Month: September 2020

Heroines?: Valentina Pavlovna Wasson and Psychedelic Wives

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from new contributing editor Peder Clark. Dr. Clark is a historian of modern Britain, with research interests in drugs, subcultures, health, everyday life, and visual culture. He completed his PhD in 2019 at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and he is currently a Research Associate at the University of Strathclyde. 

Cultural historian Mike Jay wrote an article last year which asked ‘why is psychedelic culture dominated by privileged white men?’ It’s a question worth answering, and one that Erika Dyck’s recent series on women in the history of psychedelic plant medicines for the Chacruna Institute does a fine job of addressing. As Dyck points out in her introduction, one doesn’t even need to look far to find female pioneers. Many of the “great men” of psychedelics, from Jean-Paul Sartre to Alexander Shulgin, were introduced to, or aided and abetted in their use of psychoactive substances by their wives and partners. In highlighting women such as Simone De Beauvoir or Ann Shulgin, Dyck’s introduction is redolent of Kate Zambreno’s polemical essay Heroines, which rages at the silencing, exclusion and neglect of “the wives and mistresses of modernism.” All writers themselves, women such as Vivienne Eliot, Jane Bowles and Zelda Fitzgerald have had their work side-lined, both deliberately and negligently, by the oversize literary reputations of their male partners.

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The Points Interview: David Black

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Editor’s Note: Today we’re excited to feature a Points Interview with David Black, the author of Psychedelic Tricksters: A True Secret History of LSD (independently published, 2020). Black lives in London and is an independent journalist and author. His previous books include The Philosophical Roots of Anti-Capitalism: Essays on History, Culture, and Dialectical Thought and 1839: The Chartist Insurrection.

Describe your book in terms your bartender could understand.

Psychedelic Tricksters: A True Secret History of LSD tells the story of various people who made that, beginning with the discovery of LSD’s hallucinogenic properties in 1943 by Albert Hoffman. In the late-1940s psychiatrists started using it as “psychosis-inducing drug” for schizophrenics. CIA officers investigated LSD’s potential as a weapon of mind-control and became enthusiastic trippers themselves. But the CIA and the medical establishment wanted to keep LSD out of the hands of “undesirables.” The “undesirables” included those in the new youth counterculture who challenged the official line on LSD and explored its potential for creativity and spirituality. So, in the 1960s, as LSD “escaped” into the counter-culture, the producers and distributors were forced underground.

I’ve titled the book Psychedelic Tricksters because in mythology the trickster is someone who “unwisely” defies the powers-on-high, as when Prometheus steals fire from Zeus for the benefit of humankind. The trickster’s rebellion always fails and yet is seen as necessary for the origin of civilizations, or perhaps, as in the case of psychedelics, a new beginning for a society that had lost way in war, racism and sexual oppression.

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Editorial transition at Contemporary Drug Problems

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CDP changes hands this month. Kate Seear, author of Law, Drugs and the Making of Addiction: Just Habits (Routledge, 2020), and kylie valentine, Deputy Director of the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and author with Suzanne Fraser of Substance and substitution: methadone subjects in liberal society (Palgrave, 2008) step into new roles as co-editors.

Following upon the editorship of Robin Room, the journal has been edited for the past decade by David Moore. The new co-editors served as associate editors and they recall, We have strong (and fond!) memories of reading articles in CDP that discuss pleasure, solidarity, and new possibilities; as well as articles that focus our anger and concern for systemic inequality and worldwide injustices experienced by people who use drugs. We think CDP is also a unique journal, given its concern for theoretical and empirical work, and will maintain those elements of the journal’s focus.  

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Points Roundtable: “American Rehab” from Reveal

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In July, Reveal, the broadcast channel of the Center for Investigative Reporting, released its eight-part series American Rehab, which centered on an investigation into the drug treatment program Cenikor and the group’s emphasis on “work therapy.” Examining how Cenikor was able to transform “tens of thousands of people into an unpaid, shadow workforce,” Reveal traced Cenikor’s development, struggles, and ultimate success as it placed “patients” into difficult, and often dangerous, jobs across Texas and Louisiana, keeping the money these workers earned and providing little else in terms of actual therapy or rehabilitation. Led by reporters Shoshana Walter, Laura Starecheski and Ike Sriskandarajah, the series is based off Walter’s previous reporting on the issue, which was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for national reporting.

American Rehab’s early episodes deal extensively with the history of a group that directly influenced the formation of Cenikor: Synanon. In doing so, the reporters reached out to several members of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society for advice and assistance on the history of addiction treatment. We’re really useful people to ask: roundtable participant Nancy Campbell’s book, co-authored with JP Olsen and Luke Walden, The Narcotic Farm: The Rise and Fall of America’s First Prison for Drug Addicts outlined the history of the Lexington Narcotics Farm, where “work therapy” got its start, and panelist Claire Clark’s book The Recovery Revolution: The Battle Over Addiction Treatment in the United States deals extensively with the long and complicated history of how “therapeutic communities” like Synanon influenced addiction treatment and rehabilitation. These books, as well as Campbell, Olsen, and Walden’s series, “Lessons from the Narcotic Farm” from 2012 (click the links to see parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) and contributing editor Jordan Mylet’s initial reaction to the series here, provide further details for those interested in how American drug treatment came to the disturbing point Reveal reveals. 

In response, now that the entire series is available, we decided to post a roundtable of reactions to the podcast. Participants include Nancy Campbell, professor and department head of Science & Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Erin Hatton, associate professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo and the author of Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment; Claire Clark, associate professor of behavioral science at the University of Kentucky; Jordan Mylet, doctoral candidate in history at the University of California, San Diego; and me, Emily Dufton, managing editor of Points and author of a forthcoming book about the history of medication-assisted treatment in the US. Our responses focus on the long history of work therapy in addiction treatment, the concept of coerced labor, the promotional model at the heart of many treatment programs, further reflections on Synanon, and assessments of the series’s conclusion. 

We welcome your thoughts on American Rehab and thank the reporters for bringing ADHS historians into the conversation. We hope you’ll enjoy our thoughts on American Rehab, and that you’ll listen to this important and informative podcast. 

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“Nightmarish” “Horrifying”: Thomas Randall’s The Twelfth Step

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from Matthew J. Raphael, a retired professor of English. Raphael is author of Bill W. and Mr. Wilson (University of Massachusetts Press, 2000), as well as other books and essays on the place of alcohol in American literature and culture. His previous work for Points includes reviewing the movie Bill W. and a review of Writing the Big Book.

At a convention in St. Louis in July 1955, Alcoholic Anonymous celebrated its twentieth anniversary. The event coincided with the release of the second edition of Alcoholics Anonymous. Bill Wilson emphasized the need for A.A. to move beyond reliance on its quasi-paternal founders and grow up. This idea inspired the title of the book memorializing the occasion: Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age (1957), the least familiar but most historically enlightening of A.A.’s canonical texts.

That same year, Thomas Randall, publishing under a pseudonym, released The Twelfth Step, which might be seen as a literary counterpart to Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. When I stumbled upon a copy of The Twelfth Step thirty years ago, I thought it was the best A.A.-related novel I had ever encountered. I’ve just reread it, and my opinion has not changed.

Curious readers might wish to check it out.

The cover of the 1963 paperback English edition

Honk! Spoiler Alert: The book is nearly unobtainable. There are roughly two dozen copies currently for sale online, varying in format and condition and ranging widely in price. The rare American edition from Charles Scribner’s Sons, goes from $25 to $250; the 1960 English edition, from $25 to $80; the 1963 paperback version of the English edition, from $20 to $45.

Until recently (see below), nothing was known about the writer of The Twelfth Step except what’s stated on the dust jacket and in a brief author’s note, which expresses appreciation to the New Hampshire State Alcoholic Clinic, “at which I received aid when I was desperately in need of it.” The author also gives thanks to A.A. groups in Woburn and Reading, Massachusetts; Concord, Tilton, and Laconia, New Hampshire; and Mexico City.

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Webinar with David Courtwright — THE AGE OF ADDICTION: HOW BAD HABITS BECAME BIG BUSINESS

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We live in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and shopping to binge eating and opioid abuse. Sugar can be as habit-forming as cocaine, researchers tell us, and social media apps are hooking our kids. In his new book, “The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business” (Harvard University’s Belknap Press, 2019), David Courtwright, …

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Cannabis in the 1950s British Tabloids

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from guest writer Alex Brown. Brown researches and writes for the drug history podcast Hooked on History. He has a Master’s in Contemporary History from the University of Edinburgh.

It will likely surprise none of this blog’s readers that British tabloids have proved poor custodians of “drug” information. Evidence of their inflexible anti-drug stance was presented during the Leveson Inquiry in 2011. Ex-Daily Star reporter Richard Peppiatt told the inquiry: “If a scientist announces their research has found ecstasy to be safer than alcohol, I know my job as a tabloid reporter is to portray this man as a quack.”[1] Instead of offering accurate information, “drug” articles tend to act as conduits through which moral judgments and social anxieties can be expressed.

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The Points Interview: Ronny Spaans

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Editor’s Note: Today we’re excited to feature a Points Interview with Dr. Ronny Spaans, Associate Professor in Nordic Literature at Nord University in Nordland, Norway. He also teaches Dutch at the University of Oslo. Here he discusses his new book, Dangerous Drugs: The Self-Presentation of the Merchant-Poet Joannes Six van Chandelier (1620-1695) (Amsterdam University Press, 2020).

Describe your book in terms your bartender could understand.

The bartender may already know that aquavit, gin and other spirits flavoured with spices and herbs, were seen as medicines in the Renaissance. But what he probably does not know, and probably will find interesting, is that there was a debate already in the 17th century about whether these “medicines” were dangerous to health. In addition, it probably would come as a surprise that in this debate, terms were used that we today attribute to drug abuse: addiction, hallucinations and moral dangers. And what makes it extra exciting, is that this debate was related to exotic substances. The debate about drugs in the 17th century has much in common with discussions we associate with the history of the spice trade, that is, spices as moral temptations. Exotic drugs could create hot desires in the body, fill you with madness, or make you think you were a king or deity, or they could give you divine insight into forbidden knowledge.

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