The Femininity of Addiction in the Nineteenth-Century: How the Oppressive Attributes of Society led to Inappropriate Insane Asylum Commitments

Currently, the United States is faced with an immense opiate addiction problem, some have gone as far to call it an “epidemic”. Though as of late, men use drugs (especially heroin and other opium derivatives) at a higher rate than women, however, the demographic of female addicts is on the rise. During the nineteenth-century the reality of today was not the case; middle and upper-class white women were the majority of addicts, nevertheless, this fact was repressed and avidly denied. In actuality, the oppressive atmosphere in the late nineteenth century, in regards to women’s behavior, was fertile breeding grounds for the emergence of opium addicts. Unfortunately though, men could be addicts or inebriates but the image of the perfect woman was one of pure, congenial, and virtuous nature. Clearly, an individual of such nature could not suffer from a vice as horrible as inebriety. For these reasons, women would not receive a proper diagnosis, if indeed suffering from inebriety/addiction. Furthermore, it is plausible to presume these women were committed to asylums, in particular The Athens Lunatic Asylum in Athens, OH in which there were a plethora of probate documents indicating insufficient evidence for committal. This research attempts to prove or at least present efficient evidence that the biopsychosocial and medical ideologies, and their subsequent repression of women, during the nineteenth-century rendered women prone and susceptible to addiction, causing an increase in asylum commitments by means of inaccurate probate documentation