High Society. Mind‐altering Drugs in History and Culture

Citation

Day, M. (2011), "High Society. Mind‐altering Drugs in History and Culture", Drugs and Alcohol Today, Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 110-110. https://doi.org/10.1108/17459261111174064

Mike Jay is an author and historian who is a specialist in the study of drugs and their cultures and who has written on the history of science and medicine. Without the lens of a historical perspective, many people will assume that altering one's consciousness by imbibing substances is a relatively new occurrence associated with youth culture and the “anti‐social” acting out of the beat/hippie movement of the 1960s. I kind of did. I actually never really thought about it much: I knew natives chewed all kinds of nasty bitter things to commune with the spirit world but that was about the extent of my musings. Contrary to what the state‐sponsored anti‐drug party line mechanisms would have us think, Mike Jay points out in the opening chapter of this beautifully illustrated book that the use of mind‐altering substances is a universal inclination and not the depraved modern phenomenon that we are often led to believe.

Written as an extension of the Wellcome Collection's London exhibition of the same name, High Society is an alluring fusion of prose and illustrations that records the universal place that substances, both natural and man‐made, have played in the progress and development of human society and culture. Using archaeological evidence, Jay posits that the use of mind‐altering substances stretches back into the beginnings of the human race and far before recorded history.

There are a number of fascinating facts brought forth in this volume, including the universality of substance‐induced mind expansion to get an insight into the unknown, how substances were used in their cultural and contextual origin and how they migrated from shaman to apothecaries to the salons to raves. Jay explores the role of the pharmaceutical companies in the nineteenth century in the promotion of the use of substances as a panacea for all pains and ills and one wonders how little has changed in the past 150 years, with tablets still being hyped as the cure for all the ills of society.

He also points out that it is only when a substance is transported out of the cultural context of its origin that the harms associated with its use are compounded. Examples are tobacco used in the rituals of Native Americans causing untold harm when transplanted into the European context and then beyond and the decimation of native populations around the globe by the insertion of alcohol.

It was fascinating for me to read of the role of psychoactive substances in the promotion of world trade and made me think how similar this is to the role that pornography played in the growth of the internet.

This book takes the propaganda out of drug use and records the history of substance use informatively and free of banal morality. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to all as a must‐have, must‐read.