Out of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication [Hardcover]

Stuart Walton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 22, 2002

“Who will ever relate the whole history of narcotica? It is almost the history of ‘culture,’ of our
so-called higher culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1882

With Nietzsche’s question as his objective, Stuart Walton begins Out of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication—a heterodox and throughly engaging examination of intoxicants, from the more everyday substances of alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco to the illicit realm of opiates, amphetamines, and hallucinogens. More than a mere catalog of intoxicants, however, Walton’s book is a smart, wry look at why intoxication has always been a part of the human experience—from our earliest Stone Age rituals to the practices of the ancient Greeks and Romans, right on through the Victorian era and ending with a flourish in modern times—and more significantly, why the use of intoxicants is, and will continue to be, an essential part of being human.

Using gastronomy as an example, Walton illustrates that just as the study of food history was
relatively unheard of until the 1970s, so too “intoxicology” has yet to be recognized as a richly warranted field of study. Though intoxication may not be considered as essential to human existence as food, and carries the unjust stigma of criminality, Walton proposes that it is “an integral part of Western civilization, and that we would do better to accept and celebrate that fact instead of making it a matter of criminal sanctions and repression.”

The conclusions Walton draws cut across the grain of today’s prevailing attitudes and fuel an important and often neglected debate, ultimately establishing that intoxication is not only a fundamental human right but, in fact, a biological imperative.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Trying to separate pleasure from pain and law from leisure, British journalist Walton doesn't quite succeed in systematizing a subject that lends itself more readily to laughter and forgetting. He does not lack a solid argument: "Intoxication is a universal human theme. There are no recorded instances of fully formed societies anywhere in history that have lived without the use of psychoactive substances." The missteps begin in early Christianity, when Walton deviates from his ostensible subject, the history of intoxication, and gets onto the more pedestrian issue of policing the use of intoxicants. In the next few chapters, there are hints of how the 18th-century craze for coffee lent itself to revolutionary thinking, why the nip before work went the way of the dodo, or when cigarette smoking became demonized. But though Walton is clearly aware of all of these possible avenues of exploration, the book drones on about units of alcohol and schedules of chemicals and other ways that the governments of the U.S. and Britain have spoiled the fun. Content to simply set up and knock down straw men, Walton fails to ask the more provocative questions of why we have this drive to blottodom and what its social effects actually are. The final chapters on moderation and excess and the association between art and intoxication are a bit livelier, but this fascinating and heady topic awaits definitive treatment.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Intoxication is a constant of the human condition that Walton explores in a wide-ranging, well-referenced history. Presented in lay terms, his study yet includes some fairly involved analysis, which makes indulging in intoxicants while reading it probably self-defeating. Not that it is boring, just that it demands full attention. Neither a lighthearted chronicle of crazy drug experiences nor a tossed-off polemic about the influence of those of the pro-psychoactive persuasion, it considers, in a reasonable manner, why people want to get high and how that desire affects society. In conclusion, Walton says that "to be intoxicated is not the be-all and end-all of life," but "there is no idealised state of non-involvement with which all intoxicated states may be unfavourably compared." Desire for and capacity to use intoxicants "arise early and, other than by major exercise of will, do not die." Heady stuff that belongs in collections serving communities wrestling with the "drug problem"; the book may bring fire, however, for not damning chemical adventuring out of hand. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harmony; 1 Amer ed edition (October 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609610449
• ISBN-13: 978-0609610442
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,546,149 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than provocative - a downright alluring read, January 9, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Out of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication (Hardcover)

Shibboleths need their forthright debunkers, and the drug war has needed a lively, over-educated Brit to take it apart, down its noxious, anti-human core. As a non-illicit drug user, too scared by the overt repressions of my religious and social heritages to have been more than a lightweight and now non-indulger, I needed to read the book, to check my immoral condemnations of sensation seekers. Walton gets writing back to an exercise of fun, ranging across the whole of antiquity with the erudition of a fusty Oxford don, but has evidently been to the places better designer drugs can take the individual partaker. Here's to his courage, his perspicacity, and may we see the error of our ways in, oh, about 100 years, when responsible, safe use of temporary mind-altering concoctions might be a social virtue.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Life, liberty and the pursuit of intoxication, July 18, 2003

By 

Gary C. Marfin (Sugar Land, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Out of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication (Hardcover)

Don't expect Stuart Walton to be signing copies of Out of It at your local PTA anytime soon. Walton's thesis is that intoxication is an historical constant, a biological necessity and an intrinsic good. The record speaks clearly to Walton. Look anywhere -- Greeks, Romans, polytheists, monotheists, north/south, tribal/advanced -- and you'll find consumers in search of the altered state. What drives this imperative? The answer, Walton claims, is rarely acknowledged but straightforward nontheless: "drugs make us feel different" by altering the typical void of the ordinary life. The options are multiple -- opiates, inhalants, stimulants, hallucinogns. For each class Walton provides a readable account of their composition, effects, prevalence and mode of use. Despite Walton's claim about the ubiquity of drugs, most readers visiting Walton-land will be visiting a strange land, or at least sizeable parts of it, for the first time. The range of stories contained in these pages (a Vancouver CEO buying industrial quantities of LSD, Eton students toying with asphyxiation blackouts, any number of Guiness-book drinkers) find a voice on Walton's pages.

This book has a rambling, discursive quality, but Walton can turn a phrase, and his argument will turn more than a few heads. The value of disciplined moderation, commended to us from Plato through Aquinas as the hallmark of the well-tuned soul, as the life "worth living," finds no champion in Walton's world. Absent as well, are those "victims" of the victimless crime of intoxication, those about whom MADD are so passionate. Walton won't change the minds of his readers, but he will open them. Walton is wrong, but worth hearing.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Studies the history, causes, effects, and attitudes, June 17, 2003

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Out of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication (Hardcover)

Out Of It: A Cultural History Of Intoxication by cultural historian and journalist Stuart Walton is a review and survey of the use of intoxicants down through human history and which ranged from alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco, to opiates, amphetamines, hallucinogens, and "designer drugs". From Stone Age rituals; to intoxication in the Greek and Roman eras; to contemporary recreational usage and strict anti-drug laws, Out Of It studies the history, causes, effects, and attitudes concerning these chemical substances with a distinct eye for the logic (and illogic) behind the generational shifts in social mores, customs, and prohibitions.