New Addictions in the South

BRIAN: We’re back talking about the history of addiction in America.

NATHAN: Talking to David Courtwright, I was struck by how many of the addicts in the late 19th century, indeed, the vast majority, were upper- and middle-class white women. And I later learned that most of them were from the South.

ED: Yeah, I guess I wasn’t as surprised, Nathan. Because the New South, as we call the era after Reconstruction, was a place sort of perfectly suited for this kind of addiction. You had the sudden availability of all kinds of products that had never been available before. And all these general stores, and railroads, and mail order, and all these things were coming up.

And so you have a lot of people thinking, well, what can I do to take care of myself? You go back and look at the newspapers of the New South Era, they’re just filled with patent medicine ads. And there’s a lot of self-medication going on. Whether it’s the relatively elite white women, maybe widows. The South has been devastated by the Civil War, of course.

But it’s also the case that the South is looking for other forms of stimulants. This is kind of striking. This is the same era that the cigarette machine is invented here in Virginia, and they could roll 100,000 cigarettes in a day. And the tobacco industry as we know it really takes off.

And it’s also the time that Coca-Cola is invented as a headache remedy, mainly because it has a whole lot of stimulants in it. And the very earliest ones do have coca in it, the origins of cocaine. But a lot of caffeine as well, and a lot of sugar as well.

At the same time this is all happening, the South is also the place that institutes prohibition earlier than the rest of the country. It’s partly because of the religious tradition, but it’s also because the sudden prevalence of alcohol. And these potent, new mass-produced and mass-distributed forms are also a new threat.

BRIAN: Well, and what strikes me about what you said, much of which I’d never thought about, Ed, is the stark division between what turns out to be illegal, eventually, in the early 20th century, and what turns out to be the most legitimate and important business of the South across the 20th century. And the line is really pretty blurry, in terms of actual physical addiction, by the tune of modern science.

ED: And what they have in common, Brian, is that cigarettes and Coca-Cola, but also alcohol, are on a continuum with morphine of degrees of addiction. And what Courtwright’s interview helps us understand is a lot of it depends on the channels and the social sanction by which these addictive substances come.

So it’s interesting how quickly people react. At the same time this is all happening, there’s a scare in the South about this new substance that’s supposedly leading black men to behave irrationally. Cocaine. So you can find these campaigns to stamp out cocaine use in the same society that, just around the corner, would have this morphine abuse, and that is producing these addictive substances for the rest of the world.

So yeah, Brian, it’s kind of surprising. We don’t really think about the South being sort of awash in consumer goods, but they are not only consumers of things like this new morphine, but they are producers of these addictive substances that really flow into the bloodstream of the whole nation, and later, the whole world.

NATHAN: Well, that’s the thing about– if you think about cigarettes, and Coca-Cola, and obviously, morphine. I mean, these are various substances that are only talked about as being addictive at different points in American history. It’s only recently, relatively, that we talk about the addictive power of sugar.

Or certainly, nicotine addiction is an emergency on a national scale, relative to the 1970s and 80s. But it’s not that way in the 1950s. And so I think it’s a powerful indicator of the fact that even addiction is something that is not simply relegated to the body of the person using the substance. That it is a social and a cultural phenomenon.

BRIAN: Stigmatized or legitimated.

NATHAN: Right.

BRIAN: And Nathan, you’ve also pointed to the social nature of science and medical science itself. Because back in the 1880s and 1890s, they were just beginning to recognize, through experience, and probably because of the population they were dealing with of white women, that this was, as they would call it “habit-forming.” But they certainly weren’t terribly worried about the addictive quality of nicotine at that time.

NATHAN: Right.

BRIAN: And what has happened with our growing concern with health and well-being over the course of the 20th century is that we have become more and more precise. The tools to measure addiction have become more and more precise. And we are actually able now, through scientific experiments, to show the addictive qualities of many of these substances, that for much of the 20th century, were considered completely legitimate, and even healthful.

ED: You know, it’s a fact that humans are physiologically inclined to become addicted to different kinds of substances. Throughout history, people have looked for different substances that will make them feel good in the short term, with not really an understanding of what the long term might be like. As historians, we’re not much inclined to look for constants in human history. We’re always struck by the change.

NATHAN: No.

BRIAN: That’s boring.

ED: But here’s a case that American history shows you both those things. That the physiological longing to dull various kinds of sensations matches this kaleidoscope of changing social situations. And that’s what we see in the history of addiction. Is that there’s always an impulse, a pulling toward it, but there’s always a difference supplying of that longing. And what that supply shows is the way society itself is changing.

BRIAN: It’s time for another break. When we get back, the creation of the 20th century junkie. But first, this quick message.

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