Acts of Recovery: Eugene O’Neill and Addiction Treatment in Post–World War II America

ABSTRACT This article includes a summary of “Acts of Recovery: Eugene O’Neill and Addiction Treatment in Post–WWII America,” the author’s dissertation completed in 2018. In it, the author focuses on how Eugene O’Neill’s late plays—The Iceman Cometh (1939), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1939–41), and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1943)—captured the shifting cultural attitudes about addiction following World War II, and argues that the playwright’s representation of those with substance use disorders influenced doctors and scientists who engaged with his work from 1943 until the present.