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

by Edward Slingerland

A research initiative into the role of the pub in modern British culture is being directed by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar, one of the most active contemporary scholars exploring alcohol’s contribution to human sociality. One of the team’s findings, from survey data about pub use in Britain, found that people who had a neighborhood pub that they frequented regularly had more close friends, felt happier, were more satisfied with their lives, more embedded into their local communities, and more trusting of those around them. Those who never drank did consistently worse on all these criteria, while those who frequented a local did better than regular drinkers who had no local that they visited regularly. A more detailed analysis suggested that it was the frequency of pub visits that lay at the heart of this: it seemed that those who visited the same pub more often were more engaged with, and trusting of, their local community, and as a result they had more friends.57