Drugs Histories
As a self-described “historian of cannabis” I get a lot of questions about my chosen research method. On the one hand “drugs” are laden with negative, subversive connotations, and some historians have described their research as “forbidden histories”.[1] On the other hand, they are associated with “stoners”, “drop-outs” and “hippies”, and this has actually been the issue I run into more often – drugs, cannabis in particular, seem to be too trivial to be a “serious” PhD topic. It sounds wishy-washy and uncritical, a “fun” research topic, but not one with any real analytical weight. Why would a historian choose to research drugs, beyond the shock factor of saying they study cannabis? With this in mind I would like to talk, briefly, about a few of the ways in which I am finding productive analytical uses for drugs in my work on Francoist (and pre-Francoist) Spain.
Firstly, we can make a distinction between “drug histories” and “histories of drugs”. Histories of drugs record where and when substances were consumed, in which quantities, and perhaps by whom. This kind of history is commonly used by social scientists, medical professionals, or lawmakers, and is a history only in so much as it traces certain data sets through time. Drug histories on the other hand use the substances they study as a heuristic device which bring to light wider historical phenomena. For my research, I am much less interested in the fact that there was an increase in cannabis consumption in the late 1960s and 1970s, and more interested in why this was – the social changes that drove this consumption. Drugs are not the object of study, but the tool through which we seek to understand wider issues.
Edges
As Virginia Berridge and Timothy Hickman have stated, “who is seen as using drugs and how threatening those groups appear to be in the context of the time are important in defining which drugs are a ‘problem’”.[2] Drugs tend to become flashpoints for social frictions – symbolic battlegrounds where wider social anxieties are played out.
Starting in colonial Morocco my research has found that kif (cannabis) often functioned as a symbolic reference point where colonial narratives could be voiced and explored. In newspaper articles, novels, art, and even medical, (pseudo-)scientific and political texts, kif is symbolic of the “backwards”, “uncivilized”, “corrupt” and “immoral” nature of Morocco, from which it must be rescued by “modern” Spain.
Other drugs illuminate other social flashpoints; cocaine was discussed primarily in the context of gender and female emancipation, and alcoholism was seen as a primarily working-class problem. In the later years of the Franco regime, the major social fault line was not race, but generation. Cannabis once again became the symbol of foreign corruption, not from “backwards” Morocco, but from decadent northern European tourists and “hippies” who threatened to corrupt the Spanish youth, and therefore threatened the future of the Spanish nation.
By studying drugs and the discourses around them we inevitably end up at the various “edges” that they illuminate, where we can see the wider anxieties of the societies we study played out in miniature, be it worries about modernity and the future, changing gender relations, immigration, or any number of things.
Drug Utilities and Agency
We tend to think of drugs as fixed and stable entities with a certain, repeatable effect. Some are “uppers”, others are “downers”. Some relieve pain and others trigger vivid hallucinations. However, drug effects are influenced by many factors, not just the chemical makeup of the drug. There is the dose taken, the specific biological and psychological makeup of the user. But there is also the intentions and expectations of the user, their mindset at the time, and their social setting.
In this way, people could use the same drugs to vastly different ends. In my archival research on cannabis, I have come across people who claimed the drug helped them work harder and be more productive, while others claimed they only used it in the evenings so that it did not interfere with their daily duties. Some self-medicated to suppress anger and violent tendencies, while the Spanish authorities perceived the drug as a danger precisely because they believed it made people more likely to behave violently. Many of those interviewed by police claimed that they simply used the drug to “pass the time” and had no great affinity to the substance, while others self-identified as addicts, smoking as many as 40 cannabis cigarettes a day.
These archival snapshots give an insight into the lives of ordinary people, in ways that we as historians rarely see. On some occasions, the stories surrounding drugs illuminate the rich interior worlds that people created for themselves in the midst of a deeply repressive society. At other times we see their struggles with emotions such as sadness or loss, which are often absent from the historical record, or the private worries and social pressures they are retreating from. This centres the human, emotional experience of our subjects within our histories, but it also shows the creativity and agency of ordinary people in finding uses or “utilities” for drugs to help them navigate, and sometimes enrich, their daily lives.
Social Patterns of Consumption
These are unique and often remarkable stories. However, when we read these individual experiences en-masse and layered against each other, it is possible to see patterns or “constellations” of similar uses emerging. This can provide a point of connection between the individual and the social context in which they find themselves.
For Spanish soldiers in Morocco – among the first Spaniards to regularly use the drug – cannabis was associated primarily with “forgetting” and “withdrawing from” the conditions of colonial warfare. This tells us about the personal, emotional and/or affective needs of the soldiers and the ways they found to navigate the difficulties in their daily lives. It also tells us a little about the range of possible actions available to them – most, the vast majority, were not volunteers, but conscripts. Military service entailed, above all, a loss of control over their situation, and a loss of personal autonomy. Any form of active resistance would have been met by harsh military discipline, but temporarily “withdrawing from” or “evading” reality was one of the few viable options that did remain.
This could be contrasted with, for example, the use of Pervitin in the Third Reich. Pervitin, a type of methamphetamine, was widely sought out and consumed by ordinary Germans for a range of purposes, but often relating to the perceived productivity-enhancing attributes of the powerful stimulant. Historians Snelders and Pieters have argued that this indicates a desire to be actively involved in and contribute to the “volk”, suggesting a bottom-up enthusiasm for the Third Reich on the part of ordinary people.[3]
This gives us an insight into not just the individuals we encounter in the archives, but the wider society they were part of, and how they relate to that society. Spain’s heroin epidemic of the 1980s is often understood as a response to the “failure” of the transition to democracy and the hopelessness that ensued. Large swathes of society, especially optimistic youth and activists, became deeply disillusioned with Spanish society, and withdrew from it through heroin.
Conclusion
To return to my opening question, why would a historian choose to research drugs? In my research I have found that drugs tell us a surprising amount about the societies they are part of. Social attitudes towards race, class or gender often appear in drugs histories, alongside ideas about leisure, personal autonomy, and morality. By looking for “constellations of use” we can see socially-informed patterns of drug-taking, and begin to untangle what this could tell us about specific times and places. Of particular interest are changes in drug use that appear alongside seemingly unrelated changes in other parts of society, such as during Spain’s transition to democracy in the 1970s and 80s. Drugs can also provide a rare insight into the private, emotional world of individuals encountered through archives, revealing snapshots of the real people that underpin the historical phenomena that we study.
Finally, by studying drugs through the lens of history specifically, we can make clear that they are not fixed or static chemical objects; the effects they have on people change depending on their historical context, the time and place they are taken. This asks us to re-think how we think about drugs today, in our society.
[1] Paul Gootenberg, ‘Introduction: Cocaine: the hidden histories’ in Paul Gootenberg (ed), Cocaine: Global Histories (London, 1999), p. 2
[2] Berridge & Hickman, ‘History and the Future of Psychoactive Substances,’ in DJ Nutt et al. (eds), Drugs and the Future: Brain Science, Addiction, and Society (London, 2006), p. 469.
[3] Snelders and Pieters, ‘Speed in the Third Reich: Methamphetamine (Pervitin) Use and a Drug History from Below’, Social History of Medicine (2011).