- Hardcover: 384 pages
- Publisher: Harmony; 1 Amer ed edition (Oct 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0609610449
- ISBN-13: 978-0609610442
- Product Dimensions: 24.7 x 15.1 x 3.1 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,097,424 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
“Who will ever relate the whole history of narcotica? It is almost the history of ‘culture,’ of our
so-called higher culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1882
With Nietzsche’s question as his objective, Stuart Walton begins Out of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication—a heterodox and throughly engaging examination of intoxicants, from the more everyday substances of alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco to the illicit realm of opiates, amphetamines, and hallucinogens. More than a mere catalog of intoxicants, however, Walton’s book is a smart, wry look at why intoxication has always been a part of the human experience—from our earliest Stone Age rituals to the practices of the ancient Greeks and Romans, right on through the Victorian era and ending with a flourish in modern times—and more significantly, why the use of intoxicants is, and will continue to be, an essential part of being human.
Using gastronomy as an example, Walton illustrates that just as the study of food history was
relatively unheard of until the 1970s, so too “intoxicology” has yet to be recognized as a richly warranted field of study. Though intoxication may not be considered as essential to human existence as food, and carries the unjust stigma of criminality, Walton proposes that it is “an integral part of Western civilization, and that we would do better to accept and celebrate that fact instead of making it a matter of criminal sanctions and repression.”
The conclusions Walton draws cut across the grain of today’s prevailing attitudes and fuel an important and often neglected debate, ultimately establishing that intoxication is not only a fundamental human right but, in fact, a biological imperative.
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First Sentence
Here is a modern recreational tale. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
Here is a modern recreational tale. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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3 reviews
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
More than provocative - a downright alluring read
10 Jan 2003
Format:Hardcover
Shibboleths need their forthright debunkers, and the drug war has needed a lively, over-educated Brit to take it apart, down its noxious, anti-human core. As a non-illicit drug user, too scared by the overt repressions of my religious and social heritages to have been more than a lightweight and now non-indulger, I needed to read the book, to check my immoral condemnations of sensation seekers. Walton gets writing back to an exercise of fun, ranging across the whole of antiquity with the erudition of a fusty Oxford don, but has evidently been to the places better designer drugs can take the individual partaker. Here's to his courage, his perspicacity, and may we see the error of our ways in, oh, about 100 years, when responsible, safe use of temporary mind-altering concoctions might be a social virtue.
7 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Life, liberty and the pursuit of intoxication
19 July 2003
Format:Hardcover
Don't expect Stuart Walton to be signing copies of Out of It at your local PTA anytime soon. Walton's thesis is that intoxication is an historical constant, a biological necessity and an intrinsic good. The record speaks clearly to Walton. Look anywhere -- Greeks, Romans, polytheists, monotheists, north/south, tribal/advanced -- and you'll find consumers in search of the altered state. What drives this imperative? The answer, Walton claims, is rarely acknowledged but straightforward nontheless: "drugs make us feel different" by altering the typical void of the ordinary life. The options are multiple -- opiates, inhalants, stimulants, hallucinogns. For each class Walton provides a readable account of their composition, effects, prevalence and mode of use. Despite Walton's claim about the ubiquity of drugs, most readers visiting Walton-land will be visiting a strange land, or at least sizeable parts of it, for the first time. The range of stories contained in these pages (a Vancouver CEO buying industrial quantities of LSD, Eton students toying with asphyxiation blackouts, any number of Guiness-book drinkers) find a voice on Walton's pages.
This book has a rambling, discursive quality, but Walton can turn a phrase, and his argument will turn more than a few heads. The value of disciplined moderation, commended to us from Plato through Aquinas as the hallmark of the well-tuned soul, as the life "worth living," finds no champion in Walton's world. Absent as well, are those "victims" of the victimless crime of intoxication, those about whom MADD are so passionate. Walton won't change the minds of his readers, but he will open them. Walton is wrong, but worth hearing.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Studies the history, causes, effects, and attitudes
17 Jun 2003
Format:Hardcover
Out Of It: A Cultural History Of Intoxication by cultural historian and journalist Stuart Walton is a review and survey of the use of intoxicants down through human history and which ranged from alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco, to opiates, amphetamines, hallucinogens, and "designer drugs". From Stone Age rituals; to intoxication in the Greek and Roman eras; to contemporary recreational usage and strict anti-drug laws, Out Of It studies the history, causes, effects, and attitudes concerning these chemical substances with a distinct eye for the logic (and illogic) behind the generational shifts in social mores, customs, and prohibitions.
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