The Early American Whiskey Cult
I believe that Americans considered opium to be a medication rather than an euphoric agent because they found that its particular mind-altering qualities did not give them the kind of pleasure or escape that they sought. For one thing, American society was free and fluid, even chaotic, and Americans were fervent believers in the ideal of the independent man. Such social conditions and values are not those of opium eaters. Social scientists have found that opium appeals to people who live in a highly structured culture that lacks socially approved channels for individual escape from social control.
Under those conditions, so alien to America in the early nineteenth century, opium provides a more certain escape from oppressive social controls than does liquor. Then, too, alcohol is a drug conducive to conviviality and group activity. In a society where communal drinking has been customary, as it was in America during the 1820s, the private act of taking opium is a form of deviancy, a rejection of society, in this respect similar to the solo binge. That the few who did use opium were disproportionately upper-class Americans who were most likely to reject their country’s egalitarianism suggests the validity of this analysis. Another difference between alcohol and opium is the way in which they affect individuals. A man who has failed to achieve his aspirations may react to his failure either by lowering his goals or by increasing his efforts. In this situation opium acts to reduce drive and thereby deflate ambitions. Alcohol, on the other hand, enables a man to strive harder by decreasing inhibitions. Liquor is in this way more closely associated with the unleashing of aggression, a quality that was abundantly evident in the young republic.
Alcohol’s link to aggression can also be observed by comparing its effects with those of another drug, marijuana. Although the use of marijuana is not indigenous to Anglo-American culture, the plant did grow in America, and some Indian tribes apparently dried it and smoked it. Americans borrowed corn and tobacco from the Indians, but they did not choose to cultivate marijuana. The reason seems clear in the light of a 1954 study that contrasted the use of marijuana and distilled spirits in a province of India. There the priestly caste smoked cannabis, which they praised as a promoter of contemplation, an aid to insight, a stimulant to thought, and a help in attaining inner peace. Spirits they condemned for producing violence and sexual promiscuity. The warrior caste, on the contrary, drank distilled liquor, which they heralded as a reviver of sagging spirits, and invigorator of sexual desire, a stimulant for the brave warrior, and the promoter of a more zealous, active life. Marijuana they condemned for producing apathy and lethargy. In other words, a groups preference for a particular drug and appreciation of its properties were determined by the group’s ideology, values, and psychological set. The caste that valued aggressive behavior drank alcohol.
The rejection of nonalcoholic intoxicants, the preference for distilled spirits over fermented beverages, the prevalence of delirium tremens, the solo binge, and the communal binge—each of these patterns of drinking has been associated with one or more social or psychological traits. This investigation has suggested that American were highly anxious, aspiring, and aggressive, that they combined ideals of liberty and equality with guilt, a desire for compartmentalization of their lives, and little faith in their ability to attain their high goals. We have already discussed anxiety, freedom, and equality at length, and few would doubt that Americans were aspiring and aggressive. But did Americans have little faith in their ability to attain high goals? Let us concentrate on this trait.
At first glance, low motivation for achievement contradicts a common impression about American character, for it would seem to deny the self-confident, go ahead, entrepreneurial spirit that we are frequently told built the country. Although only one of the drinking patterns, the preference for distilled spirits over other alcoholic beverages, is related to low motivation for achievement, the probability that that trait prevailed in early nineteenth-century America is suggested by other social science research. For one thing, social psychologists have shown that low motivation for achievement is related to high aspirations and to high anxiety, both of which we have found in early nineteenth-century America. Researchers have explained this connection by noting that high goals can be self-defeating, since they are unlikely to be fulfilled and hence discourage efforts to succeed. Social scientists have also found that low achievement motivation occurs in cultures where people do not believe in social stratification, and it is clear to me that Jacksonian Americans were fervently egalitarian. Furthermore, theorists have related an unwillingness to strive for success to the desire to take great risks, to gamble for long odds. And the new republic was rampant with land speculations, wildcat banks, lotteries, and high stakes card games—the river boat cardsharp became legendary. Finally, social scientists have identified low achievement motivation with economic stagnation, and economic historians report that from 1790 to the 1820s American per capita gross national product showed little real growth.
-excerpted from “The Alcohol Republic: An American Tradition” by W.J. Rorabaugh (1979)