Christopher M. Finan

It started strong, but as soon as AA came up chronologically it became immensely clear that the author is an AA member and a proselytizer thereof. He isn't objective at all from that point on, basically stating that recovery without a Christian God on board doesn't work and heavily implying that AA's success rate is much higher than it is. AA takes up the entire second half of the book, making it not in fact an "American history" after the first section. Disappointing.

I don't drink. It's not that I'm being sanctimonious. It's that I don't like the taste of any alcohol I've ever tasted (mixed with sugary stuff to make it palatable to my sweet tooth is a different story) and there are alcoholics in my extended family. Given my own pretty transparently addictive personality, I've never felt like developing a taste for alcohol was a good idea for me. But that doesn't mean I'm not curious about alcoholism through the years, the changing perceptions of show more alcoholics, and the history and development of treatments for those suffering from it. Christopher Finan's forthcoming book, Drunks: An American History, is an examination of just those things.

Starting with Handsome Lake, a Native American man who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Finan traces the many unrelated, and nowadays unknown, movements meant to help alcoholics overcome their addiction throughout American history. We all know Alcoholics Anonymous today but there were many forerunners to AA, all of which boasted varying degrees of success. Each of the movements had a similar goal, the reform and cure of alcoholics, but they went about achieving that goal in different ways and with different degrees of support from society and the medical establishment at the time. The stigma of alcoholism, the debate over whether it is a disease or not, and the rise and fall of programs to help alcoholics (indeed, even the varying opinions on whether they could/can indeed be cured) are all covered in detail here. Finan covers famous people and events in the fight against drinking (Carrie Nation, Prohibition) but he also covers those less well known who were leaders in the fight to help alcoholics get sober.

The book is organized chronologically and Finan grounds each organization's founding, existence, and eventual decline in the larger society and times that allowed for its formation. He's done extensive research, quoting both primary and secondary sources. The work can be a little dense and the differences between the movements aren't always completely obvious. But those minor differences could be the one thing that helped a drunk get dry so they were very important indeed. This is not an easy, quick narrative non-fiction read but it will undoubtedly be invaluable to those with an interest in addiction and the long, still ongoing, quest for sobriety as well as those curious about the changing attitudes towards alcoholism (moral failing? illness? disease?). show less

In Drunks: An American History, Christopher M. Finan traces the history of alcoholism in the United States from the colonial era through the Affordable Care Act. Each chapter focuses on a relatively self-contained example, though the overall narrative connects as Finan demonstrates how movements and ideas built upon each other.

He begins with an examination of Handsome Lake, a Seneca Indian who worked to encourage sobriety among his people. Describing the damage of alcohol to Indian show more communities, Finan writes, “Before they began to encounter European explorers and fishermen in the sixteenth century, very few indigenous people of the eastern coast of North America had ever tasted alcohol, and none had experienced anything more than the mild inebriation of fermented drinks used ceremonially. Nothing prepared them for the effects of distilled spirits” (pg. 10). Like some of the later movements Finan describes, community pressure worked best to encourage sobriety amongst Native American communities.

Demonstrating the connection between drinking culture and politics in the early republic, Finan writes, “Politicians in the early American republic were novices in the democratic arts, but it didn’t take them long to recognize that the shortest route to a man’s vote was through a shot glass” (pg. 46). To combat this, Washingtonian societies worked in a revival spirit, encouraging drunks to sign pledges in a manner resembling that of religious meetings during the Second Great Awakening. Even those who opposed spirituous liquors, however, often felt that beer and wine were healthy.

Finan writes of Benjamin Rush, “Rush did not expect people to stop drinking all alcoholic beverages. He considered beer healthful and supported removing the tax on it to encourage people to switch from rum and whiskey. He was also enthusiastic about wine” (pg. 59). Examining Carry Nation and Prohibition, Finan writes, “Some would even credit her with drawing national attention to the problem of saloons and leading the country toward Prohibition, which went into effect in January 1920. But the United States was already well along that road. By 1903, prohibitionists had succeeded in drying up many of the rural areas of the country. Thirty-five million people were living in places where it was no longer legal to buy a drink” (pg. 117). Despite the work of progressives to achieve prohibition, Finan concludes that it backfired as local and state governments cut funding to programs aiding drunks, believing that legal prohibition of alcohol ended the problem.

The second half of Finan’s work largely traces the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous, its growth, and influence on people from various walks of life, including Betty Ford, and other similar programs. In his final chapter, Finan describes the relevance of this study, writing, “As this book goes to press, the United States is in the midst of an epidemic of opioid addiction that killed 29,467 people in 2014. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has said that twenty-two million Americans are addicted to alcohol or drugs. Fifteen million are alcoholics; another three million are addicted to both alcohol and drugs, and four million are drug addicts” (pg. 282).

Drunks: An American History will primarily appeal to academics studying the history of addiction and recovery as well as those with an interest in their own recovery. Much of the work reads like historical context for AA’s Big Book. He demonstrates the long road from moral condemnation to a disease model of treatment and offers hope for the future as America continues to debate the manner in which it handles addiction. show less

I guess it's inevitable that a book about treatments for alcoholics would be a bit, ahem, dry. There were a lot of interesting characters and anecdotes, but my interest flagged when the descriptions of the movements got too detailed, which they often did. Still, Finan is to be commended for presenting a tremendous amount of information, much of it obscure (at least to me), while avoiding the stultifying language of academia.