A quick scan of the OED finds this early usage:

1668    P. Rycaut Present State Ottoman Empire ii. xvi. 114   'They have many times license from their Superiour, to be drunk or intoxicate themselves with Aqua vitae, Opium, or any stupifying Drugs, to be better able to perform with more spirit and vehemency their mad Dance.'

Again, spirits seem to be singled out as more druggy than beer or wine....
________________________________________
From: Alcohol and Drugs History Society [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Ferentzy [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 11 May 2011 20:07
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: alcohol as a drug

Many of the main issues have been covered. Someone might know more about the history of the term "drug", because I doubt that it was a pejorative at first. Alcohol definitely set the standard for addiction as we know it today.  When Levenstein discussed morphine withdrawal in the late nineteenth century, he compared it to alcoholic delirium tremens rather than to withdrawal from opium – which was already well known and obviously more similar. In any case, alcohol lost its status as a "good" during and after the drive for prohibition. To this day, doctors will rarely (if ever) give alcohol to their patients. During the American Civil War, that was still common. Alcohol had long been understood as habit forming (just like gambling, fornication, etc). The real issue might be a linguistic: a genealogy of the term "drug".


Peter Ferentzy, PhD
Author of Dealing With Addiction -- why the 20th century was wrong
Scientist 1, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
www.peterferentzy.com





> Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 19:45:42 +0100
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: alcohol as a drug
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> The other issue is that 'alcohol' was not always seen as a singular substance. So, for example, when there were efforts to prohibit gin in England in 1736 it was treated very much as a 'drug' in the modern sense (though without that term being used). Arguably, the introduction of spirits created a new discourse around alcohol because they created what Henry Fielding called a 'new kind of drunkenness', which appeared to be distinct from wine or beer. On the other hand, in England doctors such as Thomas Short and George Cheyne were talking about total abstinence from all alcohol as early as the 1720s. Again, they didn't use the word 'drug' because it just didn't have that kind of meaning back then, but they were discussing alcohol as a substance which was both habit-forming and detrimental to health. There was also the idea that alcohol was a national intoxicant that could be compared to opium - Edmund Burke wrote in 1757 that ‘Opium is pleasing to Turks, on account of the pleasing delirium it produces … Fermented spirits please our common people, because they banish care’.
>
> James
> ________________________________________
> From: Alcohol and Drugs History Society [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Fahey [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 11 May 2011 18:34
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: alcohol as a drug
>
> About ten years ago David T. Courtwright's Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World was published. It looked at a variety of (now) recreational drugs including nicotine and caffeine as well as alcohol and (now) illegal drugs. I am curious when alcohol began to be called a drug. In part the question is terminological, in part it asks when alcohol acquired the guilt by association with the (now) illegal drugs which encouraged efforts to make alcohol illegal too. It may have something to do with the temperance movement, but I recall temperance reformers calling alcohol a poison and not a drug. There also was a dispute as to whether alcohol was a food. Another question is why any of the recreational drugs are called drugs. This may be a result of them entering discourse as medications.
>
> On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 1:06 PM, Matthew Warner Osborn <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
> Hi David,
> Liquor was being demonized long before cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and morphine were available in Europe and America. It was the original recreational drug. You might read The Anatomy of Drunkenness by the Scottish phrenologist Robert Macnish, published in the 1820s, which was widely read and quoted. (I'm sure it's free on google books). Macnish discusses alcohol in ways that are very similar to romantic speculation about opium and nitrous oxide.
>
> Hope that's helpful,
> Matthew
>
>
> On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 9:41 AM, David Fahey <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
> Alan,
>
> Your response is informative. Drug is a word used in very different ways. Leaving aside drugs as medicine, when was alcohol identified as a drug similar to opium, heroin, cocaine, cannabis/marijuana and other "recreational" drugs? I assume that this identification was meant at least in part to denigrate alcohol.
>
> David
>
>
> On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:04 AM, Alan Joyce <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
> In a message dated 11/05/2011 15:38:56 GMT Daylight Time, [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> writes:
> When did physicians and others first categorize alcohol as a drug? Is
> this associated with the development of the disease theory re alcohol
> or alcoholism?
>
> --
> David M. Fahey
> Professor Emeritus of History
> Miami University
> Oxford, Ohio 45056
> USA
> Dear David,
>
> I find this a very difficult question to which there is- perhaps- no single- easy answer.
>
> Alcohol has been regarded and used as a 'pharmakon' since pre Grecian/ Egyptian times. .Herodotus mentions it frequently - and it appears that it was used as a dilutent to prevent the 'madness' bought on buy drinking wine 'neat'.
>
> in northern Europe in dilute form it was one way of making 'drinking water' relatively safe. It was a key part of the complex pharmacology utilised in mystery rites - a- early cave art and rituals, and elsewhere- as a diluter- an active ingredient or 'solvent' often in conjunction with cannabis's, fungi and mushroom's, opioid's and other pharmakon's of like properties. in rites- etc is well evidenced- as is it's use in 'medicines' such as laudanum, tincture of Opium, etc.
>
> Weak 'beer' was the only 'safe' alternative in 17th/ 18th/ 19th century London and other emergent bastion's of emergent Capitalism to river, stream, pump water, often polluted with sewage, animals remnant's, waste and bacteria. ( The cheapest brews were often potentiated with opium).
>
> It was used as an emetic. In 20th century England it was prescribed in the form of Guinness or stout for health reasons. ( The practice was discontinued in the 1950's/60's).
>
> Bromptom's Cocktail was cocaine, morphine and alcohol were used in the UK for terminal cancer and as far as I'm aware remain's available.
>
> Sorry I cannot provide more info and dates- but opioid's etc are my speciality.
>
> Nest : Alan Joyce.
>
>
>
>
> [cid:X.MA1.1305126290@aol.com]
>
> Alan Joyce . NUN communications. (Volunteer).
>
>
>
> --
> David M. Fahey
> Professor Emeritus of History
> Miami University
> Oxford, Ohio 45056
> USA
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> David M. Fahey
> Professor Emeritus of History
> Miami University
> Oxford, Ohio 45056
> USA