Alcohol use and occasional drunkenness were pervasive in colonial America

Alcohol use and occasional drunkenness were pervasive in colonial America, but it wasn’t until per capita alcohol consumption began to rise dramatically between the Revolutionary War and 1830 that Americans began to look at excessive drinking in a new way and with a new language. The harbinger of this new view was Benjamin Rush’s 1784 treatise An Inquiry Into The Effects of Ardent Spirits in which Rush referred to the “habitual use of ardent spirits” as an “odious disease.”⁴ In the 1840s the Washingtonians, America's first society of recovered alcoholics, spoke not of alcoholism but of drunkenness and referred to themselves as confirmed drinkers, drunkards, hard cases, inveterate cases, sots, tipplers, and inebriates.

“Alcoholism” Coined

Drawn from the Arabic word al-khuk  -- a name referring to an antimony-based eye cosmetic, alcohol later camу to mean the essence or spirit of something.⁶ It wasn't until the eighteenth century that the word alcohol came to designate the intoxicating ingredient ' in liquor. The Swedish physician Magnus Huss introduced the term alcoholism in 1849 to describe a state of chronic alcohol intoxication that was characterized by severe physical pathology and disruption of social functioning.⁷ It took nearly a century for Huss's new term, and the accompanying term alcoholic, to achieve widespread usage in America. (White 1998, XIII -- XIV)

References

White, William L. 1998. Slaying the dragon: The history of addiction treatment and recovery in America /  William L. White. Bloomington, Ill. Chestnut Health Systems.