Sociology Department

We pay so much attention to the iniquity of addiction that we scarcely notice the ubiquity of intoxication. From the temperance crusade of the 19th century to crack cocaine in the 1980s and now fentanyl and the overdose crisis, the United States has never lacked for drug scares. Yet cannabis has been widely legalized, psychedelics are used to treat mental illness, and there’s Ritalin for ADHD and Prozac for improving one’s outlook. To begin to make sense of this, we need to broaden how we think about intoxication – a concept far too narrow to do justice to the wide variety of altered states found everywhere in American culture.