David --
   There is surprisingly little on this.  But it is a territory littered with epistemological landmines. 
   Klaus Mäkelä published a seminal paper: The uses of alcohol and their cultural regulation. Acta Sociologica 26:21-31, 1983.  In it he pointed to the main physical use-values being as a food, as an intoxicant, and as a medicine, but also emphasized how culture added many use-values: as a medium of sociability, as a sacrament, etc.  To the physical use-values can be added thirst-quencher and heater/cooler (and some use-values other than for human consumption -- as a fuel, as a solvent).  I would add that "intoxicant" can be subdivided at least between mood-changing and obliteration. 
   We used to ask about "reasons for drinking" and for that matter "reasons for not drinking" in US surveys of the 1960s.  There was a tradition of interpreting "social reasons" as good and "personal reasons" as bad -- you can see it in Mulford and Miller and in Knupfer's and Cahalan's "escape drinkers", where those giving "personal reasons" were seen as potential problem drinkers.  
   However, since these "bad signs" were well recognized in American culture, we had a sense that respondents who were telling us "yes" knew that they were admitting to a "bad sign". A number of us, as sociologists, got very uneasy about this tradition, remembering C. Wright Mills' classic article from 1940 on reasons as "situated vocabularies of motive".  That is, we saw that respondents were picking reasons which reflected what was conventional in the culture as well as what they felt.  Reasons, in other words, could not be facilely interpreted as fundamental motors driving people.  
   Then several of us became involved in asking about reasons in cross-cultural studies, and suddenly they became more interesting again, since the responses were telling us something about the place of alcohol in the culture.  In Africa, we had to add "it's part of a good meal" as a reason for drinking, which had never occurred to us to ask in the US.  And in a cross-drug study, we suddenly realized that we had never asked "to get high" as a reason for drinking!  (References to these studies if you want them.)  
   The record of a 1983 discussion among researchers about all this can be found here: "The meaning and measurmeent of motivations for drinking", Drinking and Drug Practices Surveyor 19:43-45, 1984.
   I see that Ron R has already answered you.  He did a great but unpublished paper, part philosophy and part sociology, in the 1970s on the non-transivity of reasons for drinking and reasons for abstaining.  Unfortunately (hint), it doesn't seem to have made it onto his website.
   Now psychology has come along and picked up reasons again, starting all over again from the top, but with more attention to psychometrics than to meaning.  Most of the studies I have seen have been of US college students.
   Robin 

-----Original Message-----
From: Alcohol and Drugs History Society [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Fahey
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2005 9:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: reasons for drinking/drug use

Has there been comparative study of the reasons for drinking/drug use?
Class, sex, race, religion, age, ethnicity, in different countries, at different times of the day and week, and in different historical periods? And, of course, different kinds of alcohol and different kinds of drugs, whether usually licit or illicit?  As I write this post, I realize how complicated comparisons can be!