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

by Edward Slingerland

The Greek pantheon includes two gods, Apollo and Dionysus, who personify the tension between self-control and abandon.71 Apollo, the sun god, represents rationality, order, and self-control. In art, the Apollonian mode is characterized by restraint and elegance, carefully designed balance. Apollo was worshipped by means of staid, formal offerings in designated temples. Dionysus is the god of wine, drunkenness, fertility, emotionality, and chaos. Dionysian art indulges in excess, ecstatic elevation, altered states. His worshippers famously included the maenads, wild women who would gather secretly at night in the woods for the original bacchanalia, alcohol- and drug-fueled parties rather like contemporary raves, only with a much darker edge, more nudity, and occasional cannibalism. Dionysus appeals to the more ancient, primitive regions of our brains, those dedicated to sex, emotions, movement, touch. Apollo finds his natural home in the prefrontal cortex.