Drinking And History
What Your Hangover Says About You
Now we begin to see a real divide in the Hangover Man. If we was even moderately wealthy, he might rise late after a night of too much claret, be dressed by servants and haul himself off to his club, where a nice plate of rashers and eggs in aspic would set him straight. But on the way there, if he happened to pass a poor man staggering home clutching his head after awakening in some filthy straw above a gin shop, he might well decry the lamentable state of the lower-class rabble.
Drunk in the U.S.A.Meanwhile, across the pond, booze was playing a foundational role in the establishment of the United States, where most of the constitution was hashed out while the framers were bellied-up at the bar. Whisky was so beloved by early Americans that the first challenge to federal authority in the United States was a rebellion sparked by taxes on hooch. Presidential candidates like George Washington distributed rum outside voting stations in the early days of the republic, a practice to which I would argue we might want to return.
Despite being founded by a group of people who believed drinking was a sign of being in league with the devil, by the early 19th century, Americans were drinking five bourbons a day. As much as whisky drinking is immortalized in fictional accounts of the frontier West, it’s unlikely that these fictions will ever match the centrality of drinking in early American life. The frontier was populated largely by single, unattached men who lived in boarding houses, where they got one square meal a day and a rack to sleep in. When they weren’t working or sleeping it off, they spent all their available time and money in the saloon. To not drink would be un-American.
Drinking on the job: First a crime, then a privilegeAttitudes toward drinking began to change rapidly during the 19th century, and some of today’s fragmented ideas about when and where it’s appropriate to drink were formed during this period. As labor (which had for much of history been seasonal) became a year-in, year-out activity, and as people began to identify as primarily urban, life became far more ordered while at the same time more chaotic. The rigid rules of the factory floor meant that anything standing in the way of hitting productivity goals, including the role alcohol traditionally plays in helping regular guys unwind, was seen as a threat to the new culture of work.
To make matters worse for a working stiff, social problems that sprang up in the wake of the astonishing and unplanned growth of cities during the industrial revolution, particularly those problems associated with poor neighborhoods, were often blamed on alcohol abuse and the “weak character” of new migrant communities, rather than overwork and overcrowding. Drunkenness came to be seen as an existential threat to the modern economy.
At the dawn of the 20th century, nearly 2,000 years of boozing had led us to the point where one of the wealthiest economies on earth was on the verge of abolishing the sale of alcohol.
The main result of the Volstead Act (the law that enacted Prohibition) was that a lot of people got very sick from drinking “gin” that was literally concocted in bathtubs. Prohibition also helped engender a culture of violence and corruption in many American cities. On the other hand, the free-spiritedness and challenge to the status quo associated with the boozy Jazz Age is something we still celebrate (and fetishize — just ask Baz Luhrmann). Drinkers will drink, though, and Prohibition did have its upsides. “I think it would have been most fun to drink during Prohibition," says Noah Rothbaum, editor-in-chief of Liquor.com and the author of The Business of Spirits: How Savvy Marketers, Innovative Distillers, and Entrepreneurs Changed How We Drink. "Just not in the United States. I'm talking about London, Paris and Cuba, where legendary bartenders like the Savoy Hotel's Harry Craddock were working."