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Substance Use and Abuse: Cultural and Historical Perspectives
Substance use and abuse are two of the most frequent psychological problems clinicians encounter. Mainstream approaches focus on the biological and psychological factors supporting drug abuse. But to fully comprehend the issue, clinicians need to consider the social, historical, and cultural factors responsible for drug-related problems. Substance Use and Abuse: Cultural and Historical Perspectives provides an inclusive explanation of the human desire to take drugs. Using a multidisciplinary framework, authors Russil Durrant and Jo Thakker explore the cultural and historical variables that contribute to drug use. Integrating biological, psychosocial, and cultural-historical perspectives, this innovative and accessible volume addresses the fundamental question of why drug use is such a ubiquitous feature of human society.
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320 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2003
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June 6, 2018
Substance Use & Abuse by Russil Durrant and Jo Thakker asks a crucial question: Why do people use drugs in our modern society? In answering this question, Durrant and Thakker delve deep into multiple fields of study to find out the purpose of drugs. However, the more pressing follow-up question is the one people will be even more interested in. That is, why do those who use drugs sometimes go on to abuse drugs while others are perfectly fine with just trying it out? As it turns out, it depends on the context in which the substance is taken and personal expectations to some extent.
The book mentions six functional contexts in which drugs are taken; Medicinal, Recreational, Social, Pragmatic, Ritual-religious, and Dietary. Medicinal is self-explanatory along with Recreational. As for Social, sometimes drug use determines demarcation between class hierarchies. Pragmatic means practical, so you take drugs for reasons like alleviating fatigue. Ritual-religious is apparent when you consider indigenous tribes and the ingestion of coca leaves or the taking of qat. Speaking of qat, there are tons of drugs that I had never even heard of. This book makes a mention of plenty of substances like betel, kava, qat, and pituri that are taken in Asia and the South Pacific.
That still doesn’t explain our big question of drug abuse. However, what counts as drug abuse? What is an addiction, so to speak? Like all good books, this one turns to the ICD and DSM definitions of substance addiction. Cultural norms also come into play. Take the intake of alcohol. Back in medieval times, people needed to drink alcohol since the water was bad and alcohol was a safer bet. With the coming of distilled spirits around the Elizabethan Era, many people drank as they used to but drunkenness started being a larger social problem. Distilled Spirits are several times more concentrated than beer, cider, or mead, and people weren’t adjusting their intake for this difference.
Now don’t get me wrong, tons of people use drugs in our society and those substances are perfectly innocuous or non-deleterious to your health. Once again, cultural norms come into play. Take caffeine for instance. How many people in this day and age can’t get going without their morning coffee? And yet, caffeine is still a drug at its core. It does have a Lethal Dose. Many drugs of the modern era have been powered up by science. Opium was certainly a problem in some areas long ago; in the modern era, we have heroin. With the invention of the hypodermic needle, it could be injected directly into the bloodstream. In fact, we can make heroin that is so pure that it can be snorted. Back in the times of the New World Exploration, indigenous people had stuff like the coca leaf; in our modern era, we now have cocaine of such purity and concentration that it puts that stuff to shame.
This book is from 2003, so it does predate the modern Opiate epidemic, but the book is still quite interesting. Using statistics and other methods it found that most of the people that try hard drugs or illicit substances have less to lose by doing so. Since this book is meant for people that are studying drug use and abuse it is quite technical and scholarly. It throws out a lot of technical names for drugs and other substances. This might be a major turnoff to a lot of people that are looking for something simple and understandable. I mainly picked this book up because the title looked interesting. With the Opiate epidemic in full swing, and the War on Drugs still in effect, it is a subject that has gotten me curious. Luckily my library had a copy of it.
The book mentions six functional contexts in which drugs are taken; Medicinal, Recreational, Social, Pragmatic, Ritual-religious, and Dietary. Medicinal is self-explanatory along with Recreational. As for Social, sometimes drug use determines demarcation between class hierarchies. Pragmatic means practical, so you take drugs for reasons like alleviating fatigue. Ritual-religious is apparent when you consider indigenous tribes and the ingestion of coca leaves or the taking of qat. Speaking of qat, there are tons of drugs that I had never even heard of. This book makes a mention of plenty of substances like betel, kava, qat, and pituri that are taken in Asia and the South Pacific.
That still doesn’t explain our big question of drug abuse. However, what counts as drug abuse? What is an addiction, so to speak? Like all good books, this one turns to the ICD and DSM definitions of substance addiction. Cultural norms also come into play. Take the intake of alcohol. Back in medieval times, people needed to drink alcohol since the water was bad and alcohol was a safer bet. With the coming of distilled spirits around the Elizabethan Era, many people drank as they used to but drunkenness started being a larger social problem. Distilled Spirits are several times more concentrated than beer, cider, or mead, and people weren’t adjusting their intake for this difference.
Now don’t get me wrong, tons of people use drugs in our society and those substances are perfectly innocuous or non-deleterious to your health. Once again, cultural norms come into play. Take caffeine for instance. How many people in this day and age can’t get going without their morning coffee? And yet, caffeine is still a drug at its core. It does have a Lethal Dose. Many drugs of the modern era have been powered up by science. Opium was certainly a problem in some areas long ago; in the modern era, we have heroin. With the invention of the hypodermic needle, it could be injected directly into the bloodstream. In fact, we can make heroin that is so pure that it can be snorted. Back in the times of the New World Exploration, indigenous people had stuff like the coca leaf; in our modern era, we now have cocaine of such purity and concentration that it puts that stuff to shame.
This book is from 2003, so it does predate the modern Opiate epidemic, but the book is still quite interesting. Using statistics and other methods it found that most of the people that try hard drugs or illicit substances have less to lose by doing so. Since this book is meant for people that are studying drug use and abuse it is quite technical and scholarly. It throws out a lot of technical names for drugs and other substances. This might be a major turnoff to a lot of people that are looking for something simple and understandable. I mainly picked this book up because the title looked interesting. With the Opiate epidemic in full swing, and the War on Drugs still in effect, it is a subject that has gotten me curious. Luckily my library had a copy of it.
December 31, 2017
Had a hard time with the format. Very little breaks in pages makes it hard to process.
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