Similar patterns appeared in the use of drugs and drink. In the United States, consumption of alcohol and the use of drugs both tended to rise during the 1960s and 1970s in a series of surges that correlated with the rate of inflation in consumer prices. Similar tendencies had occurred in the United States during the price-revolution of the eighteenth century. The Victorian equilibrium, on the other hand, was marked by a sustained decline in alcohol consumption, and in the United States by a decline in drug use after 1830.
