Intoxication

Volume VI, Number 1 | winter 2012

Drunken Silenus supported by Satyrs by Anthony van Dyck.

Preamble

Alms for Oblivion

By Lewis H. Lapham

“One should always be drunk,” proclaimed poet Charles Baudelaire. But the question remains, drunk with what?

Evening Landscape with Two Men by Caspar David Friedrich.

Essay

Last Testaments

By Francine Prose

What do artists and writers do when they are faced with the imminence of death? Francine Prose reviews the final works of historian Tony Judt.

Map

Indigenous Intoxicants

Getting high, around the world.

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Miscellany

The questions “Have you ever used Derbisol?” and “How often?” sometimes appear along with questions about alcohol, cocaine, and marijuana use on youth-risk surveys for students. Derbisol is a fictitious drug devised to test the reliability of the responder. In one survey, 163 of 894 students said that they had tried Derbisol—or 18.2 percent.

Voices In Time

c. 650 BC | Paros

Drunkard’s Dream

Archilochus longs for carnal knowledge.More

Voices In Time

1992 | San Francisco

Crack Isn’t Addictive, Now, Is It?

William T. Vollmann picks up some street knowledge.More

Voices In Time

1801 | Baltimore

Intervention

The Great Spirit versus the evil of spirits.More

Charts & Graphs

Prohibition

Laws forbidding drugs or alcohol.

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Portrait of Anglo-Irish essayist, poet, novelist, and dramatist Oliver Goldsmith.

Photograph of journalist, author, and professor Michael Pollan.

Portrait of English essayist and critic Thomas De Quincey.

Photograph of English novelist, poet, and critic Kingsley Amis.

Contributors

Photograph of English essayist, poet, and biographer John Addington Symonds.

Photograph of American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac.

Thanks be to God: since my leaving drinking of wine, I do find myself much better and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.

- Samuel Pepys, 1662