Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization

by Edward Slingerland

Among primates, humans are in a situation not unlike the cave tetra’s. Homo sapiens have achieved their impressive success by adapting to an extreme and unusual ecological niche, one very different from that inhabited by our primate ancestors and closest primate relatives today. In the same way that the cave tetra can no longer survive out in the bright, terrifying world of the surface river, humans have become so dependent upon culture that we can no longer live without it.

Humans are powerful in groups precisely because we are weak as individuals, pathetically eager to connect with one another, and utterly dependent on the group for survival.

the absence of trustingness in a child is a sign that something has gone badly wrong in their environment.

In response to this need, humans have come up with various cultural technologies for temporarily but powerfully enhancing childlike creativity and receptiveness in otherwise fully functional adults. Spiritual practices of various sorts, such as meditation and prayer, can be effective ways to do it. Faster, simpler, and vastly more popular, however, is turning to chemical substances that can temporarily put development and cognitive maturation into reverse.

America is one of the few places in the industrialized world where having a local pub or café is rare, and where drive-through stores allow an individual to acquire cigarettes, firearms, Slim Jims, and enough alcohol to paralyze an elephant without having to leave the comfort of her SUV. This is a historically unprecedented lifestyle, and one for which we may not be evolutionarily well equipped, genetically or culturally.