>Society wide problems cause a huge fraction of the population to experience severe emotional trauma and the process of addiction largely seems to be an experience of trying to escape the feelings associated with that.
So then why weren't addiction problems more widespread historically, like say 1900-1960? Life tended to have a lot more of what are generally considered traumatic experiences back then.
Weren't they? Perhaps they were just using different drugs, e.g. alcohol. You can't use a drug to escape negative feelings if you don't have access to it.
And perhaps nobody cared enough to log it, especially in the lower classes
You just shrugged off opium dens, or moonshining, or whatever substances could be had. The demon liquor and marijuana and heroin were all well known.
But, people didn't care about the poor. Whether or not they do now, they do collect data about them. We don't necessarily have great understanding about prevalence of who used them how often, so we shouldn't pretend there was a significant difference unless there's a reason to. Nostalgia or rose-colored glasses or pretences of a better time aren't valid reasons to break from expectation.
So then why weren't addiction problems more widespread historically, like say 1900-1960? Life tended to have a lot more of what are generally considered traumatic experiences back then.