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

by Edward Slingerland

One study reported that 67 percent of the subjects who had taken a dose of purified psilocybin considered it either the single most significant experience of their life or in the top five, with many comparing it to the birth of their first child or death of a parent.114

As Ehrenreich argues, periodic festivals and carnivals have been another. One of the worries she expresses in her book is that, under the pernicious influence of Apollo, these opportunities for both individual and group ecstatic joy are being squeezed out of our lives in the name of efficiency, health, or morality. The grim wolf has done an effective job of herding the Labrador into line.

In defending the functions of intoxicant use, let us never lose sight of one of the greatest contributions of intoxicants to human life: sheer hedonic pleasure.

While it is socially acceptable to talk in purely aesthetic terms about our interest in fine wine, microbrewed beer, or designer cannabis, we remain uncomfortable talking about our need for embodied pleasure for its own sake, rather than as a side effect of more respectable, abstract connoisseurship. This is a hang-up that we need to get over.

Sir David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, disputed the conclusions of the Lancet article’s authors, noting that the data showed only a very low level of harm in moderate drinkers. “Given the pleasure presumably associated with moderate drinking, claiming there is no ‘safe’ level does not seem an argument for abstention,” he said. “There is no safe level of driving, but governments do not recommend that people avoid driving. Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but nobody would recommend abstention.”129

A person who meditates for an hour and achieves x percent reduction in stress and experiences a y percent rise in mood is viewed in a much more positive light than one who spent that hour achieving precisely the same results by downing a couple pints of beer. Some of the variance here can be explained by the potential negatives that accompany alcohol consumption—potential for addiction, truckload of calories, damage to the liver—but this is only part of the story.

In the U.S., 15.1 million adults are reported to suffer from various degrees of alcoholism, leading to 88,000 annual alcohol-related deaths and an estimated cost of $249 billion to the economy. As many as 10 percent of children live in households where at least one parent has a problem with alcohol abuse.

An even more subtle danger is that drinkers can become dependent on alcohol not as a means for getting into an altered state, but merely to maintain a baseline state of happiness.

part of the puzzle is the wide cross-cultural variation in rates of alcoholism illustrated in Figure 5.1. Why is Italy near the bottom globally, despite widespread consumption of incredibly delicious alcoholic beverages (by both humans and lemurs), while Russia is at the top?

In Southern Europe, alcohol—primarily wine, but also beer—is part of everyday life, so integrated into the cuisine that mealtime would be unthinkable without it. Children are introduced to moderate, healthy drinking habits early in life. In Italy, for instance, children from an early age are given glasses of wine mixed heavily with water, with the mix gradually becoming less and less diluted as they become older. People generally do not drink anywhere except at the lunch or dinner table, and drinking to the point of overt drunkenness is frowned upon. Distilled liquors are not unknown, but are generally consumed in very small quantities before or after the main meal, as an aperitif or aid to digestion. Overall alcohol consumption per capita tends to be quite high in these countries, but rates of alcoholism and alcohol-fueled disorder are low.

Although physically in Eastern Europe, Russia is a classic “Northern” drinking culture, as are, for instance, other Eastern European countries, Germany, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries. Historically speaking, these cultures do not drink as much at home or with meals. Alcohol tends to be strictly forbidden to children, who come to think of it as an adult and somewhat taboo substance. Drinking as a primary activity, separate from mealtimes, is more common. Distilled spirits are frequently mixed in with the beer and/or wine, and may even replace them entirely. Northern drinking cultures drink less frequently, but are more prone to binge drinking. Public drunkenness is not uncommon, and in some cases it is seen as a badge of honor or manliness. Drinking alone, away from the meal table and outside of social contexts, is also not as stigmatized as in the South.

Despite ancient warnings about the dangers of drunkenness and disorder, our only genuine mass epidemics linked to alcohol have been relatively recent, because they have been fueled by liquor.

the question of why the genes predisposing one to alcoholism have remained in the human gene pool. One possibility is that, prior to the advent of distillation and unregulated private drinking, the dangers of alcoholism were outweighed by the individual and social benefits of a taste for alcohol, but that this calculus has since changed. In a world awash with powerful distilled spirits, and where drinking increasingly takes place in the privacy of one’s own home, alcohol may indeed be more dangerous than helpful. It is quite possible that distilled liquor is such a novel threat that genetic evolution simply hasn’t had time to catch up.

Alcohol is the only drug, besides pure stimulants like meth, that is known to increase physical aggression and violence.45 Cannabis, kava, MDMA, and psychedelics all produce either mellow or introverted highs. Alcohol’s stimulating effect, when combined with cognitive myopia and loss of executive function, can induce aggressive or violent behavior, especially in people with already low levels of cognitive control.46

A probably related, and particularly disturbing, finding comes from studies where men are shown pornographic clips depicting (fictionally) either consensual sex or rape and have their physiological arousal measured. Sober male subjects are more aroused by portrayals of consensual sex, whereas intoxicated men are aroused by both. The self-reported readiness of men to behave in ways that would constitute rape also increases with BAC. It should therefore not surprise us that when sexual assault occurs it is very common to find alcohol in the mix. Studies of convicted rapists find that anywhere from 40 to 63 percent were intoxicated when they offended.58 Heavy use of alcohol also plays a central and odious role in sexual assaults on college campuses, and in the wider world is predictive of partner abuse.59

Seriously impairing the PFC can clear the way for trust and forgiveness and generosity; it can also open the floodgates to hostility and misogyny.

The elimination of booze-soaked, informal venues for people to mix and gather does represent a loss of community and channel for honest communication. It also, arguably, leads to healthier livers, lower obesity, and a climate more welcoming to women, non-drinkers, and underrepresented minorities. There is no simple resolution of this tension.

personal relationships in industrialized societies. Survey data suggests that married couples who drink together, and in similar amounts, report higher levels of marital satisfaction and have lower rates of divorce.66 Studies have also shown that drinking together, as opposed to drinking apart, has positive effects on couples’ interactions the following day.67

the goal of all of these religious practices is physiologically identical: to reduce the activity of the PFC and boost endorphins and other “feel good” hormones, allowing the narrow individual self to be open to the “Mind-at-Large.”

a neuroimaging study of the phenomenon of speaking in tongues, or “glossolalia.”75 The subjects were Pentecostal women who had reported experiencing regular, daily episodes of speaking in tongues for several years. In the lab, they were scanned while either speaking in tongues or singing relatively mellow gospel songs, accompanied by music and gentle movement. Compared to the singing condition, the subjects showed “decreased activity in the prefrontal cortices during the glossolalia state.” In other words, these Pentecostals seemed to be able to use prayer-induced glossolalia to knock out their PFC as effectively as having downed a few glasses of Chardonnay.

we are simply not well adapted, evolutionarily, to be able to consume alcohol safely outside of the traditional context of ritual and social controls.