Alcohol and Drugs History Society

Coffee as a substitute for alcohol in 19th-century Norway (article)

Ole-Jørgen Skog, "Studying Cultural Change: Were the Changes in Alcohol and Coffee Consumption in the Nineteenth Century a Case of Beverage Substitution," Acta Sociologica 49/3 (September 2006): 287-302.  Evidence from Norway.

Politics of addiction in England (book)

Sarah Mars, The Politics of Addiction: Medical Conflict and Drug Dependence in England (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2010).

Obama's Afghan War Helps Create Many Opium Addicted Children

"A group of researchers hired by the U.S. Department of State found staggering levels of opium in Afghan children, some as young as 14 months old..."

"Among the factors leading to increased levels of drug use is the high unemployment rate throughout the country, the social upheaval provoked by this war and those that preceded it, as well as the return of refugees from Iran and Pakistan who became addicts while abroad."

Here is the link to the full article.

TOWARD NATIONAL IDENTITY: ADDICTION, SUBJECTIVITY, AND AMERICAN LITERARY CULTURE

PhD dissertation by Allan G. Borst, Department of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009.  The author's abstract follows.
 
"This project examines literary and cultural narratives of addiction in order to show how addict-subjects have been defined according to American beliefs about willpower, productivity, morality, racial and economic disparity, and social health.  In the contemporary world of American consumerism and late capitalist expenditure, addiction signifies everyday life and normative American identity as much as it names the criminality, self-destruction, or disease associated with drug addicts and alcoholics.  Historically speaking, literary and cultural representations of alcoholics and drug users from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries produce distinct photonegatives of normative American values.  The addict-subject thereby demonstrates the limits of permissible behavior to the rest of society.  This study covers a broad range of literature, including Temperance-era speeches and sermons, Harlem Renaissance novels depicting underground jazz and nightclub culture, memoirs and autobiographical fiction that promise an insider’s view of addiction and its impact on everyday life, and novels of the 1980s that illumine potent connections between contemporary drug use and capitalist consumerism.  The American addict-subject has been a romanticist, a naturalist, a modernist, and a postmodernist, and thus offers invaluable ways of approaching the problems of representation and traditional narrative forms like the bildungsroman, the fallen woman narrative, and the first-person confessional.  Ultimately, addiction has left as many indelible marks on American literary history as it has on American culture and American identity."

Borst is holding release of this dissertation while in the process of turning it into a book manuscript. However, he has two articles derived from the project that are or will soon be in print. "Signifyin(g) Afro-Orientalism: The Jazz-Addict Subculture in Home to Harlem and Nigger Heaven" is in the November 2009 16.4 issue of Modernism / Modernity (Johns Hopkins U Press). Also, "Managing the Crisis: James Frey's A Million Little Pieces  and the Addict-Subject Confession" will appear in issue 75 of Cultural Critique (Spring 2010).

Gentlemanly appetites in the 19th-cent. British novel (book)

Gwen Hyman, Making a Man: Gentlemanly Appetites in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009).  Includes drink and cocaine.

Addiction (book)

Howard Padwa and Jacob A. Cunningham, Addiction: A Reference Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2010).  Includes documents.

Heroin treatment in Britain (book review)

Klaus Weinhauer reviewed Alex Mold, Heroin: The Treatment of Addiction in Twentieth-Century Britain, in Twentieth Century British History 20 (2009): 567-569.

Five Myths About Criminalizing Drug Use

The Washington Post article "Myths About High Times in America"  by Ryan Grim is here.

United States Narcotic Farm 1935-1975

Nancy Campbell, Historian of Science, and Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensalear Polytechnic Institute co-edited with filmmakers J.P. Olson and Luke Walden The Narcotic Farm: A History of Photographs, Abrams: New York, 2008. This book is an offshoot of the 1 hour documentary film "The Narcotic Farm" completed last Fall by the two filmmakers and broadcast on various public stations over the last seven months. 

The film is not available for purchase at this time, but people are encouraged to ask their local PBS station to air it. It is distributed to public TV by NETA and is available for all public TV programmers. People are asked to contact the filmmakers through the film website to find out how to preview the film.

Dissertations (2003-08) on alcohol, drugs, tobacco and addiction (article)

Jonathan Erlen and Dan Malleck, "Dissertations on Alcohol, Drugs, Tobacco and Addiction: A Five-Year Retrospective, 2003-08," Social History of Alcohol and Drugs 23/1 (Fall 2008): 58-73.  Most of the titles have not previously been listed on ADHS.