This is what happens when I am allowed to rant.
In this paper, I will cover my preliminary research into the world of substance abuse during the 1950s and early 1960s, focusing as much as I can on the white middle class and suburban areas of the United States. Some of the questions that have to be asked during my research are whether minorities or ethnic groups had a more positive relationship with substances such as alcohol, and how attitudes of substance abuse have changed over time. Also, what role did this substance abuse play in overall culture, and did it affect the ensuing culture shift towards progressive liberalism during the late 1960s to 1970s? I am interested in this topic because I find the depiction of the 1950s as a haven of conservatism and conformity to ring hollow. I have always been interested in the darker side of life, not in terms of romanticizing it, but in terms of understanding it. Indeed, alternatives to this paper included an examination of serial killers from the mid-1800s to present day, as well as a review of female gender dysmorphia, and a look at the role of women in political and social protest movements from the 1950s through to the present. These are all topics that exist primarily on the outskirts of what is comfortable or socially acceptable to study. My personal interest is only that of curiosity of the darkest rooms of intellectualism, where I can find the strangest histories of the modern world. I think that these sorts of studies are important because too often historians can get caught up in the history that has already been told, albeit perhaps in a different manner. A quick perusal of any popular bookstore will yield dozens of books on the Civil War or World War II, but few on, say, ladies of the night that serviced these soldiers, or the social impacts of medicine shows during the 19th century. Books of this nature are curiosities rather than the norm, though these subtle histories may have more impact now than, for instance, the fall of Rome on the average suburbanite. Though one can feel the echoes of these far-flung histories, they might as well be as distant as the moon, for all their impact has on people as individuals. No, I believe that historians have a duty to cover what is now termed “modern” history, that of not just the 1950s and 1960s, but that of the 1980s, 1990s, even as this decade comes to a close, one must reflect on where society has come from with the same historical eye that one casts on the ruins of the Aztecs or the scarred buildings of London.