Cult of Pharmacology

DeGrandpre Richard DeGrandpre

Description

America had a radically different relationship with drugs a century ago. Drug prohibitions were few, and while alcohol was considered a menace, the public regularly consumed substances that are widely demonized today. Heroin was marketed by Bayer Pharmaceuticals, and marijuana was available as a tincture of cannabis sold by Parke Davis and Company.Exploring how this rather benign relationship with psychoactive drugs was transformed into one of confusion and chaos, The Cult of Pharmacology tells the dramatic story of how, as one legal drug after another fell from grace, new pharmaceutical substances took their place. Whether Valium or OxyContin at the pharmacy, cocaine or meth purchased on the street, or alcohol and tobacco from the corner store, drugs and drug use proliferated in twentieth-century America despite an escalating war on "drugs."Richard DeGrandpre, a past fellow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and author of the best-selling book Ritalin Nation, delivers a remarkably original interpretation of drugs by examining the seductive but ill-fated belief that they are chemically predestined to be either good or evil. He argues that the determination to treat the medically sanctioned use of drugs such as Miltown or Seconal separately from the illicit use of substances like heroin or ecstasy has blinded America to how drugs are transformed by the manner in which a culture deals with them.Bringing forth a wealth of scientific research showing the powerful influence of social and psychological factors on how the brain is affected by drugs, DeGrandpre demonstrates that psychoactive substances are not angels or demons irrespective of why, how, or by whom they are used. The Cult of Pharmacology is a bold and necessary new account of America's complex relationship with drugs.

Sujets

• Médecine
• USA
• Pharmacology
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 27 novembre 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822388197
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Cult of Pharmacology

Duke University Press Durham + London 2006

Richard DeGrandpre

The Cult of Pharmacology

How America Became the World’s Most Troubled Drug Culture

 2006 Duke University Press / All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acidfree paper $ Designed by Jennifer Hill / Typeset in Galliard by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Preface

vii

Part OneEnd of a Century

1 mama coca

3

2 cult of the ssri

34

3 the emperor’s new smokes

Part TwoEarlier Times

4 the placebo text

103

64

5 america’s domestic drug affair

6 war

170

Part ThreeWhile at War

7 the drug reward

179

8 possessed by the stimulus

9 ideology

236

208

138

Appendix Oneescalation of american drug laws

in the twentieth century

243

Appendix Twou.s. regulations allowing a white

market for drugs in the twentieth century

Notes

247

Selective Bibliography

Index

287

283

245

Contents

Preface

ngland began importing co√ee from the Muslim East in the seven- teenth century. At first many Britains viewed the brewed substance ‘‘co E √ee house’’ was a threat to English ale houses, and thus the economy, with suspicion, and some groups made e√orts to demonize it. The and of course was counter to Christian values. Worse still, its stimulant actions caused impotence and ‘‘made men as unfruitful as the deserts ∞ whence that unhappy berry is said to be brought.’’ England eventually made peace with the popular and profitable bean, however, reclassifying it ≤ as a harmless beverage. Today co√ee is not just the working person’s daily wake-up fix and the café philosopher’s stimulant of choice—it is also a global billion-dollar business. This about sums up the modern history of drugs: irrational and unpre- dictable, full of fear and loathing, with a strong theme of commerce running right through the center. Far from deviating from this norm, America in the twentieth century dealt with drugs in a fashion as irrational and as seem- ingly unpredictable as any nation in history. The only obvious constant in America’s relationships with psychoactive substances, whether from the street, the store, or the pharmacy, was that, like co√ee, nearly all these substances at some point carried a strong emotional charge in society. This was as true for heroin and alcohol as it was for popular ‘‘medicines’’ like Benzedrine, Miltown, and Prozac. Drugs in twentieth-century America thus became a vast and layered realm of significance, a territory of meaning contested with great zeal. For the meaning of a drug determined not only its legitimacy but also who could use it and how, and who could not—at least not legally. By midcentury, drugs in America began to be divided up accordingly, as the market for mind-altering substances fractured into two and then three parts: the ‘‘ille- gal drugs’’ of the black market, the ‘‘ethical medicines’’ of the pharmaceuti- cal market, and the drugs of the gray market, which by the end of the century included alcohol, tobacco, and ca√eine. Whether a drug fell into one category or another at any particular time was viewed not as an irra- tional and unpredictable enterprise driven by the historically contingent

forces of culture and commerce but as a straightforward scientific issue. Even respected drug scholars and researchers held throughout the century that by entering the bloodstream and thereby directly impacting the brain, drugs acquire special powers. Modern science did not do away with myth, in other words, by tearing down the ancient view of drugs as powerful spirits. Instead, a cult of phar- macology emerged as pharmacological essences replaced magical ones. The former were said to act in much the same manner as the latter, in that a drug’s powers were still viewed as capable of bypassing all the social condi- tioning of the mind, directly transforming the drug user’s thoughts and actions. As ‘‘soul’’ was reinterpreted as ‘‘mind,’’ and ‘‘spirit’’ was reinter- preted as ‘‘biochemistry,’’ magical explanations of drug action fell out of use. Indeed, psychobabble and biobabble had taken their place. But do not misunderstand me. In suggesting that a cult of pharmacology came to reign supreme over America, I am not also suggesting a conspiracy theory. In this book I describe various networks of understandings within which drug-related phenomena, both praised and condemned, were inter- preted, and how these understandings caused the social and historical deter- minants of ‘‘drug e√ects’’ to be overlooked. The pharmaceutical industry, the tobacco industry, modern biological psychiatry, the biomedical sci- ences, the drug enforcement agencies, and the American judicial system— all these institutions were quick to embrace and promote a cult of phar- macology not as a conspiracy but as a belief system that served their own interests, albeit in varying ways. In fact, to suggest an active conspiracy would be to miss a central theme of this history, for the power of the cult of pharmacology to classify drugs as angels and demons stemmed largely from the fact that it was widely embraced. America became the world’s most troubled drug culture not because the government conspired to allow ac- cess to drugs to some while denying access to others, but because more than any other nation, it was a full member of the cult—it truly believed.

Still, the ideology of the all-powerful drug, the cult of pharmacology, at times came into question, as in Peter Laurie’sDrugs, Alfred Lindesmith’s Addiction and Opiates, Stanton Peele’sThe Meaning of Addiction, Oakley Ray’sDrugs, Society, and Human Behavior, Eric Schlosser’sAtlantic Monthly essays on ‘‘reefer madness,’’ Thomas Szasz’sCeremonial Chemistry, Andrew ≥ Weil’sThe Natural Mind, and Norman Zinberg’sDrugs, Set, and Setting.

v i i i

P r e f a c e

These and other interrogations of drug issues implicated a variety of non- pharmacological factors in the shaping of drug outcomes and of America as a drug culture. Although they had little e√ect in tearing down the cult of pharmacology, they were nevertheless significant for promoting under- standing of how drugs work. Weil’sNatural Mind(1972), for instance, lays out a first principle about drugs and society: the desire for altered states of consciousness is a natural drive among human beings (indeed, of all the cultures in the world, only ∂ the Eskimos lack a tradition of drug use). Much of what has taken place in the name of drugs, throughout history and in twentieth-century America, boils down to this fact and one other, namely, that given the basic human tendency toward altered states, society is always confronted with the prob- lem of how to deal with mind-altering substances and activities. Weil later co-wroteFrom Chocolate to Morphine, an equally lucid work that, among other things, attempts to clarify the di√erences betweendrug useas a description of behavior anddrug abuseas a moral judgment of that behavior. ‘‘Any drug can be used successfully, no matter how bad its reputa- tion, and any drug can be abused, no matter how accepted it is. There are no ∑ good or bad drugs; there are only good and bad relationships with drugs.’’ Here Weil presents another basic principle for drugs and society: in its response to drugs, society has a tendency to load them with extraneous meaning—with myth. Gradually, but sometimes very quickly, this meaning joins the drug ritual itself, animating drug outcomes.

In looking at drugs in twentieth-century America, one must pick up where the nineteenth century left o√, that is, in the middle of an ongoing drug drama, a drama that not only spilled over into the twentieth century with great impact but also clearly emerged from the two principles identified by Weil: drug use is ubiquitous, and the social meanings drugs acquire often transform their e√ects, their uses, and their users. But something specific to drugs in twentieth-century America was also evident by the end of the century. Below the surface of the influential pseudoscience of drugs that developed was a strong and growing undercurrent of understanding, both scientific and conceptual, that, had it been acknowledged in Western so- ciety, could have undermined the modern mythologizing of drugs as angels and demons. Instead, America became the world’s most troubled drug culture, never

P r e f a c e

i x