High Society: The Central Role of Mind-Altering Drugs in History, Science, and Culture

262 Pages·2010·48.34 MB·English

by  Mike Jay

About the Author
Mike Jay has written widely on the cultural history of science and medicine, and
is a leading specialist in the study of drugs across history and cultures. He is the
editor of Artificial Paradises, an anthology of drug literature, and author of the
widely acclaimed Emperors of Dreams, a narrative history of drugs in the
nineteenth century, and The Atmosphere of Heaven, on the discovery of nitrous
oxide. His critical writing on drugs and their histories has appeared in The
Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The London Review of Books.

Other titles of interest published by
Park Street Press include:
The Psychotropic Mind
Salvia Divinorum
The Psychedelic Journey of Marlene Dobkin de Rios
See our website
www.parkstpress.com

CONTENTS
Foreword
A Universal Impulse
High Societies - The Evolution of Drugs - Animal Intoxication - Drugs and
Shamanism - Drugs and Culture - The Culture of Kava - The Culture of Betel -
Drug Prohibitions - Drug Subcultures - The Cultures of Ecstasy
From Apothecary to Laboratory
What Is a Drug? - Drugs in Antiquity - Renaissance Herbals - Witches and
Flying Ointments - The Invention of Laudanum - Linnaeus and the
Enlightenment - The First Synthetic Drugs - Opium and the Romantics - The
Club des Haschischins - Freud and Cocaine - Addiction and Drug Control -
Mescaline, LSD and Beyond - Drugs of the Future
The Drugs Trade
Drugs of the New World - The Psychoactive Revolution - Tobacco in China, Tea
in Europe - The Opium Wars - The Anti-Opium campaign - Temperance and
Prohibition - The ‘War on Drugs’ - Epilogue: The Decline of Tobacco
Notes and Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Index
Copyright
Foreword
The fundamental urge to alter our consciousness in significant but controllable
ways is, it seems, part of our hard-wiring. Very few people live their lives
without using some kind of mind-altering substance, be it a cup of coffee, a glass
of wine, sleeping pills, cigarettes or betel. The abundance of intoxicants and the
myriad ways in which they are woven into the fabric of cultures around the
world have left an extremely rich visual and material record, which this book
explores. Moreover, drugs have significantly influenced social and cultural
movements, defining entire subcultures from coffeehouses and opium dens to
modern-day raves. Mind-altering substances answer the deep desire – need, even
– we have to enhance and extend our ordinary experience of life.
As a habit, taking drugs seems directly related to our core interest in
experimentation: the indulgence of our inclination to wonder ‘What if?’.
Accordingly, scientific enquiry into this aspect of human experience has
progressively deepened and broadened in modern times. Since the eighteenth
century, the development of new drugs has played out against a backdrop of
pharmacological investigation and application, with traditional substances
derived from plants and herbs augmented and then supplanted by synthetic
chemicals. Though inevitably more subjective, the actual experience of drug
consumption has also become an increasing focus of enquiry, frequently through
self-experiment. Here the approach of science has gone hand in hand with the
practices of art to explore the impact of drugs on creativity. More recently, in a
century when the social impact of drug consumption has emerged as an ever-
more-threatening ‘social menace’, science has also been called upon for
guidance in tackling the problem of addiction.