ABSTRACT
Between the French Revolution and the beginning of the First World War, the perception of drugs and alcohol changed fundamentally in the Anglo-American world. At the beginning of this period, drug use and alcohol consumption, if discussed at all, were generally considered personal choices and outside of the purview of government intervention. Accurately identifying the origin of the medicalization of a drinking habit is less important than the fact that, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, more people were considering heavy drinking and drunkenness to be problematic. Opium was the classic example of social degradation through upper class drug use, culturally familiar due to the popularity of the “opium eater”, but near the end of the century, opium’s danger was joined, and arguably eclipsed, by another pharmaceutical innovation: cocaine. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
