Out of It: a cultural history of intoxication

Stuart Walton Hamish Hamilton, 2001
Reviewed by Griffith Edwards

Stuart Walton is a highly experienced journalist and author of The World Encyclopedia of Wine. In the present book he ventures into areas which would not generally be seen as being within the expertise of a wine writer. Rather than dismiss the work out of hand, I started my reading with the mental set that we owed Walton a hearing. Journalists are clever people, an outside view can often be refreshing, let me not be hoity-toity about a journalist treading over my scientific home ground.

The blurb declares in bold type that intoxication is a "fundamental human right". Well, I hadn't thought that way before, good to be brought up sharp, I murmured. And just a few pages into the introduction, I found this statement also pretty bracing:-"the use of illegal drugs goes on relentlessly rising far from seeing this as a troubling symptom of social breakdown, I consider it a heartening and positive phenomenon."

And toward the end of the book that same position is forcefully restated: - intoxication "is our birthright, our inheritance, and our saving grace".

But somewhere between the beginning and end of this book, I became disaffected. Walton and I start from not all that different a position - we share the view that there can be pleasure in intoxication, that different drugs need to be differentiated, that drugs can be used without harm. I suspect also that we have in common a Millsian belief that people should be allowed to do pretty well whatever takes their fancy, provided that their actions harm only themselves and inflict costs on no purse other than their own. The dilemma of course lies in the fact that intoxication is not infrequently associated with harm, and with the costs often borne by other people.

Walton's book substantially ignores the reality of that dilemma. His is not a tightly argued or persuasively evidenced book. Having at the beginning resolved to swear off scientific territoriality and give the chap a chance, as I read on I rediscovered the belief that there can still be some advantage in knowing what one is talking about. Broadly, Walton does not know enough, and has not thought enough to justify the position which he takes. I did not by the last page have a sense of having been intellectually challenged and that made me feel cheated. This book trivialises the social history of mankind's relationship with drugs and that's sad as coming from an able writer.