Native Americans had used alcohol, long before Europeans had colonized America. The use of alcohol was mainly spiritual, and the beverages had only a little concentration of alcohol, and it required lots of efforts to produce a small amount of alcohol. Native Americans used alcohol to communicate with spiritual forces and only highly ranked priest had access to it. Distillation a European process of making a more potent beverage was unknown to them, but when the Europeans started trading with the Native Americans they introduced them their method of making a more potent beverage that they were not use to. The abundance of a more potent beverage in such a short time did not permit the natives to develop morally and regulate the use of alcohol, which the Europeans had thousands of years of experience and had regulated centuries before. Due to the history and factors such as socioeconomics, cultural, and genetics has influenced modern Native Americans to abuse alcohol even more which had a destructive impact on their culture.
In his book Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie a Native American himself describes the lives of Native Americans in Spokane reservation in Washington State. In the book, alcoholism is discussed and covered with deliberate details which haunt the reservation. So one of the reasons of such a high rate of alcohol abuse among the Spokane tribe is the socioeconomics of the reservation. Poverty, unemployment and low-schooling rates often encourage alcohol consumption. Simon, one of the characters of Alexie’s story, cannot afford to repair his truck, so he drives his pickup truck backwards putting him and the tribesmen in danger. Although done humorously, Alexie illustrates well the alarming levels of poverty in the r...
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...e European’s culture, and this was done with violence. The trauma caused by the violence and the cultural loss have induced Native Americans to use alcohol as a coping mechanism. Their genes were not on their side, but in fact, they strengthened their addiction. As a result, alcoholism was inevitable for Native Americans to escape.
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Most people point to wars, Presidents or the economy when asked to describe the history of the United States, but what about alcohol. Social history in general has always taken a back seat to political and economic history, mostly because many aspects of social history are not exactly bright spots from the past. Alcohol, for example, is actually a much bigger aspect of our history than one may expect. As a matter of fact, early America was centered around drinking as a kind of social event. William Rorabaugh’s book Alcoholic Republic outlines how prevalent drinking really was during the years after the Revolutionary War. Rorabaugh argues that post-colonial Americans should be considered alcoholics. However, the evidence Rorabaugh uses
...n White, eds. Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns Reexamined. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, 1991.
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Binge drinking and alcoholism have been a long-time concern in American society. While the government and schools have made great efforts to tackle the alcohol problems by enacting laws and providing education, the situation of dysfunctional alcohol consumption hasn’t been sufficiently improved. In the essay “Drinking Games,” author Malcolm Gladwell proves to the readers that besides the biological attributes of a drinker, the culture that the drinker lives in also influences his or her drinking behaviors. By talking about cultural impact, he focuses on cultural customs of drinking reflected in drinking places. He specifically examines how changing the drinking places changes people’s drinking behaviors by presenting the alcohol myopia theory.
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Alcohol Prohibition was supposed to improve the country’s social problems but it only led to the rise of powerful criminals. Prohibition was the first of the many culture wars that would divide the United States in the twentieth century. For centuries alcohol has been part of the American life; the prevalence of alcohol in daily life was plainly visible. According to Lerner, “the Americans can fix nothing, without a drink. If you meet, you drink; if you part, you drink; if you make acquaintance, you drink … you start it early in life, and you continue it, until you soon drop into the grave” (1). As the consumption rate of distilled spirits increased, American’s love for drinks caused problems: domestic violence, crime, neglected families, economic ruin, disease, and death. It was these combined effects that led reformers to warn against alcohol. Waves of temperance reformers, and temperance groups like the Washingtonians had tried to change drinkers through voluntary abstinence, but those who believed that moral courage and personal resolve could conquer alcoholism were quickly disappointed (Lerner 2).
In the 1600's and 1700's, the American colonists drank large quantities of beer, rum, wine, and hard cider. These alcoholic beverages were often safer to drink than impure water or unpasteurized milk and also less expensive than coffee or tea. By the 1820's, people in the United States were drinking, on the average, the equivalent of 7 gallons of pure alcohol per person each year (“drinkingprohibition” 1). As early as the seventeenth century, America was showing interest towards prohibition. Some people, including physicians and ministers, became concerned about the extent of alcohol use (“There was one...” 1). They believed that drinking alcohol damaged people's health and moral behavior, and promoted poverty. People concerned about alcohol use u...
Once people wanted a drink, nothing stopped them. Subsequently, prohibition sparked American ingenuity to step to the forefront. A black market emerged, as brewing beer making wine, and distilling whiskey, became a national past time. Enterprising home brewers could make enough Home brew, Dago Red, Bathtub Gin or Moonshine to quench their thirst and to sell as well. Therefore, stills begin popping up in basements, barns, backrooms, and the deep woods. Both Canada and Mexico were wet, and their border towns offered many opportunities for thirsty Americans to quench their thirst. Ships anchored outside the three-mile limit on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, loaded with alcohol becoming floating bars and nightclubs. Additional ships offered cases of alcohol spirits only to the professional rumrunners. Illegal liquor grew to such an extent that enforcement became virtually impossible.
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The cause of alcoholism is a combination of biological, psychological, and cultural factors that may contribute to the development of...