centers of today, Travis chronicles the development of recovery and examines its relationship to the broad American tradition of self-help, highlighting the roles that gender, mysticism, and print culture have played in that development.

Travis draws on hitherto unexamined materials from AA's archives as well as a variety of popular recovery literatures. Her analysis traces AA's embrace of the concept of addiction as disease, the rise of feminist sobriety discourse and the codependence theories of the 1970s and 80s, and Oprah Winfrey's turn-of-the-millennium popularization of metaphysical healing. What unites these varied cultures of recovery, Travis argues, is their desire to offer spiritual solutions to problems of gender and power. 

Treating self-help seekers as individuals whose intellectual and aesthetic traditions are worth excavating, The Language of the Heart is the first book to attend to the evolution and variation found within the recovery movement and to treat recovery with the attention to detail that its complexity requires. 

Drunken nation: Russia's depopulation

Russia is losing population for many reasons, none more important than widespread alcoholism.  Russians drink more spirits than any other European people, much more.  For details, see here.

UK teenagers as binge drinkers

According to a recent study, United Kingdom teenagers are the third worst binge drinkers, after only Denmark and the Isle of Man (usually considered by foreigners as part of the UK.  UK girls indulged in binge drinking even more than UK boys.  For more, see here.

Drink and (mostly British) politicians

The (London) Times looks at drink and politicians, mostly British, here.

Britain's heavy drinkers ask for liver transplants

Controversy has arisen over heavy drinkers receiving nearly a quarter of all liver transplants in Britain.  Is this fair to other people who need a donated organ?  For details, see here.