My latest guest is drug-history pioneer David Herzberg. In two important books—Happy Pills in America: From Miltown to Prozac (Johns Hopkins, 2008) and the prize-winning White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America (Chicago, 2020)—David has put pharmaceuticals at the center of addiction history in the United States. David is also co-editor of drug history’s flagship journal, The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs.
We talk about David’s fascinating journey through the late twentieth-century United States, heroin, methadone, White Market Drugs, how to talk to your kids about intoxicants, and David’s hope that we can make drugs boring again. It’s a great conversation.
As always the podcast is available through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Pocketcasts, and the Substack app.
Episode Outline
0:00-4:02: Introduction.
4:02-20:14: Early life, hard times as a Jewish kid in Arkansas, finally being recognized as a good student in Vermont, the possible influence of all of this on David’s scholarship, early interest in history, an eccentric high-school teacher.
20:14-41:35: Miserable at Harvard, dropping out, doing some very hapless wandering around the western United States, Eugene, becoming a tree planter amidst heavy drug users.
41:35-55:34: Getting out of Eugene and moving to Portland (Oregon), returning to Vermont and then going back to college, dumping science and then sociology for history, thinking about graduate school and the history of education.
55:34-1:18:22: Graduate school at Wisconsin, women’s history, getting interested in pharmaceuticals and how they were advertised, Paul Boyer, Judy Leavitt, Ron Numbers, heroin, methadone, drug education, and talking to your kids about drugs.
1:18:22-1:34:09: What David learned when he started researching drugs, making drugs boring again, debating whether drugs are special, the inspiration for White Market Drugs, and the Groundhog Day of prescription-drug epidemics.
1:34:09-end: Outro.
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