The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Social History of Drugs, Richard Davenport-Hines

An account of drug use, The Pursuit of Oblivion presents an often-ignored insight into the history of need & addiction. Today the international trade in illicit drugs generates annually as much money as the oil industry, about $400 billion worldwide. In this elegantly comprehensive history of drugs & their role in society, award-winning historian Richard Davenport-Hines examines how licit medicines developed into the commodity of this huge illicit business. Melding social, political & cultural history, The Pursuit of Oblivion illustrates that intoxication is neither unnatural nor deviant. It describes how for 1000s of years humans have taken substances to change their physical or emotional state. Davenport-Hines argues persuasively that drug use is a necessary part of experience, recounting how many drugs that are controlled or prohibited nowadays were freely available until the early 20th century. Altho intrepid 17th-century European explorers experimented with narcotics discovered overseas, modern drug history wasn't firmly established until the 19th century. Innovative Victorian physicians, spurred on by the new availability of syringes & the discovery of new therapeutic substances, began to use morphine & other powerful medicines in the treatment of a wide range of diseases. Many patients became unwittingly dependent on the drugs that had been used to treat their physical or nervous ailments. Physicians, tho, remained confident in the healing powers of new pharmaceuticals & many, including Freud, enthusiastically endorsed the advent of cocaine. In the 20th century opiates, cocaine & marijuana became increasingly associated with minorities, the lower classes & deviants. Attitudes & policies were changed across the world by the USA anti-drug lobby's obsession with the total prohibition of recreational drugs. Fueled by class antagonisms, fear of crime & naive idealism, the government took the global initiative in the drug wars, & behind the formidable Harry Anslinger launched a forceful, but counterproductive, prohibition policy to which the European powers gradually conformed. The last century has revealed that the War on Drugs, with its aim of unconditional surrender, is an unwinnable war. Drug use can be dangerous & destructive, but as long as it's sustained by an economic reward system made possible only by prohibition, it will remain gratifying to both suppliers & some users. In its depiction of the people & events that have shaped the history of drugs, The Pursuit of Oblivion is a history of individual emotional extremes. Davenport-Hines tells the story of addicts & users across five monarchs, politicians, great writers, composers, exhausted laborers, pop stars, defiant schoolchildren, victims of the ghetto & happy young people on a spree. Drawing on evidence from different continents & cultures, this book forces a reconsideration of many views on a controversial subject of global importance.