First, there was a good bit of heavy drinking before Prohibition. Alexis de Toqueville commented how it seemed to mark every social interaction. Temperance organizations did have a point- life and work for most was hard, men could easily become alcoholics, and there was not much margin between a family just getting by and a ruined home.

The Volsted Act was the first success of what would later be called single-issue advocacy, pioneered by Wayne Wheeler and the Anti-Saloon League. The law was unpopular, but the ASL managed to leverage it into being. However, because there was never popular support for Prohibition, there was immediate non-compliance. Actually, there was even non-compliance before: because there was a year before the law was to go into effect, people had time to stock up. Many, like H. L. Mencken, enlarged their cellars for the purpose.

The First World War had already fractured a lot of the older notions of civil and moral behavior, but it was Prohibition that really changed the social aspect of drinking- it became fashionable. And for everybody: taverns and bars and saloons had been limited to men , excluded proper women , but under Prohibition women began going to speakeasies as well. While there had been a good bit of drinking before, drinking enough to be drunk in public was thought to be rather shameful. Under Prohibition, drinking could be glamorous, drunks became humorous, endearing, charming creatures. Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, and the Algonquin Club group would write funny stories and make funny quips about it, like Parker's "one more drink and I'll be under the host". When Prohibition ended, that attitude stayed. The drunk became a stock character in films, like the Thin Man series. Many comedians would work up their own comic drunk character, like Red Skelton's Willie Lump Lump. And, there was a reaction, also- the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935, and the passage of drunk-driving laws.

Daniel Okrent : Last Call