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Convalescing Civil War soldiers with crutches
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The Post-Civil War Opioid Crisis

Many servicemen became addicted to opioids prescribed during the war. Society viewed their dependency as a lack of manliness.
by Jonathan S. Jones, Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on July 9, 2023

Inside the Story of America’s 19th-Century Opiate Addiction

Doctors then, as now, overprescribed the painkiller to patients in need, and then, as now, government policy had a distinct bias.
by Erick Trickey via Smithsonian on January 4, 2018

From Teddy Roosevelt to Trump: How Drug Companies Triggered an Opioid Crisis a Century Ago

Americans, warned President Teddy Roosevelt's newly appointed opium commissioner in 1908, 'have become the greatest drugs fiends in the world.'
by Nick Miroff via Retropolis on October 17, 2017
Man working on a farm.

RFK Jr.’s 18th-Century Idea About Mental Health

The health secretary’s clearest plans for psychiatric treatment are a retreat to the past.
by Shayla Love via The Atlantic on April 4, 2025
Image of a joint sticking out of the sidewalk in a suburban neighborhood.

The Suburbs Made the War on Drugs in Their Own Image

Matthew Lassiter’s history plays out in ranch houses, high school parking lots, and courtrooms from Shaker Heights to Westchester to Orange County.
by Claire Bond Potter via The New Republic on February 27, 2024
Woman holding packages of naloxone.
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The Nixon-Era Roots of Today’s Opioid Crisis

The Nixon administration saw methadone as a way to reduce crime rather than treat addiction.
by Zoe Adams via Made By History on April 20, 2023
An advertisement for Bayer aspirin and heroin.

Treating the (Last) Pandemic

Heroin, Aspirin, and The Spanish Flu.
by Jessica Cale via Dirty Sexy History on September 26, 2022
Bleachman, a mascot created by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation as a part of a campaign directed at drug users and intended to help slow the transmission of HIV in needle-using communities, 1988.

What We Can Learn From Harm Reduction’s Defeats

The history of the movement is one of unlikely success. But what can we learn from embattled experiments like prescribed heroin? 
by Sessi Kuwabara Blanchard via The Nation on February 15, 2022
Photos of Civil War veterans showing injuries and amputations.

America’s First Opioid Crisis Grew Out Of the Carnage Of The Civil War

Tens of thousands of sick and injured soldiers became addicted.
by Michael E. Ruane via Retropolis on December 1, 2021
DR. JOHN J. CRAVEN, MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH AND THE PHYSICIAN WHO LATER ATTENDED JEFFERSON DAVIS, PERFORMS AN OPERATION DURING THE 1863 SIEGE OF CHARLESTON. THE DOCTOR APPEARS TO BE APPLYING A SPLINT TO THE LEG OF A PATIENT WHILE A MAN BEHIND HIM SEEMS TO BE HOLDING A WHITE COTTON CLOTH, LIKELY SOAKED IN CHLOROFORM, OVER THE PATIENT'S MOUTH AND FACE. | LOCATION: MORRIS ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA, CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA. (PHOTO BY CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES)

America Has Been Through An Opioid Crisis Before

America’s first opioid crisis came after its bloodiest war, but the lessons of the original debacle have been lost in history.
by Jonathan S. Jones via Vice on April 9, 2021
A worker removes the Sackler name from a building at Tufts University in 2019.

The Problem of Pain

It’s easier to blame individuals for the opioid crisis than to attempt to diagnose and cure the ills of a society.
by Sophie Pinkham via Dissent on April 5, 2021

A Blizzard of Prescriptions

Three recent books explore different aspects of opiate addiction in America.
by Emily Witt via London Review of Books on April 4, 2019
a rolled dollar bill and cocaine on a table

How America Convinced the World to Demonize Drugs

Much of the world used to treat drug addiction as a health issue, not a criminal one. And then America got its way.
by J. S. Rafaeli via Vice on August 13, 2018
Shafer Commission
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Nixon Made a Mistake on Pot. Will Trump Do the Same with Opioids?

Decades after Nixon waged war on pot, Trump is doing the some with opioids. It could make things worse.
by Emily Dufton via Made By History on April 20, 2018
Ad for children's medicine.

How Advertising Shaped the First Opioid Epidemic

What the first opioid epidemic can teach us about the second.
by Jon Kelvey via Smithsonian on April 3, 2018
Bottle of OxyContin.
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While Government Cracked Down On Illegal Drugs, Big Pharma Hooked Millions On Opioids

The racist roots of the opioid crisis.
by David Herzberg, Matthew R. Pembleton via Made By History on October 30, 2017

Born a Slave, Emma Ray Was The Saint of Seattle’s Slums

Emma Ray was a leader in battles against poverty, and for temperance.
by Lorraine McConaghy via Crosscut on February 26, 2016
A row of beds at the Fort Worth Narcotic Farm.
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“I Don’t Expect Many Escapes”

On the rise of the narcotic farm model, a radical reimagining of the nation’s approach to addiction.
by Holly M. Karibo via HNN on November 19, 2024
Foggy hills in Appalachia.

Love in the Time of Hillbilly Elegy: On JD Vance’s Appalachian Grift

Justin B. Wymer knows a snake when he sees one.
by Justin B. Wymer via Literary Hub on August 27, 2024
Collage of CIA director Richard Helms, Jimi Hendrix, and redacted Project MK-Ultra documents.

The Secret Black History of LSD

Research on psychedelics has been riddled with medical racism and exclusion but it hasn’t stopped Black people from finding creativity and solace through drugs.
by Kali Holloway via The Nation on March 22, 2022
Protesters holding anti-War on Drugs signs with a red target printed over them

How the Drug War Dies

A few decades ago, the left and the right, politicians and the public, universally embraced the criminalization of drug use. But a new consensus has emerged.
by Maia Szalavitz via The Nation on March 21, 2022
Vintage drawing of a Victorian-era drugstore

Was Edgar Allan Poe a Habitual Opium User?

While Poe was likely using opium, the efforts to keep him quiet suggest that he was also drinking.
by Elizabeth Kelly Gray via Commonplace on February 7, 2022
Richard Nixon speaking to the press in 1971

New Documents Reveal the Bloody Origins of America's Long War On Drugs

When President Nixon launched the war on drugs in 1971, it set off a bloody chain reaction in Mexico as new documents reveal.
by Benjamin T. Smith via TIME on August 24, 2021
Riot police clash with demonstrators in Medellín, Colombia, last week.
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The U.S. War on Drugs Helped Unleash the Violence in Colombia Today

Efforts to combat narcotics and communism militarized the country's security forces.
by Kyle Longley via Made By History on June 8, 2021
box of matches with faces drawn on the match sticks

Burnout: Modern Affliction or Human Condition?

As a diagnosis, it’s too vague to be helpful—but its rise tells us a lot about the way we work.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on May 17, 2021
A drawing of a person with a facial expression of pain with "Simple Bodily Pain" written above

The Fifth Vital Sign

How the pain scale fails us.
by Gracia Dodds via Nursing Clio on October 28, 2020
Ketamine bottles

The Many Lives of Ketamine

Neuroscientist Bita Moghaddam traces the history of ketamine from the battlefield to the dance floor.
by Sam Kelly, Bita Moghaddam via The MIT Press Reader on October 20, 2020

Timothy Snyder’s Bleak Vision

"The Road to Unfreedom," Timothy Snyder's book on Russian influence around the world, is built on contradiction and conspiracy.
by Sophie Pinkham via The Nation on May 3, 2018

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