Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Historian Courtwright (Violent Land) ranges widely across more than four centuries and the world to chart the "psychoactive revolution" that made ever more potent drugs available to all classes of people and redefined the meaning and means of consciousness, and even social conscience. As pleasure came to matter more, drugs of all kinds found ready takers. Courtwright gathers up historical, scientific, literary, artistic, and public policy references on psychoactive substances, legal and illegal, to show how drug usage was as much an outgrowth of market forces as cultural habits. Drugs were commerce and currency and moved from geographically limited areas of cultivation to worldwide consumption, with ever more efficient means of production and supply driving down prices and thereby opening markets to the poorest. Efforts by governments over the past century to outlaw particular drugs, while regulating others, have proved uneven and erratic. Always intelligent and informed, witty and wise, Courtwright's book is the best way to get a fix on why getting drugs out of our systems would require more than abstinence; it would take another revolution in handling social and personal pain. An essential acquisition.DRandall M. Miller, Saint Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New England Journal of Medicine

Set on a world stage, this book is about the ``psychoactive revolution'' of the past 500 years. Courtwright, well known for his work concerning the history of drug addiction and, more generally, social history, observes that in wealthy societies in the 20th century a cornucopia of drugs, illicit and licit, became available and popular. How did this situation arise, he asks, and how have societies and governments coped with it, and especially, why have some drugs posed more of a problem than others? The main story relates to the expansion of European oceangoing commerce in early modern times and the resulting discoveries of new commercial opportunities. In the drug trade, the three big items eventually became alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine, to the exclusion of other possibilities derived from the plant world. These three drugs remain abundant and profitable commodities, eliciting various responses in different societies.

Thus, this book is not about medicine itself or about the changing practices of physicians over the centuries. Although the author mentions those practices from time to time, he is concerned with the broader story of the sweeping changes in the markets, and thereby in the uses, of a range of substances. And he explains how governments have responded differently in different ages to the growing commodification and popularity of psychoactive substances. Alcohol and caffeine were, of course, Old World products whose spread became enormously wider as a result of European expansion and European technology. Tobacco was a New World plant that conquered the Old World after Europeans discovered its psychoactive (and addictive) properties. At about the same time, advances in distilling techniques and the spread of information about them through the printed word created opportunities for making and selling alcohol. After their conquest of South America, some Europeans began cultivating coffee on that continent, while elsewhere other Europeans were expanding the tea trade. Alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine soon became important trade commodities, the taxation of which was a mainstay of government finances.

Courtwright does not confine his story to the big three in the drug world. He also writes about cannabis, opium, coca and cocaine, and synthetic products. None of these substances or their derivatives became commodified in quite the same way as did the big three, although there were important regional exceptions, such as the infamous opium dens of the Chinese. Part of the story of the lesser-used drugs is the relative absence of their commercialization. For example, until well into the 20th century, smoking marijuana was a practice of particular -- and relatively small -- populations in certain regions. Nor is Courtwright's analysis entirely commercial. To the Christian Europeans, the Amerindians' use of plant hallucinogens such as peyote was reprehensible.

One essential difference with respect to alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine was the skill of entrepreneurs and their resulting profits and power in promoting these products. Courtwright's approach is to paint a large picture, while occasionally delving in some depth into particulars. He writes about James Duke and the growth of the cigarette trade after the late 19th century. The industry that Duke's ingenuity and acumen fostered became very powerful, and it remains so today, able to fight off efforts to restrict it severely or even to eradicate it, however steep is the mountain of evidence about the ill effects of tobacco use.

Herein lies the story of a sea change in social approaches to drug use and the drug trades. With the advance of industrialized societies, concern mounted about the effects of psychoactive substances. Altered states of consciousness do not mix well with the needs of a technologically complex civilization. Europeans sometimes tolerated altered states of consciousness among peasants and workers as a means of easing the pain of their often miserable lives, especially in early modern times. Views changed with advancing industrialization in the 19th century, however. Even so, efforts to control the use of tobacco and alcohol detract from their potential as objects of taxation (and contradict the realities of their use). The enormous power of the tobacco and alcohol industries has overcome efforts to ban or restrict their products. When the United States, for instance, prohibited the liquor trades in 1920, wealthy Americans eventually engineered the law's repeal by arguing that it would promote an economic revival (repeal occurred in 1933, the nadir of the Great Depression) and pointing out the benefits of having alcohol taxes.

In the case of other drugs that were declared illicit during the industrial age in some places, there are ongoing efforts to eradicate their use. Courtwright is known for his use of historical knowledge to argue against the legalization of ``drugs,'' and he does so again in a concluding chapter dealing with dangerous psychoactive substances in the 21st century.

Courtwright writes with felicity, gracefully constructing his narrative in a clearly organized fashion, eschewing jargon and technical language. This is an engaging book that deserves a wide audience among general readers.

K. Austin Kerr, Ph.D.
Copyright © 2001 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; 1 edition (March 23, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674004582
• ISBN-13: 978-0674004580
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #863,613 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellant Scholarship, Great Reading, March 19, 2001

By A Customer

I read an early draft of this book, then recently finished the completed product. In both cases, the book was always easy to read, enlightening, and meticulously researched. Courtwright is a well known social historian who has specialized in drug abuse and violence in modern society.

Forces of Habit more of a general history than his early works, which primarily dealt with narrow topics. In the book, Courtwright traces the spread of drug use (and abuse) from isolated, local customs to the largescale manufacture and distribution seen today. He explores the history of all psychoactive substances, both legal and illegal. Tobbaco, alcohol, and caffenine are explored in one chapter, where cocaine, marijuana, and opiates are dealt with in the next. Other, rare drugs are also discussed.

Courtwright presents a balanced view of the use of these substances, exploring the economic, political, and cultural impact of drug use. This book is always a pleasure to read, as Courtwright has the ability to convey information easily, without "dumbing it down" for the reader. This book is highly recommended.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting introduction to drugs and commerce., August 12, 2002

By	gwc (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This book is great fun, not least because of the author's extraordinary skill in the efficient delivery of interesting facts. The opening chapters, which detail the origins of the world's major drugs, are among the most informative I've read.

The second half of the book, while still engrossing, is a less comprehensive historic analysis of drug use and prohibition. Courtwright concentrates on economics at the expense of culture, emphasizing production and commerce rather than demand and moral opposition. Given the enormous social influences in the modern world, such as the American cultural war against 60's drug use and the pervasive use of alcohol and tobacco as social tools, the emphasis on money and power over cultural forces in the past strikes me as an incomplete analysis. It leads the author to unconvincingly argue that American prohibition and its repeal were primarily the results of economic interests (a "contradiction of capitalism"). Oddly, the same events in the Soviet Union are attributed to "popular resistance", without any comparative discussion of the two nations. Finally, the value of pleasure and the concept of individual rights are generally neglected.

In the end, my main problem with is that Courtwright doesn't give culture the excellent and amusing treatment he gives commerce. I can think of worse things to say about a book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A worthy addition to the Monomaniacal School of historiography, July 31, 2005

By	Steve Sailer (Chicago) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (Paperback)

"Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World" by David T. Courtwright (Harvard University Press, 277 pp, $24.95) is a vivid account of the global spread of psychoactive drugs over the last 500 years. The University of North Florida historian defines drugs broadly enough to include not just the usual suspects like heroin and marijuana, but also generally legal drugs such as tobacco, alcohol and caffeine.

Courtwright's witty writing should appeal to those with a taste for black humor. The author possesses a seemingly infinite supply of vivid examples about the impact of drugs on humanity, and even upon the animal kingdom. Lions, he notes, "have learned to prey upon drunks staggering home at night from East African roadside bars."

"Forces of Habit" can help modern white-collar workers banned from smoking indoors reflect on the ferocious anti-smoking campaigns that earlier tobacco addicts endured. While American smokers are forced to risk pneumonia each winter while they puff away in the freezing doorways of office buildings, "Russian smokers suffered beatings and exile; snuff takers had their noses torn off. Chinese smokers had their heads impaled on pikes. Turkish smokers under the reign of Ahmed I endured pipe stems thrust through their noses."

Ironies abound in "Forces of Habit." Alcoholics Anonymous' co-founders, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, "both smoked heavily and died of cigarette-related illnesses." (Today, AA chapters searching for meeting places are bedeviled by the new prohibitions on indoor smoking. Reformed alcoholics often want to smoke to relieve the tension of staying on the wagon.)

But Courtwright has serious ambitions as well.

"This book," he writes, "grew out of a broader curiosity about psychoactive commerce, a ubiquitous -- and, I now believe, defining -- feature of the modern world."

This leads Courtwright to rewrite much of human history from a, well, drugocentric viewpoint. "The domestication of fire," he informs us, "made widespread drug use possible in the first place." A few eons later, "The Apollo 11 astronauts," he notes, "were drinking coffee three hours after landing on the moon."

"Forces of Habit" is thus in the grand tradition of the Monomaniacal School of History. It stands comparison to such valuable works as William McNeill's "Plagues and Peoples" and Daniel Yergin's "The Prize," which explained the history of the world in terms of germs and oil, respectively.

Courtwright's vast goals are assisted by his defining "psychoactive drug" expansively enough to include coffee and chocolate. He even tentatively discusses sugar. I'm not sure why he didn't ultimately accept sugar as "psychoactive." Those of us with little kids have certainly seen sugar's impact on brain chemistry.

One problem with his semi-sprawling approach to defining "psychoactive drugs" is that it's not clear where to draw the line. If I drink a glass of warm milk to help me fall asleep, does that make milk psychoactive? Or would it be "psychodeactive?"

When going on a family outing, I always insist that we bring along some high-calorie, high-fat foods like cheese sticks. Few things end screaming tantrums faster than cheese. And it helps mellow out my kids, too. So, is cheese a psychoactive drug, just like crack and crank?

What about sunshine? The vitamin D it produces seldom fails to cheer me up.

Is a tan also a drug?

Evidently, Courtwright defines a drug as a chemical that wasn't around for most of human evolution. He takes a Darwinian perspective on the desire for drugs.

"Humans evolved in itinerant band societies. Life in the sedentary peasant societies that succeeded them was less varied, fulfilling, egalitarian and healthful. Taking drugs to get through the daily grind (or to treat the intestinal and parasitic diseases attendant to settled life) is peculiar to civilization. ... Such practices are further clues, if any are needed, that our social circumstances are out of sync with our evolved natures."

Drugs apparently produce artificially the pleasurable brain chemistry reactions that evolution devised to reward our distant caveman ancestors for engaging in hunting and other behaviors essential to survival. Perhaps this explains the terrible alcoholism problems currently suffered by the indigenous tribes -- such as American Indians, Eskimos and Australian aborigines -- who have only recently given up the primordial hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Of course, New World Indians had their own native drugs to share with Columbus. According to Courtwright's bottomless bag of memorable quotes, the fanatically anti-smoking and anti-drinking Adolf Hitler called tobacco, "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man, vengeance for having been given hard liquor." (Perhaps, though, Hitler showed that power is the most dangerous drug of all.)

Courtwright dislikes drugs, but what he really hates is capitalism. "The peculiar, vomitorious genius of modern capitalism," he expounds, "is its ability to betray our senses with one class of products or services and then sell us another to cope with the damage so that we can go back to consuming more of what caused the problem in the first place."

Rich merchants and Western European governments generally encouraged drug commerce well into the 19th century. The relatively recent growth of temperance movements and at least partially effective government controls on drugs, Courtwright asserts, were a response to the industrial revolution changing what capitalists required from workers. Before industrialization, landlords could keep fieldworkers in debt-slavery by getting them addicted to expensive alcohol or opium. Drunken factory workers, though, would break expensive machinery.

"The growing cost of the abuse of manufactured drugs turned out to be a fundamental contradiction of capitalism," claims Courtwright. On the other hand, one could also argue that the historically high level of sobriety reigning in today's hyper-capitalistic information economy -- where caffeine is the only acceptable drug -- demonstrates that free markets can encourage self-control.

Many economists, most notably Milton Friedman, have suggested legalizing all drugs. They point out that the outlawing of drugs generates crime, just as Prohibition did.

The historian Courtwright, however, believes these economists are living in a theoretical dreamland. The "dangers of exposing people to psychoactive substances for which, it is increasingly clear, they lack evolutionary preparation" means that the "answer, whatever it may be, is not a return to a minimally regulated drug market."

I fear this is true, but I would have liked to have seen Courtwright grapple more directly with the libertarian economists' arguments. Historians love facts, but distrust logic, while economists don't like to mess up their beautiful theories with too much reality. Perhaps someday, a thinker equally at home with both the history and theory of drugs will resolve this crucial quandary. Until then, "Forces of Habit" makes a fine introduction.