America Has a Drinking Problem
June 3, 2021 4:06 PM   Subscribe

A little alcohol can boost creativity and strengthen social ties. But there’s nothing moderate, or convivial, about the way many Americans drink today. The Atlantic's Kate Julian explores the history of alcohol use in human societies and the history of drinking in the United States
posted by starzero (129 comments total) 39 users marked this as a favorite
 
That's fascinating! I had no idea that earlier Americans drank THAT much. Or that people drink that much now, although I have heard anecdotally from coworkers here and there about their pandemic drinking habits, which sound pretty intense.

The social aspect is very interesting to me. I remember being absolutely stunned when I started working career-track jobs at how booze soaked the working world was. Drinks over business lunches, cases of beer and wine stashed in office fridges, team happy hours, drinks with professional contacts, endless rounds and rounds and rounds of networking receptions. I learned pretty early that I'm the kind of anxious mess that gets more freaked out by the loose feeling of a buzz and the possibility of misspeaking, and I have seen enough colleagues and clients and professional contacts just get wildly inappropriate after a few drinks, so now I'm usually the person who gets a single beer in a dark bottle or a glass of Sprite to gesture with and pretend to sip all evening (I don't like carbonation, either. Yep, I'm fun.). But it does make me wonder how much bonding and creativity I miss out on by being able to unclench. I only drink for real in already very trusted company.

And yeah, Zoom happy hours are an abomination. I tried one, I really did. You know what doesn't mix? Drinking and people attempting to manage their mute/unmute situation. I still have to attend these godforsaken things for work but at least it's easier to pretend to be playing along while I have something open in another tab to read instead.

I just want to go back to meeting people over coffee. That's an addiction I'm much, much more comfortable with.
posted by bowtiesarecool at 4:46 PM on June 3, 2021 [18 favorites]


I sat next to a guy departing the annual Salesforce conference on a JetBlue flight from SF to NYC a few years ago. He seemed a little shaky and regretful when he told me he had had 75 cocktails over the course of the conference. Booze and tech sales seem to go hand-in-hand.
posted by migurski at 5:17 PM on June 3, 2021 [14 favorites]


without the ability to distill any strong spirits existing in society at all, except a few alchemists goofing around,

There was distillation in monasteries and I am putting money down that other MeFis here know more about this than I do.
posted by Silvery Fish at 5:36 PM on June 3, 2021 [9 favorites]


I used to look down on people who drank too much, then I got anxiety, and now I look at alcohol as cheap, tasty, liquid benzodiazipines. I don't drink, but I'm always looking for something--magnesium, St. John's Wort, Kratom, ashgawanda, NAC. I engage in all sorts of addictive behaviors, so I don't dare start drinking, but I wish I had a dry pub to visit where I could make friends.

Robin Dunbar, the anthropologist, examined this question directly in a large study of British adults and their drinking habits. He reports that those who regularly visit pubs are happier and more fulfilled than those who don’t—not because they drink, but because they have more friends. And he demonstrates that it’s typically the pub-going that leads to more friends, rather than the other way around.
posted by mecran01 at 5:37 PM on June 3, 2021 [32 favorites]


I sat next to a guy departing the annual Salesforce conference on a JetBlue flight from SF to NYC a few years ago. He seemed a little shaky and regretful when he told me he had had 75 cocktails over the course of the conference.

This sounds like a great start to a novel about 21st-century America.
posted by swift at 5:42 PM on June 3, 2021 [55 favorites]


I lived in RI when the NYTimes published an article about US drug use, (soberingly entitled “State-by-State Drug Use (Or, Rhode Island Needs More Rehab)”).

I showed it to dozens of people, and to a person, they all said: “everybody else is lying.”

Heavy drinking normalized to an acceptable average.
posted by Silvery Fish at 5:46 PM on June 3, 2021 [6 favorites]


Over a decade ago at a Metafilter meetup I had a conversation with a former member of this site while I was quite drunk and also under the influence of two other, non-liquid, drugs. At one point he (affably) told me "I don't understand why people want to alter their consciousness," and I said "I don't understand why people *don't* want to."
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:54 PM on June 3, 2021 [39 favorites]


the drunk apes beat the sober ones
Well how can I argue with that?
I certainly increased my consumption of alcohol and pot cookies over then last 16 months.
posted by MtDewd at 5:58 PM on June 3, 2021 [3 favorites]


Much better piece by Bruce Bustard.
posted by Ideefixe at 6:12 PM on June 3, 2021 [2 favorites]




Going back and forth on this one. I think the subhead (". . . there’s nothing moderate, or convivial, about the way many Americans drink today") really took away from the article for me. I think the self-aware lede--Americans drink, and worry about drinking--did the article more justice than the moral panic of the subhead. It had some judgy stuff, but tonally was also full of interesting tidbits. With a few moments where "cool story" seemed to trump the urge to find a citation (Programmers hooking IV drips of alcohol?)

I'd always assumed the ridiculous whiskey consumption rates of the past had some seriously watered down fare. Thought the top decile today (2 bottles of wine daily!) is a little scary.
posted by mark k at 6:18 PM on June 3, 2021 [5 favorites]


I get a little tired of articles about the perils of drinking, simply because in the US it always seems to be combined with a kind of moral panic.

I have lived in the US, Netherlands, Hong Kong and now Indonesia. It was the US where people were most likely to say that people with a glass of wine or two with dinner had a serious drinking problem, and also the place where I knew the most people who had hard-core drinking problems. There is also huge disparity between what Europe and US says about safe drinking.

Obviously it's a very different vibe here in Indonesia, but I really actually like Islam's take that the prohibition is really down to things that separate you from God and his Creation being bad. I may not share the philosophy, but it is lovely.
posted by frumiousb at 6:26 PM on June 3, 2021 [20 favorites]


Came across a piece by an Indian Woman on why she has been drinking all her life. Even though her family has a lot of Alcoholics.

Quite eloquent. And I keep wanting to say it'll end badly, yes, maybe so, but I can see why she finds it such a comfort. And I keep remembering "functional alcoholics". Don't know.

*********(snip)****************
https://psyche.co/ideas/heres-to-my-lovely-incandescent-relationship-with-alcohol

Anandi Mishra

is a writer and communications professional, whose work has been published by the LA Review of Books and Electric Literature. She has also worked as a reporter for The Times of India and The Hindu. She lives in Delhi, India.
posted by aleph at 6:32 PM on June 3, 2021 [6 favorites]


given the potable drinking water problem.

The article mentions this piece of common knowledge and wonders why people would drink alcohol for potability reasons when it's so much easier to just boil your water.
posted by thecjm at 6:33 PM on June 3, 2021 [3 favorites]


The article mentions this piece of common knowledge and wonders why people would drink alcohol for potability reasons when it's so much easier to just boil your water.

Two reasons:

It's not necessarily easier to boil it on demand. Fermenting gives you long term potable stuff that you prepare in a big batch. It's ready when you want it and a sort of "guaranteed safe" when a third party gives it to you.

And the health benefits of boiling water were not clear to people--even in some cultures into at least the 1960s. I think it was harder to get the anecdotal experience that would lead to this conclusion; why would you boil plain water and then drink it in the first place, if you didn't understand germ theory?

(Also not sure on the impact of endotoxins, which can survive boiling . . . they might be chewed up during fermentation.)
posted by mark k at 6:41 PM on June 3, 2021 [36 favorites]


Metafilter: the drunk apes beat the sober ones
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:00 PM on June 3, 2021 [11 favorites]


The Egyptian Pyramids were built on beer. Farmers between the planting and harvest seasons were conscripted into hauling those blocks with better food and free beer.
posted by ovvl at 7:05 PM on June 3, 2021 [3 favorites]


If I make an imperfect comment after hours, I blame society.
posted by ovvl at 7:07 PM on June 3, 2021 [1 favorite]


when it's so much easier to just boil your water.

Is it? Now we can just touch a button on the microwave or turn a knob on the stove, but it seems like historically going through all the preparation necessary to boil the water every time you want a drink seems like much more of a pain in the ass than just having a container of beer on hand.
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:14 PM on June 3, 2021 [27 favorites]


Drinking at a bar with friends is one of the things I have missed most in the last year. I am aching for a happy hour where I can get sloppily buzzed and make plans to rent a houseboat or build a Plinko board.

I do find myself not really drinking at all lately unless it’s in a social setting. Drinking alone is, as suggested here, sort of depressing. I’m in my 40s and I spent a few years in my early 20s drinking alone somewhat regularly, and I largely tired of it.

These days I don’t really like “being drunk” without something to do. Those “golden moments” where everyone is vibing are alcohol’s main draw for me. Thankfully.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:30 PM on June 3, 2021 [6 favorites]


It makes intuitive sense that a culture may be more apt to go out of their way to boil water and enjoy tea...

Ooo! Now I want to know what effect tea has on endotoxins!
posted by Silvery Fish at 7:39 PM on June 3, 2021


Even drinking in bars has become less social in recent years. Striking up conversations with strangers has become almost taboo.

Is that true? I've not been to a bar in perhaps a decade, last time, in Manhattan, I had an interesting conversation with strangers.

Northborough MA's Mount Assabet was formerly called Liquor Hill. Changing the name was a big deal in 1836. The curious can read about it here. (That wasn't part of the conversation, just some history trivia that seemed relevant to this conversation.)
posted by BWA at 7:54 PM on June 3, 2021


I learned in undergrad, as a theology major, in a course about the sociology of the Mediterranean area in Jesus's time, that as a 1st-century Palestinian male, Jesus probably consumed 1400 calories per day, 25% of which were alcohol, mostly beer.

(Which is to say Jesus was NOT ripped; Jesus was short and, at best, had a dad-bod.)

I went to Catholic undergrad (alcohol fine and good!) but a Methodist seminary for grad school, and even Methodists who are fine with alcohol are proud of their history as a temperance church. Methodists are among the first groups who noticed that alcoholism (as it would later be known) led to a variety of social ills, like wife-beating and child neglect. Thomas Bramwell Welch, a tee-totaling Methodist minister in New York, pioneered the pasteurization of grapes to prevent their fermentation, and encouraged their use at communion, and if you're an American, you can buy the fruits (heh) of his labor at any supermarket as "Welch's grape juice." And if you go to a Methodist service there's about a 30% chance you'll be at the kiddie table for communion and get grape juice!

Methodists are such a uniquely American denomination. Yes, Charles and John Wesley were British, but they thought they were Anglicans. It wasn't until they came to America and saw how under-churched Americans were that they started getting antsy. They asked the Anglican Church for more bishops in the Americas, and the Anglican bishops were basically like "LOOK WE CANNOT ASK EDUCATED MEN TO LIVE IN THE HORRIFYING FRONTIERS OF AMERICA, PISS UP A TREE," which made John Wesley realize he probably needed to schism from Anglicanism and ordain his own bishops, which he did, so they could ordain ministers who would ride circuit on the frontier and (literally a major qualification in the early years!) be willing to shoot snakes from horseback. Early Methodist ministers in the US (and Canada) were a combination of "better educated than everyone they met" and "extremely rough-and-tumble," and it took a very special type of person -- celebrated even today in American mythology! -- to do it. Even today Methodist ministers who "ride circuit" (in their Subarus) get special legit points with other Methodists for riding circuit, and they're pretty coveted assignments fresh out of seminary.

While there's a bunch of uniquely American religious stuff (Baptists, Great Awakenings, tent revivals), it's impossible to understand American Christianity without Methodism and circuit-riding Methodist ministers on the frontiers, and it's impossible to understand American attitudes towards alcohol without understanding Methodists as a sometimes-temperance church, and their deep commitment to protecting the victims of alcoholism (both alcoholics themselves and those in their families who suffered) AND their underlying "high-church" Anglican tendencies where they (officially!) favor wine for communion even while the whole history of the denomination is a complicated dance with alcohol and temperance.

because in the US it always seems to be combined with a kind of moral panic.

Yeah, that's our Methodism talking. :)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:54 PM on June 3, 2021 [87 favorites]


The article mentions this piece of common knowledge and wonders why people would drink alcohol for potability reasons when it's so much easier to just boil your water.

Boiling water isn't enough to eliminate many common parasites and issues with water. I do a lot of hiking, and while boiling is better than nothing, it won't kill many water-born diseases.
posted by frumiousb at 7:59 PM on June 3, 2021 [14 favorites]


Sitting here drinking a delicious non alcoholic Athletic Brewing Co All Out Stout, seriously you have to try this.

I played hard for Team Bourbon throughout the pandemic. I mean, I always enjoyed my alcohol prior to 2020, but things took an ominous turn in the last year, in all the ways the article mentioned. Drinking because I was bored, drinking because I was frustrated, always alone. The physical effects on my body and the emotional effects on my family were too big to ignore.

I rather like the idea that whether drinking is acceptably healthy or not is all about the social context, but once you’ve gone to the dark side, I don’t think it’s possible to enjoy responsibly again, at least for me. I’d like to think I’m wrong, I love the taste of bourbon and I love feeling drunk and forgetting about the Really Bad Things over which I have no control.

Which kind of gets to the point of the article. The USA is a profoundly unbalanced, mentally ill nation and always has been. Alienation, anxiety, flimsy social connections, wealth/racial/geographic inequality, the pursuit of technology and consumption are endemic and have made us paranoid to the point of psychosis (see: guns, Qanon). So many of us have slipped right past social cohesion and flow and down into amateur psychopharmacology for our anxieties, it’s really no surprise that so many of us are either total drunks or can’t touch the stuff.

I blame society for my cirrhosis!
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 8:05 PM on June 3, 2021 [41 favorites]


During the Q&A, someone in the audience told him about the Ballmer Peak—the notion, named after the former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, that alcohol can affect programming ability. Drink a certain amount, and it gets better. Drink too much, and it goes to hell. Some programmers have been rumored to hook themselves up to alcohol-filled IV drips in hopes of hovering at the curve’s apex for an extended time.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

This para is pretty crappily researched.

This is an xkcd joke! If you Google "Balmer Peak wiki" the xkcd comic is the first hit.

And the IV joke is the alt text!

And the article represents it as being real-ish?

Feels like something got left on the editing room floor...
posted by billjings at 8:11 PM on June 3, 2021 [41 favorites]


One of my favorite facts I've learned recently about early American drinking is about Johnny Appleseed. If you stop and think about his name, it's weird because apple trees are grown from grafts, not seeds. Turns out that apple trees for cider are grown from seeds cause their funkier-tasting apples work better in cider. Therefore, all those apples orchards hungry Johnny Appleseed planted were for making booze! (Citation: Gastropod podcast)
posted by carolr at 8:11 PM on June 3, 2021 [27 favorites]


This was such a breezy read, it carried through in the audio version. Also, now that I've learned the original context of 'drinking spree', i wondered if it carried through in 'shopping spree'?

Earlier in the article it mentioned Younger North Americans have a reputation of being more dry drinkers comparatively and that certainly struck me as matching my observations in my time in a Scottish uni, right down to the social drinking habits.

Oh this came up early in the comments: And yeah, Zoom happy hours are an abomination. I tried one, I really did. You know what doesn't mix? Drinking and people attempting to manage their mute/unmute situation

Happy to share that the main webconference solutions seems to have updated their algorithms on detecting your audio input vs speaker output (zoom still the best at handling this) nowadays. You barely need to mute yourself or even wear headphones. But it works best if you can have different speakers and mics. I've done regular hangouts now where my mates' audio comes out of the wired speakers while i can putter around the room speaking normally and there's no feedback situation. If you guys can manage the setup, that's improved the quality of my lockdown communications considerably.
posted by cendawanita at 8:30 PM on June 3, 2021 [3 favorites]


This is a really subtle article that gets to one of the things metafilter tends to gloss over in discussions of alcohol—that it's so socially mediated a drug, that you really can't understand its effects and harms and benefits without putting it in the context of a society and country, and most of all that use patterns change radically over time, and will keep changing.

It's a workplace drug in a lot of Western societies, which is something the article doesn't really touch on. It glances at the uptick in women's drinking as a hidden effect of the 1970s shift in workplace participation, but booze-at-work is far, far more than that, more often overt and communal, rather than private. It's not just used in the context of and around work, but actually for production, in that it helps people with little in common socialise towards sharing a space and a set of tasks, and (admittedly, more in the past) deadens the effect of mindless repetitive work with a calorie-heavy, mild-euphoria producing, depressant. In the worst jobs, of course, it also does disinhibition for the nasty work nobody feels good about doing. You read common stories about workplaces in the 19thC where workers were given beer or gin as a side-benefit and understood part of the wage; in the early colonial period in Australia, rum was so central to the economy of forced labour that it served as currency as well as a ration. Even in my working life the place of alcohol at work has shifted radically, something it's hard to describe to young people: in my first office job in the late 90s, most of the (conservative, financial industry) office would pop down to the bar downstairs together, have a few beers with lunch, head back to the desk, and nothing was thought of it, simply as part of the professional day. Is that healthier than the contemporary shift towards workers meeting requirements with the help of amphetamines, the other modern workplace drug?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 8:39 PM on June 3, 2021 [19 favorites]


For a fast-talking, cartoon animated, piss-taking, humorous overview of the early history of US drinking habits, and what happened that one time when we tried changing the Constitution in response, then had to change it back:
Oversimplified presents: Prohibition (30 min)
posted by bartleby at 8:40 PM on June 3, 2021 [2 favorites]


Aside from the question of water purity vs. simply boiled water or tea, ale (particularly small beer) or cider is also a relatively cheap source of calories. It's not the best source of calories, but when you are engaged in mostly agricultural labor, anything helps. Particularly when it is hot out.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:46 PM on June 3, 2021 [3 favorites]


As a 'well, you're not wrong' chuckle, one of the very authentic details about the main character in Mare of Easttown is that you never see her drink a glass of water in the entire series. It's exclusively coffee all day, beer all night. A different social class or location would have been lattes/white wine, or diet soda/cocktails, tea/gin, etc. Something prepared - boiled/flavored/carbonated/sweetened/etc when on the clock, something alcoholic when off.
But never just water by itself.
Spot-on to signal an American type.
posted by bartleby at 8:54 PM on June 3, 2021 [12 favorites]


The American moral panic over alcohol might be historically a Methodist thing, but I think Baptists won the last few decades. When I started drinking, I did it pointedly. As for the increase in drinking...it does seem like a lot of my peer group whose parents demonized drinking now imbibe pretty regularly. Given the group, there's a decent chance they'll all hit 40 and repent, so at least some of the drinkers should be running out of steam soon.

Alcohol has limited social function for me, because when I'm truly nervous I turn into a teenager and front-load shots, which really only promotes social ease if everyone keeps pace with you. It's bad for work things because we really don't need another excuse for coworkers/bosses/clients to behave inappropriately, do we? But it's also good for work things, because you're either a sane person who is miserable about losing your free time to work stuff (at least there's drinks), or you're an awful person who feels excited at the prospect of partying with your boss's boss's boss (drinks!!).

I love alcohol. I love it so much that I've had to cut back this year. I would be very sad to give up alcohol entirely, but ~7 drinks per week is basically perfect for me and I hope it's sustainable.
posted by grandiloquiet at 9:19 PM on June 3, 2021 [1 favorite]


Weird that people freak out about smoking, yet give booze a pass.
posted by No Robots at 9:24 PM on June 3, 2021 [8 favorites]


History trivia:
Most US States have several emblematic items - a state bird, a state flower, favorite pie, etc. The state alcohol of New Jersey is applejack.

Applejack is a colonial era booze produced by a process called 'freeze distillation'.
Water freezes, but pure alcohol doesn't.
So you squeeze your apples into wooden barrels and you have unfiltered cloudy apple juice, or 'cider'. Add some yeast and close them up, and it ferments into mildly alcoholic 'hard cider'. When winter comes around, you put a barrel of hard cider outside, since it gets below freezing in the snow and ice behind your barn. Every few days, you pop the lid off, and a chunk of ice has formed on the top; remove it and let the barrel re-freeze. Repeat, until the contents don't freeze anymore.

Congratulations, you now have a quarter barrel of apple flavored alcohol, concentrated by freezing the water out rather than evaporating via distillation.

Applejack. Like a whiskey/pear brandy/schnapps kind of thing.
(Be careful though, because freeze distillation leaves behind a lot of terpenes, which can give you quite a hangover the next morning. But you don't have to build complex copper stills or cut and burn all that wood or peat or whatever. Press apples in November, leave the barrels outside, throw away the frozen bits, get free liquor for Christmas.)
posted by bartleby at 9:26 PM on June 3, 2021 [40 favorites]


Beer and wine run about 5 and 11 percent, respectively.

Many references in the piece -- like, say, to the pandemic -- might suggest otherwise, but that sentence proves this was written at least 20 years ago.
posted by gurple at 9:40 PM on June 3, 2021 [8 favorites]


Another Round
posted by 3.2.3 at 9:41 PM on June 3, 2021 [2 favorites]


I find a major difference between European and US attitudes to drinking alcohol -- the concept of moderation. In Italy and France, teenagers might be offered a small glass of wine with family dinner. In the UK, a pint of two at the pub is a normal social event -- the focus more on gossip or darts than getting drunk. In the US there seems to be little ground between binge drinking and teetotallers: excess or abstinence. God or the Devil (although Jesus seemed fond of wine.)
posted by binturong at 9:41 PM on June 3, 2021 [10 favorites]


And if you go to a Methodist service there's about a 30% chance you'll be at the kiddie table for communion and get grape juice!
...
their underlying "high-church" Anglican tendencies where they (officially!) favor wine for communion

Having attended many different Methodist churches for six decades, I’ve never seen anything but grape juice used for communion. It’s a given in Methodist churches that communion needs to be safe for recovering alcoholics.
posted by 3.2.3 at 9:52 PM on June 3, 2021 [1 favorite]


I think most modern people underestimate how much historical agrarianism involved seasonal gluts, without things like drying silos and refrigeration. AKA, all the fruit / grain happens at once, what the hell are we going to do with 100 cubic meters of it, because it'll just rot if we leave it here.
Beer and wine and fruit brandies are a great way to preserve all those calories you worked so hard producing. They are sterile, never spoil, store easily, can be traded for goods and services, act as a store of value, etc. If you live on bread and soup for every meal, bread and soup and a pint of beer for every meal just upped your caloric intake and vitamins and minerals by a third. You are now healthier and will live longer, and if you're burning off those mealtime pints by going back to the plow or throwing hay around a barn, you're in no danger of drunkenness or obesity.
You're also less likely to die of waterborne diseases, if you're doing things like the Roman soldier trick of filling your canteen or water skin with 1 part wine to 5 parts water from the closest available source, with God knows what kind of algae or animal shit it contains. The ancient equivalent of iodine tablets.
Turning 'what the hell are we going to do with all these plums' into 'now no one will die of scurvy this winter, we have plum wine' is a key human technology, up there with pointy rocks.

The American problem is the cultural tendency to say "This is fine. But what if it was stronger / faster / on fire / came in sixteen colors?!" The quest for But What If...More?! produces some great stuff, but also leads to 'tsk. Okay, now you've gone too far'.
posted by bartleby at 10:15 PM on June 3, 2021 [56 favorites]


I was surprised the discussion of the social acceptability of drinking in women didn't mention medications like Miltown and Valium that were marketed to women in previous decades and served much the same purpose as alcohol would to reduce anxiety...it's not obvious that women's usage of anti-anxiety drugs has gone up, possibly which drugs are in favor have just changed.
posted by phoenixy at 10:17 PM on June 3, 2021 [12 favorites]


I find a major difference between European and US attitudes to drinking alcohol -- the concept of moderation.... In the UK, a pint of two at the pub is a normal social event -- the focus more on gossip or darts than getting drunk.

Yeah, this is not true. I was an American college student who lived in the UK on a student exchange program for a year, and then later for a while after I graduated. I never saw such destructive extreme binge drinking at my Midwestern big state university campus that could compare to the shit I saw on a Saturday night in the city streets of Cardiff and Manchester and Newcastle and.... The image of Englishmen quaffing a few pints of mild ale in Ye Olde Bird And Baby Pub is a relic of history.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:06 PM on June 3, 2021 [61 favorites]


if you're burning off those mealtime pints by going back to the plow or throwing hay around a barn, you're in no danger of drunkenness or obesity

Alternatively, a lot of history makes more sense if you assume most people were slightly drunk much of the time. I think both The Great Hedge of India (a history of salt and tea) and some histories of opium cover this - switching from wine or beer to tea as an army norm produced a more effective army, but contrariwise immiserated early industrial workers abandoned even gin for opium when they could, because it numbed even hunger.
posted by clew at 11:09 PM on June 3, 2021 [6 favorites]


I never saw such destructive extreme binge drinking at my Midwestern big state university campus that could compare to the shit I saw on a Saturday night in the city streets of Cardiff and Manchester and Newcastle and....

If you think that was bad, try a Friday night.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 11:10 PM on June 3, 2021 [6 favorites]


I can imagine the complicated social pub rules serving to slow down drinking enough for the conviviality to be dominant, in which case, no wonder people would remember it fondly. But paying for the space and bartenders who will do anything but maximizing drinking makes the drinks more expensive and then people, eh, pregame, yesno?
posted by clew at 11:15 PM on June 3, 2021


There's a big difference between how British university students drink, and normal British pub behaviour. When I was a student we couldn't afford to go to pubs, so we'd pre-drink a bottle of wine or a 200ml bottle of spirits (each), and then do shots at the club. At the pub I'd have two pints and play darts. You're both right!
posted by Braeburn at 12:34 AM on June 4, 2021 [16 favorites]


Yeah, totally agree with Braeburn re the difference between UK student and grown-up drinking. Student drinking meant a bottle of wine each over dinner, and then the actual drinking (spirits) started. Nowadays, drinking means two pints of IPA with the pub quiz and nervously considering whether a third is worth tomorrow's headache. There's also a whole world of class, geographical, and career differences.

The British anthropologist's claim that people make new friends in pubs didn't ring true to me — maybe I'm too much of a repressed misanthrope for that.

Looking at the stats for annual alcohol consumption, I was struck by how close the UK and Russia are (11.4L/yr vs 11.7L/yr), which didn't match my prior. The US is a bit behind (9.8L/yr).
posted by Klipspringer at 2:05 AM on June 4, 2021 [6 favorites]


Medieval people drunk beer instead of water: no they didn't.
posted by MartinWisse at 3:07 AM on June 4, 2021 [15 favorites]


that could compare to the shit I saw on a Saturday night in the city streets of Cardiff and Manchester and Newcastle and.... The image of Englishmen quaffing a few pints of mild ale in Ye Olde Bird And Baby Pub is a relic of history.

The Englishmen sipping a relaxed pint aren't doing it on a Saturday night in a city centre full of students. It's like saying no-one eats healthily nowadays because everyone in McDonalds was eating fast food.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:42 AM on June 4, 2021 [3 favorites]


Even more insidious and potentially more harmful is the way that unhealthy food is pushed via advertising and store displays in the US. (I won't get started on work culture re: food. Operant conditioning at its worst.)

They've come up with a million ways to make sure you notice the junk food subliminally: they package the message in ways like "Look at this cute little kid unscrewing an Oreo!! (How could this activity possibly be anything other than wholesome????)" Or somehow you see the damn stuff at the store out of the corner of your eye without it really registering.

When I leave the US, my eating habits snap back to a much healthier level without my having to do much to make that happen other than returning to a routine with a bit of attentiveness.

I say potentially more harmful because a lot of people simply won't drink to excess no matter how much it's pushed. But it's a lot easier to eat unhealthy food to excess without really noticing ill effects ... sometimes for years.

But I'm glad someone is writing about the epidemic of overconsumption in the US and that definitely includes alcohol. I left off drinking almost two decades ago and I can see that it's a good thing I did it at that time. (But it is possible to leave off of it any time ... people do it every day.)
posted by Sheydem-tants at 3:52 AM on June 4, 2021 [2 favorites]


Some of my own friends—mostly 30- or 40-something women, a group with a particularly sharp uptick in drinking—regularly declare that they’re taking an extended break from drinking, only to fall off the wagon immediately.

It took me many times "quitting", and I don't think that is unusual, for problem drinkers who eventually stop. The fantasy that an "extended break" will result in being able to have only the parts of drinking you like, when it's over (assuming that drinking is a problem enough that quitting is really the best thing) is also a typical bargaining/evasion move, but people have to go through it. I won't judge anyone who does this, I did it too, I know what it's like. And they are expressing a belief that a better life is possible, and experimenting with what the first steps in it would be like.

Again, all that is thinking of people who really have become problem drinkers. Whose drinking is at a level that is harming them.
posted by thelonius at 4:11 AM on June 4, 2021 [13 favorites]


Weird that people freak out about smoking, yet give booze a pass.

Much less stink.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:16 AM on June 4, 2021 [14 favorites]


Is anyone else giving some serious side-eye to this Slingerland dude who keeps getting quoted and cited in the article? This part especially pinged my bullshit radar:

Slingerland published a social-science-heavy self-help book called Trying Not to Try. In it, he argued that the ancient Taoist concept of wu-wei (akin to what we now call “flow”) could help with both the demands of modern life and the more eternal challenge of dealing with other people. Intoxicants, he pointed out in passing, offer a chemical shortcut to wu-wei—by suppressing our conscious mind, they can unleash creativity and also make us more sociable. At a talk he later gave on wu-wei at Google, Slingerland made much the same point about intoxication...

And this bit, which appears to be as close to a working hypothesis as Slingerland currently has:

As the importance of alcohol as a caloric stopgap diminished, why didn’t evolution eventually lead us away from drinking—say, by favoring genotypes associated with hating alcohol’s taste? That it didn’t suggests that alcohol’s harms were, over the long haul, outweighed by some serious advantages.

This is based on a fallacy that is very common in "evolutionary psychology," namely the assumption that every trait is selected for. Some people are different from others? Well, that difference *must* have somehow influenced genetic success in the misty past! From this point of view, nothing is due to random mutation, and every distinguishable trait, no matter how minuscule, must be selected for/against because it confers some advantage/disadvantage.

This is a minor derail from the more fundamental point of the article, but this kind of thinking is way too common and it annoys me that a professor of divinity is giving talks at Google with this kind of BS lined up.
posted by cubeb at 5:28 AM on June 4, 2021 [40 favorites]


Hard agree, cubeb. That type of theorizing absolutely drives me up the wall.
posted by Think_Long at 5:34 AM on June 4, 2021 [1 favorite]


(Like, if there's any single place in the world where this kind of evo psych just-so story would be lapped up eagerly and then get used to justify awful behavior, an auditorium at Google is just about at the top of the list)
posted by cubeb at 5:37 AM on June 4, 2021 [6 favorites]


Much less stink.

While I agree that alcohol is less stinky than cigarette smoke, it is still pretty stinky. The smell of it coming out of people's pores and on their breath makes me gag.
posted by all about eevee at 5:38 AM on June 4, 2021


The smell of it coming out of people's pores and on their breath makes me gag.

Same here. When I was a kid my mom collected empty cans for the deposit money and I find it tough to distance even the smell of fresh cold beer from a garbage bag full of unwashed empties that having been baking in the sun. No wonder I've always been a teetotaler.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:45 AM on June 4, 2021 [3 favorites]


I drink a little more often since COVID, but smaller drinks: quality not quantity.

I brew my own mead & cider, and I last spring bought a bunch of tiny 8-ounce bottles. The stuff is not much stronger than beer, and a couple of nights a week I will enjoy a little bottle of mead while I putter around my workbench. Weekends I might watch a movie on my laptop (while my wife & daughter watch something else on the big TV) and enjoy a whole 12-ounce bottle -- but almost never a second drink.

uncleozzy: I do find myself not really drinking at all lately unless it’s in a social setting. Drinking alone is, as suggested here, sort of depressing. I’m in my 40s and I spent a few years in my early 20s drinking alone somewhat regularly, and I largely tired of it.

I am wary of alcoholism and, nearing age fifty, the calories. *shrug* Also, my wife is a teetotaler, so there isn't much drinking in our house aside from this.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:54 AM on June 4, 2021 [2 favorites]


Canada has a multitude of different drinking cultures and I think the US is the same, so treating it like a monolith is hard.

But I do find that the article aligns with my experience that Americans have a really hard time talking about or conceiving of moderation when it comes to alcohol.

Like, the last thread here on alcohol where I participated felt really weird to me. I shared that under the stress of the pandemic and not being able to get mental space, I had started looking forward to a scotch or two a few times a week - I can't remember if I got into it, but my pre-pandemic consumption was maybe a drink or two a month. My point was kind of "it's pretty human to seek comfort items," but I think it got lost in the discussion.

I wasn't worried about it as problematic for me, because I'm 50, and I know myself and my body and my use of drugs including caffeine and alcohol including at hard times like in 2004 when my daughter died and my husband took a contract 5 hours away and I also briefly drank more, and sure enough, once the Ontario numbers started to turn around and gardening season got into full swing and the days got longer, I got my mental downtime differently and I think the last drink I had was before Mother's Day but I don't really remember, because it's - not really a huge deal either way, for me.

It's sort of like I eat baklava at friends' houses when they have it, and occasionally my family and I go through a period of getting the best baklava from the Lebanese place and we might actually eat too much baklava and then we slow down.

I totally, totally get that for people who have substance abuse issues with alcohol, it doesn't work that way. I've been up close to that (as a child with alcoholic grandparents and one uncle) and it's really hard. I could go over what I think worked to break the generational chain but it mostly comes down to a) genetics, b) one of the things my parents did right and c) having other emotional tools. Again, this is not the same for people whose bodies work differently from mine.

But the idea that moderation is a myth does seem...especially American to me.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:01 AM on June 4, 2021 [21 favorites]


Minimum drinking age by country.

Some US drunk driving stats.

Best of all- Animated map of state drinking age post prohibition to today.

Death stats have fallen since the law was enacted. That it can be enforced by threat of withholding Federal Tax dollars for those states that don't fall in line was upheld by the Supreme Court. States' rights in theory....

Our semi-rural road is regularly dotted with paper bags in which are empty bear cans and fireball minis. High school kids, I assume. I see some irony in that much of the country seems bent on legalizing marijuana for entertainment. Taxes, in no small part.

(Lenin banned vodka in Russia before the US experiment, then pulled back. Others tried later. Futile in results, and hurt the treasury. See here.)
posted by BWA at 6:04 AM on June 4, 2021 [1 favorite]


By the late 1990s, the volume of alcohol consumed annually had declined by a fifth.

That's funny.
posted by JanetLand at 6:20 AM on June 4, 2021 [22 favorites]


ministers who would ride circuit on the frontier

This was my great-grandfather--I have his portable melodeon (mfg. 1865) in my front room, which was his most important tool as a Methodist minister riding the circuit and establishing new churches. He would ride into a frontier town, set up under a nice tree and start playing hymns on his melodeon, and when a crowd gathered around to sing, he would start talking. My dad has his saddlebags.

He never drank at all, and neither did his daughter (my grandmother, who married a preacher and only ever got drunk once in her life, accidentally at a Presbyterian women's social, when she thought the white wine was grape juice). I expect my great-grandfather would be rather surprised at my own lifestyle choices through the years.
posted by LooseFilter at 6:38 AM on June 4, 2021 [4 favorites]


I never thought Americans drank that much until I learned that a fifth of spirits is about 750ml (i.e. a fifth of a us liquid gallon, and not 200ml (i.e. one fifth of a liter). Why did I think in this one unit would Americans be referring to the metric system? Who knows!
posted by Braeburn at 6:46 AM on June 4, 2021 [7 favorites]


The American problem is the cultural tendency to say "This is fine. But what if it was stronger / faster / on fire / came in sixteen colors?!" The quest for But What If...More?! produces some great stuff, but also leads to 'tsk. Okay, now you've gone too far'.

I live literally across the street from the Sam Adams Brewing R&D facility in Boston. When I first moved to this part of town, I took the tour like any other redblooded citizen. One of the things they make among their abundance of projects is Sam Adams Utopia, which... I don't even know how to describe it. It starts as a high ABV top-ferment, which then gets champagne yeast and a bunch of sweet things (maple syrup, vanilla, possibly some sort of brown liquor?) added to it, and then it barrel-ages on new oak for three years. They don't distill it, but they do everything else they can to get it up to some ungodly ABV like 29%. It comes in a fancy hand-hewn steampunk-looking brass bottle, and you drink it like brandy. The tour guides all speak of it in hushed tones, and it's absurdly expensive. I of course ran out and bought a bottle at the earliest opportunity.

It tastes like Hitler's earwax. Imagine the heaviest stout you've ever had, with the extra cloying sweetness obliterating all the nuance, and the burn of 29% ABV. I couldn't give it away.

In conclusion, Murica!
posted by Mayor West at 6:50 AM on June 4, 2021 [23 favorites]


This article, those linked within this thread and this thread itself provide much food for thought. My first takeaway is that talking about drinking is the story of the blind men and the elephant incarnate.
posted by y2karl at 6:54 AM on June 4, 2021 [7 favorites]


I never saw such destructive extreme binge drinking at my Midwestern big state university campus that could compare to the shit I saw on a Saturday night in the city streets of Cardiff and Manchester and Newcastle and.... The image of Englishmen quaffing a few pints of mild ale in Ye Olde Bird And Baby Pub is a relic of history.

See also: British tourists on a beach vacation.

The fantasy that an "extended break" will result in being able to have only the parts of drinking you like, when it's over (assuming that drinking is a problem enough that quitting is really the best thing) is also a typical bargaining/evasion move, but people have to go through it. I won't judge anyone who does this, I did it too, I know what it's like. And they are expressing a belief that a better life is possible, and experimenting with what the first steps in it would be like.

I know quite a few people who use extended breaks as a reset button. Their pattern is to have their drinking slowly increase over time, up to the point where they feel like it might be becoming a problem. Then they take a few weeks or more off, and restart at the low level. For whatever reason (family history, brain chemistry, whatever) they can't seem to sustain a steady level of moderate drinking in perpetuity, but by hitting that reset button once or twice a year their drinking stays within bounds. That seems like a good and healthy adaptive management choice to me, and at least so far isn't leading any of them to lifetime abstention (though I know for others a short break can be the first step towards quitting drinking entirely).

I appreciated the point in the article that there are contexts within which drinking alcohol has benefits (ie, sociality), since so much of the discussion in the US especially is about the costs and harms. Something that I have really missed during this pandemic is being able to sit at the bar at a brewery or restaurant, order some food, get a drink, and be simultaneously alone and with others. Sometimes the people next to you or the bartender are chatty and sometimes not, but even when no one is wanting to talk there is still people watching and overheard conversations.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:00 AM on June 4, 2021 [8 favorites]


100%, y2karl. Along with the apparent conviction that the elephant is accusing you of something.
posted by argybarg at 7:02 AM on June 4, 2021 [7 favorites]


Along with the apparent conviction that the elephant is accusing you of something.

Well in the last thread it felt like some of the discussion became an "all Cretans are liars" situation. I actually have found that not uncommon among Americans who like to judge women, especially moms, in particular - see also all the "Wine Moms" articles etc.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:07 AM on June 4, 2021 [9 favorites]


I don't understand why people want to alter their consciousness

For me, it's curiosity. I thoroughly appreciate the resulting ability to cross-check my customary experience of reality against those obtained by throwing the perceptive apparatus into unusual modes.

My working conclusion is that unaltered consciousness has a great deal going for it, but also has some self-disguising failure modes that are much easier to compensate for after a bit of serious attention paid while in altered states.
posted by flabdablet at 7:10 AM on June 4, 2021 [5 favorites]


I don't understand why people want to alter their consciousness

It's not called expanded consciousness for nothing.
posted by y2karl at 7:12 AM on June 4, 2021 [1 favorite]


My experience is that some people crave the experience of experimenting with their brain chemistry, and some people don’t. You can’t make the people who crave it stop craving it, and you can’t make the people who are not interested become interested. I read or hear people’s reports of their trips on various psychedelics and think “glad I don’t have to do that.” But I also recognize how real and pervasive the longing or curiosity is among others.
posted by argybarg at 7:14 AM on June 4, 2021 [5 favorites]


I'm sure some people do crave it.

Personally, I just find it super interesting. I'm certainly looking forward to my next opportunity but I'd be hard pressed to agree that I'm doing that with anything that could reasonably be described as craving.
posted by flabdablet at 7:17 AM on June 4, 2021


Yes, craving might be too strong on my part. “Are drawn to it,” perhaps. Either way, setting it as a moral marker or character issue in either direction is unhelpful.
posted by argybarg at 7:18 AM on June 4, 2021 [2 favorites]


When you get sober, it's amazing how much you notice that everything in our lives is geared towards alcohol being the following: a way to celebrate, a way to cope, a way to quell your anxiety (hey it was me!), a way to mourn, a way to say "it's five o'clock somewhere!", a way to spend your free time, etc.

I'm not white-knuckling anymore, which is nice, but those first few months were very tense. I had my first drink at 15, and somewhere around 18, alcohol became the thing I liked most. In the ensuing years, it led to a DUI, almost two more DUIs afterwards, at least a few sexual assaults that I repressed and blamed myself for, and well, it nearly ended my marriage. I give the side-eye to pandemic drinking, especially since here in Ontario, kids aren't allowed to go back to school but hey, the bars are gonna be open soon!
posted by Kitteh at 7:28 AM on June 4, 2021 [9 favorites]


you can’t make the people who are not interested become interested

I've personally met several counterexamples.

I've also met many people who declare themselves completely uninterested in psychedelic experiences and live with chronic suffering of various kinds that I am absolutely convinced are rooted in persistent assumptions that they make about themselves - assumptions very similar to those I also used to make, never having examined them closely until experience with altered states made them manifestly non-viable. As the old saying goes, it's not things you don't know that will do you in, it's things you do know that aren't true.

I'm not convinced that there's a huge amount of useful perspective to be gained from the experience of being drunk. There's some, for sure, but the potential for abuse is really high compared to safer substances like psilocybin or cannabinoids. Probably the biggest thing is finding out whether you're a mean drunk or a happy drunk; because if you're a mean drunk, you more than likely have baggage it would really benefit you to work through while not drunk.
posted by flabdablet at 7:35 AM on June 4, 2021 [5 favorites]


I do find that the article aligns with my experience that Americans have a really hard time talking about or conceiving of moderation when it comes to alcohol.

I think Americans have a hard time with moderation in most things. The culture has little nuance -- it's all either/or. Republican or Democrat. Patriot or commie. God-fearing or atheist. Straight or gay. Gun-lover or pacifist. Gluttony or dieting. Fitness freak or sloth. Logger/miner or environmentalist.

Pick your side and fight the other. It's the American Way.
posted by binturong at 7:46 AM on June 4, 2021 [15 favorites]


I think moderation isn't something humans do well, full stop. We like excess. When we find something makes us feel good--be it booze, drugs, food, etc--why wouldn't we want to feel like that more?
posted by Kitteh at 8:01 AM on June 4, 2021 [3 favorites]


flabdablet:

I appreciate your experience, but I also hope you understand the hint of proselytizing, which I have experienced from other enthusiasts of the psychedelic experience, is off-putting. The background message is "you could heal yourself if you would just open your mind and not be so uptight." Then we're right back to shaking our head at what's wrong with those poor people.

I think if society is going to become more accepting of people who value mind-altering experiences — which I do sincerely hope for — then I think we take a step back from that goal if we don't likewise fully honor people's lack of interest.
posted by argybarg at 8:02 AM on June 4, 2021 [6 favorites]


When you get sober, it's amazing how much you notice that everything in our lives is geared towards alcohol being the following: a way to celebrate, a way to cope, a way to quell your anxiety (hey it was me!), a way to mourn, a way to say "it's five o'clock somewhere!", a way to spend your free time, etc.

“Here's to alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.”
—Homer Simpson
posted by Ike_Arumba at 8:22 AM on June 4, 2021 [10 favorites]


Lack of interest in anything has never struck me as a stance particularly worth honouring.

Accepting a lack of interest, sure; no problem there at all. After all, there simply isn't time to take an active interest in every conceivable pursuit. If I express an interest in a thing and you express a lack of interest in that thing, no skin off my nose and should be none off yours either.

Honouring a lack of interest, though? Step too far, in my book. Since when has wilful ignorance ever been an honourable position?

Honest reportage about personal motivations for experimenting with altered states of consciousness, prompted by interest expressed in the question of why anybody would want to do that, in the context of a public conversation about the social effects of the most widely used and abused psychotropic on the planet, does not amount to following people home and shouting TRY PSYCHEDELICS at them as they attempt to eat their breakfasts.
posted by flabdablet at 8:43 AM on June 4, 2021 [5 favorites]


I quit drinking a year and a half ago. I had been making beer for over ten years. When I quit, I looked for a substitute beverage. There are many fine non-alcoholic beers on the market. I decided to make a tonic. I make an infusion (hops, tea, hot peppers, ginger, citrus zest, pepper, salt, allspice, coriander, mauby bark, cherry bark, cinchona bark, juniper berries, irish moss, flax seed, cinnamon, cloves, mace, mint, rosemary, flax seed). I put it in the fridge for a couple of weeks, strain it and put it in a corny keg that I pressurize with CO2. Most satisfying. I don’t miss my homebrew at all.
posted by No Robots at 8:50 AM on June 4, 2021 [20 favorites]


"Willful ignorance"? Do you not see the patronizing happening?

I think we are unlikely to see this the same way, so I think I'm done here.
posted by argybarg at 8:53 AM on June 4, 2021 [6 favorites]


Wow, No Robots, that's freaking awesome. It sounds so good!
posted by Kitteh at 8:54 AM on June 4, 2021 [2 favorites]


I am in the "I would like to try psychedelics as a part of therapy and wellness" camp, but I remember with horror when I did acid as a teen. I am fascinated by the studies and anecdotes that come out for sure.
posted by Kitteh at 8:55 AM on June 4, 2021 [4 favorites]


There are plenty of issues with Craig Ferguson but I always very much appreciated his monologues on alcoholism in the US.

Also--and I write this as someone who firmly believes in the therapeutic and mind-expanding possibilities of psychedelics, and who's very much not trying to be mean here--I find people describing their experiences with psychedelics about as interesting as people describing getting drunk and jumping in the pool, or for that matter talking about their dreams. Which is to say, sort of abstractly interesting, maybe, when it's actually related to the topic at hand.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:32 AM on June 4, 2021 [6 favorites]


I think moderation isn't something humans do well, full stop.

Slight alternate hypothesis - moderation is something humans can do as a group better than we can individually. The bacon-wrapped lemma: we can also do it much worse as a group. Norms and etiquette matter, or set and setting, you might say.

Which seems like something Silverlight and the SV libertarian impulse might be understating.
posted by clew at 9:37 AM on June 4, 2021


Medieval people drunk beer instead of water: no they didn't.

That article is not saying that no one ever drank beer instead of water, it's saying that premodern Western people didn't exclusively drink alcohol instead of water. Which is true, but the article, in quoting medical advice &c., doesn't seem to be giving much thought to practicalities. Water is heavy. Even if you have a reliable source, drawing it and bringing it home is a major household task if science doesn't do it for you. Without running water piped to homes, it's very desirable to have a non-perishable-ish source of drinking liquid you can use as needed (and of course you must take into account the calorie-storage situation someone else discussed above). If you're sailing on a saltwater ocean, of course drinking supplies are a practical issue, not just a morale one. They didn't give little kids weak beer and cider for fun. Slingland could've done with a greater consideration of material history to give his work more nuance, or at least that's how it sounds from the FPP. But then, it's evo psych, so I don't really believe any of it.

From the English historians' POV (or at least the way it was a few years ago), the real inflection point was the introduction of cheap gin, which can't be used as a water substitute unless you want to die very young. European drinking habits weren't adapted to distilled liquor, and we never recovered.

(BTW, a good eau de vie smells very nice. Nicer than it tastes, even.)
posted by praemunire at 10:07 AM on June 4, 2021 [3 favorites]


After watching Prohibition I decided that much of what's wrong with the U.S. today is driven by the same kinds of people who decided back then that what was wrong with the U.S. was too much drink. That said, I'm wary of people who drink more than they can handle and it's far too common.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:15 AM on June 4, 2021 [3 favorites]


I know quite a few people who use extended breaks as a reset button. Their pattern is to have their drinking slowly increase over time, up to the point where they feel like it might be becoming a problem. Then they take a few weeks or more off, and restart at the low level. For whatever reason (family history, brain chemistry, whatever) they can't seem to sustain a steady level of moderate drinking in perpetuity, but by hitting that reset button once or twice a year their drinking stays within bounds. That seems like a good and healthy adaptive management choice to me, and at least so far isn't leading any of them to lifetime abstention (though I know for others a short break can be the first step towards quitting drinking entirely).

Sure, there are all kinds of drinkers, and various moderation or harm reduction strategies are effective for some of them, and I am all for that. For those that they won't work for, well, the way you find out is to try them. I think it is unfortunate that we seem to have this cultural binary of you're an alcoholic, get ready for lifetime AA or jails-institutions-and-death, or you're perfectly fine as a drinker. There's a lot in between. I heard that NHS doctors talk to people about safe vs. unsafe levels of drinking, and I think that sounds like it might be a good place to start as an outreach approach.
posted by thelonius at 10:55 AM on June 4, 2021 [8 favorites]


much of what's wrong with the U.S. today is driven by the same kinds of people who decided back then that what was wrong with the U.S. was too much drink

I've always thought that too much drink probably WAS the cause of many of the US's problems back then, especially the problem of the widespread abuse of women (who led the charge for Prohibition.)

It's just that banning alcohol didn't stop people from using it. Just drove users to unregulated black markets which begat violence and dangerous products.

The lessons being that banning things doesn't cause them to stop existing, and punishing addicts doesn't make them any less addicted. Lessons we still don't seem to have learned 100 years later...
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:10 AM on June 4, 2021 [11 favorites]


I've always thought that too much drink probably WAS the cause of many of the US's problems back then, especially the problem of the widespread abuse of women (who led the charge for Prohibition.)

I'm not sure it's correct (or fair) to tie alcoholism, a disease, to violence against women - a systemic social problem that also exists in communities with much less tolerance for alcohol.
posted by Think_Long at 11:34 AM on June 4, 2021 [5 favorites]


TFA makes the point that banning it did vastly reduce use, and that the reduction persisted for years after the legalization. While also perhaps increasing solo drinking over healthier social drinking. In conclusion, prohibition USA was a land of contrasts.
posted by mark k at 11:35 AM on June 4, 2021 [4 favorites]


I don't know what this says about the country, but it's worth mentioning that three out of our last four presidents do not drink alcohol.
posted by riruro at 11:40 AM on June 4, 2021 [2 favorites]


I'm not sure it's correct (or fair) to tie alcoholism, a disease, to violence against women

Soooo...I'm guessing you've never spent time in a household with an abuser who is also a drinker. Intimate partner violence and alcohol (a WHO factsheet)

I'm not sure why something's being a disease means it can't contribute significantly to harmful behaviors, though I don't think you'd call drinking the sole cause of this particular set of behaviors.
posted by praemunire at 11:41 AM on June 4, 2021 [7 favorites]


I think moderation isn't something humans do well, full stop.

Not arguing, just sharing more thoughts...after my daughter died, the doctors that contributed to both her death and physical injury to me (tearing, dislocated hip, blood loss) prescribed me bottles of Percocet and Ativan - like a 3 month supply. I also had no job, my spouse was mostly gone, and I really wanted to disconnect for a while. My dinner was a glass of scotch and a chocolate bar. (I learned I really hate Ativan and Percocet.)

And...after three months, I was done. This is no moral or will power thing, trust me, I had none of that going for me. I just...got tired of it. This taught me that addiction is not about will power or moral fortitude. Like, I tried, but an alcoholic life isn't for me...I have to find other ways to mess up.

I can't say I'm moderate (I live under North American capitalism and I have 4 packs of watercolour crayons) but I think I do naturally incline in that direction. I can be influenced by others -- working in an office, I will eat doughnuts every time they are presented to me. Working at home it's like, ehn.

I also have two kids. One FILLED his trick or treat bag every year, took it in his room, and then around December we would reallocate together the 80% of his haul that he never touched. He loved having it, hated eating it. My other child threw up the first Halloween I let him take his bag into his room because he ate so much candy at 1 am when he woke up. And yet now he's sort of the first to stop eating his slice of pie or cake because he's done, even if it was 1-2 bites. It's weird and complex.

I can't speak to much of my alcoholic family but the two "worst" alcoholics were both veterans, and in both cases I suspect that a lot of their addiction in some way stemmed from PTSD and also how they were influenced by those around them to deal with it (or not deal with it.) I think of that as a generational legacy. I still teach my kids that they have strong evidence for the genes for alcoholism and need to be mindful. But...after my experience, and I have PTSD...I don't know.

On preview - the two worst were also violent and abusive, behaviour which ended after they each stopped drinking (in one's case, he wasn't really in a position to, so hard to say that was conclusive. Still I have no trouble linking them.)
posted by warriorqueen at 11:44 AM on June 4, 2021 [9 favorites]


tie alcoholism, a disease, to violence against women

It's a disease with behavioral symptoms that are unfortunately dangerous to others beyond just the person suffering from the disease. Lots of diseases are like that.

Doesn't change the fact that the best way to end the dangerous behaviors is to treat the disease, rather than punishing the person suffering from it.
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:45 AM on June 4, 2021 [3 favorites]


I'm not sure why something's being a disease means it can't contribute significantly to harmful behaviors, though I don't think you'd call drinking the sole cause of this particular set of behaviors.

Yeah, I get that - I was just pushing back against the idea that it is such a tight causal relationship. But I am admittedly out of my depth on the research, so I'll step back.
posted by Think_Long at 11:46 AM on June 4, 2021 [1 favorite]


I think it is unfortunate that we seem to have this cultural binary of you're an alcoholic, get ready for lifetime AA or jails-institutions-and-death, or you're perfectly fine as a drinker. There's a lot in between. I heard that NHS doctors talk to people about safe vs. unsafe levels of drinking.

Oh jesus, this times a billion. You're either a "normal" drinker or you're one drink away from being the cliche brown bagged bottle drinker on a park bench. Drinking encompasses a ton of grey area drinking, but it's easier to have things black and white. Alcohol culture doesn't do nuance, even though I'd guess most drinkers fall into between those two.
posted by Kitteh at 11:49 AM on June 4, 2021 [9 favorites]


The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to simulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the greater exciter of the Yes function in man. It brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth. Not through mere perversity do men run after it. To the poor and the unlettered it stands in the place of symphony concerts and of literature; and it is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognise as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us only in the fleeting phases of what in its totality is so degrading a poisoning. The drunken consciousness is one bit of mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.
William James
The Varieties of Religious Experience

often reduced and edited to
Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it.
posted by y2karl at 12:12 PM on June 4, 2021 [11 favorites]


“You are the last hope of the universe.”
“So I really am important? How I feel when I'm drunk is correct?”
“Yes. Except, the Dave Matthews Band
doesn't rock.”

posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:18 PM on June 4, 2021


^I agree whole-heartedly with James. However, should we not at a certain point leave behind the simulacrum for the real thing, and devote ourselves to the development of our mystic consciousness by other means, especially if we are not poor and unlettered?
posted by No Robots at 12:18 PM on June 4, 2021


I believe he addressed that with
...it is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognise as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us only in the fleeting phases of what in its totality is so degrading a poisoning.
posted by y2karl at 12:23 PM on June 4, 2021 [1 favorite]


Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, [drink] provokes, and unprovokes;
it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.
posted by praemunire at 12:24 PM on June 4, 2021 [2 favorites]


often reduced and edited to...

I'm looking at you, The Oxford Book of Aphorisms.
posted by y2karl at 12:29 PM on June 4, 2021


I don't know what this says about the country, but it's worth mentioning that three out of our last four presidents do not drink alcohol.

Two of those teetotalers were two of the worst presidents we've ever had.
Gledden-Mitchell, "Teetotalitarians"

A pattern from our history - albeit anecdotal
Pick any evil SOB - he's probably teetotal
Hitler didn't touch the booze, and neither Torquemada
Bin Laden with a drink to choose took yak's milk - nothing harder
Pol Pot too forsook the brew, Bieber was too young
Stalin may have had a few but not your Mao Tse Tung
Donald Trump, of presidents the Idiot du Jour
He may love your blandishments but not a heavy pour
Risking some hyperbole but very plainly stated
You can shove sobriety it's clearly overrated
If we're all to get engaged in evil's true demise
Don't waste your time getting enraged - here's wisdom from the wise
To rid their inhumanities, step back awhile and think
The course to alter history's to buy that man a drink
posted by kirkaracha at 12:32 PM on June 4, 2021 [10 favorites]


Is drunkedness a euphoric state? I drank a fair amount when younger, and went straight from "buzzed" to puking my guts out without any inbetween. Buzzed is nice, but not a life-changing state.
posted by maxwelton at 12:51 PM on June 4, 2021 [1 favorite]


I get a little tired of articles about the perils of drinking, simply because in the US it always seems to be combined with a kind of moral panic.

I have lived in the US, Netherlands, Hong Kong and now Indonesia. It was the US where people were most likely to say that people with a glass of wine or two with dinner had a serious drinking problem, and also the place where I knew the most people who had hard-core drinking problems.


Isn't this the exact point the article is trying to make? The first sentence is "Few things are more American than drinking heavily. But worrying about how heavily other Americans are drinking is one of them."
posted by thebots at 1:33 PM on June 4, 2021 [6 favorites]


Reading is for sober people, thebots!

I find that the alcoholic/non-alcoholic distinction only allows people to put themselves on one side or another to little profit. I could talk about how my internalizing this really helped me but no one gives a shit. I think it's unfortunate that a lot of really problematic drinking can go unaddressed because "hey, i'm not an alcoholic" is not only a thing you might think but actively encouraged by most people in consistent cultural references to how you either are bottom of the barrel or just fine and dandy.

On a personal note, I have never been able to not think of a polar bear when told not to think of a polar bear. I have however had success rejecting the premise that I should care about thinking about a polar bear and then had many pleasant non-polar bear related thoughts.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 3:13 PM on June 4, 2021 [4 favorites]


I don't know what this says about the country, but it's worth mentioning that three out of our last four presidents do not drink alcohol.

"Never trust a man who doesn't drink" Attributed to Winston Churchill.

The belief being that a person loses inhibition under the influence of alcohol and an untrustworthy or "bad" person is afraid to reveal their true opinions. Shielded by a facade, they must always be on their guard.
posted by binturong at 3:24 PM on June 4, 2021 [1 favorite]


I don't understand why people want to alter their consciousness

Consciousness sucks
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:46 PM on June 4, 2021 [23 favorites]


It's interesting to read this thread. I'm currently on a week-long binge and I have not eaten in days. Alcoholism is a monster.
posted by SPrintF at 5:37 PM on June 4, 2021 [7 favorites]


Hey SPrintF, do you know how to stay safe at this point? I am not a doctor, and I cannot give medical advice, but the main thing is that it is dangerous to try to abruptly self-detox after like a week of drinking. If you are over your head it is best to call for help, in the short-term medical sense of help. You probably know that, I'm sorry. I don't really have any experience like that, I used to drink hard and then sober up for a day or two at least. If it were me, I guess I'd start by reducing the frequency of drinks, and see if I could keep some water down. Best wishes to you, and please be careful.
posted by thelonius at 6:14 PM on June 4, 2021 [15 favorites]


I've read multiple books on the social history of alcohol.
It's been a while, but there are several reasons why American drinking habits were less moderate than those of Europeans. The two that come to mind:

A lot of Americans lived or worked where they didn't have regular/steady access to alcohol. The example that really struck me was of cattle drives. Workers would spend weeks or months herding cows across the prairies, in periods of forced abstinence. Then, when they reached their destination, they were paid off and turned loose until the next job came along. It's a cycle that lends itself to binge drinking. I'm sure hunters and trappers had similar habits, but since those were solitary occupations, it may have been less noticeable than a team coming in all at once. (One of America's first celebrity bartenders came out of Gold Rush San Francisco)

Prohibition: Because the government banned all alcohol, rather than only restricting hard liquor, this killed what social drinking culture America had.
posted by cheshyre at 6:44 PM on June 4, 2021 [1 favorite]


maxwelton Is drunkedness a euphoric state

Yeah, once a certain level of tolerance has been established. When I'm problematically drinking, after a certain point I reach a level of disinhibition where I don't care anymore and "chase the high" of being drunk by consuming more alcohol. Being buzzed is like a step, but getting royally and deeply hammered is a different experiential level. Perhaps a (deeply flawed) analogy is tugging out a quicky vs. a multi-hour love making session that culminates, finally, in orgasmic release. Only the euphoria persists as long as one can stay conscious, even if you don't remember much of it afterwards.

As for psychedelics - a large part of the draw for recreational users isn't (just) altered perceptions, but the immense euphoria that usually accompanies the altered state.

Dose and setting contribute to good/ bad trips, but also genetics and current brain chemistry. I've used and enjoyed a variety of psychedelics and have never had a truly bad trip (mostly because I retained understanding of what was going on) and they were always accompanied by intense euphoria.

I've been in my poorest mental health (depression, anxiety, anhedonia) for the last couple of years. During a particularly low point, I arranged for time and setting to consume a moderate amount of psilocybin hoping for some self-introspection and self-directed therapy.

All of the altered perception and intense introspection (and acute toxic response) but zero euphoria. It was overall an entirely unpleasant experience despite still being in control/ not technically a "bad trip."

In the past, the associated euphoria helped me consider and digest my thoughts. Without the euphoria, it perhaps exacerbated the conscious aspect of the depression and the bitterness of thought persisted and maybe even amplified.

Tried again a month later with a different batch from a known trustworthy source who had consumed some of the same batch, same deal. Complete lack of euphoria and an unpleasant experience for me but a regular trip for them.

I'm hoping that I might recover the brain chemistry to enjoy psychedelics again because my previous experiences were super fun and I enjoyed the persistent outcome of euphoria-linked introspection.
posted by porpoise at 7:54 PM on June 4, 2021 [3 favorites]


Isn't this the exact point the article is trying to make? The first sentence is "Few things are more American than drinking heavily. But worrying about how heavily other Americans are drinking is one of them."

*shrugs* Maybe. Mine was a general grumble. TBH something about the article tone put me off from the beginning.
posted by frumiousb at 8:42 PM on June 4, 2021


Even drinking in bars has become less social in recent years, or at least this was a common perception among about three dozen bartenders I surveyed while reporting this article. “I have a few regulars who play games on their phone,” one in San Francisco said, “and I have a standing order to just refill their beer when it’s empty. No eye contact or talking until they are ready to leave.” Striking up conversations with strangers has become almost taboo, many bartenders observed, especially among younger patrons. So why not just drink at home? Spending money to sit in a bar alone and not talk to anyone was, a bartender in Columbus, Ohio, said, an interesting case of “trying to avoid loneliness without actual togetherness.”
This was quite interesting to me as someone who has done this kind of drinking sometimes. I think part of the reason is some of the psychological "tricks" people use to keep drinking under control is to confine it to certain contexts/times/locations, to stop the habit taking hold in other places. For example people may have "rules" about drinking at home/in hotel rooms alone, or drinking when you have work the next day, or drinking before noon. Breaking these rules crosses a psychological barrier that makes it harder to stop drinking more, so they have to be followed even when they are slightly absurd. If I'm away on a work trip on my own, I'll go and have a few beers in the hotel bar by myself, but I won't go and drink in my room, even if that's way cheaper. And you know, sometimes I actually have struck up interesting conversations with strangers.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 2:44 AM on June 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


I feel like a big thing that's unsaid when we talk about alcohol is sugar. We're addicted to sugar in the US, but we like to deny it. If you're a person who would feel silly scarfing down a couple of Snickers after work, it looks much more adult to have a couple of scotches. I come from a family of heavy drinkers. None of them ate desserts and they would all probably have said they never touch sugar. But they were jacking up their blood sugar with alcohol every day.

There's such a big market now in alcoholic drinks that are advertised as low carb, low calorie, low sugar, but they contain hard liquor, which is pretty much like sugar, only worse.

Mind you, I love sugar and I certainly have not cut it out. And I have tried drinking alcohol instead. (That always backfires, by the way.)
posted by BibiRose at 7:37 AM on June 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


Drinking alcohol depresses blood sugar levels, not increases them
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:05 AM on June 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


Also, your body processes almost no calories from alcohol. It effectively stops your body from processing other sources of calories until it’s finished cleaning them out too.

So no, it isn’t just like sugar to your body. You do not get energy from ethanol.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 5:53 PM on June 5, 2021


Also, your body processes almost no calories from alcohol. It effectively stops your body from processing other sources of calories until it’s finished cleaning them out too.

Neither of those are really true AFAIK? Do you have a source?

From my browsing to try and confirm my understanding, while you don't get the "list value" from alcohol (which is high) but you do grab quite a bit as its metabolized. The wiki writeup on alcohol metabolism suggests about 20% of the list value as a minimum under normal circumstances. I haven't seen anything about stopping other metabolism (and I have unfortunate experimental data, in the shape of my belly, here).

I have seen reports in the past that heavy (ie, severely alcoholic) drinkers can cause pathway shifts and, after a certain point, get almost nothing out of the extra drinks.
posted by mark k at 6:17 PM on June 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


You can read a lot of studies that will pull you in various directions here in the references: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_weight

One of them highlighting how it’s a bit of a paradox: http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/69/2/173

Which also might explain your circumstances if you’re a moderate drinker. I’ve read most of those studies, they really do kind of shrug in the end because the human body is a mystery. In summary from what I’ve gleaned: ethanol raises appetite (hello belly), raises energy burn (skinny malnourished alcoholics), is extremely inefficient as an energy source and takes priority over all others for removal (it’s poison after all),
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 10:14 PM on June 5, 2021


Thanks, but none of those say the body doesn't process calories from alcohol, e.g. from the journal article: "Several studies carried out by using whole-body indirect calorimeters (7–9) clearly showed that ethanol energy is used efficiently by the body and that alcohol energy does count!" (Their exclamation point.) I think you're going well beyond the scientific observations here.
posted by mark k at 10:26 PM on June 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


From TFA:
The social context of drinking turns out to matter quite a lot to how alcohol affects us psychologically.
This is a concept that I first encountered reading Ceremonial Chemistry (Szasz, 1974) in college. The book has a lot of questionable ideas, but this one I see coming up again and again: people acting surprised that the effects of drugs vary so widely with set and setting. I think there was a discussion here on mefi where someone mentioned that heroin and alcohol are considered a deadly combination in the United States, but in Europe(?) people routinely drink beers while shooting up in supervised injection facilities to no ill affect. I recently spectated an online dramatic recital of testimony given by a young Andrew Weil in a Japanese cannabis possession trial where he stated that he gave strong cannabis doses to naive volunteers in a laboratory setting, and they reported none of the giggly stoned intoxication experienced by veterans who knew what to expect.

I am always alarmed to see commercials featuring people drinking alone at home on Japanese TV, because I think of "never drink alone" as one of the rules for set and setting to help avoid negative outcomes with alcohol.
posted by The genius who rejected Anno's budget proposal. at 10:27 PM on June 5, 2021


TFA is noted in this week's "Russell Goldenberg's Winning the Internet" email, indicating that it is the most linked-to article in his analysis of "3,298 unique links from 210 emails, sourcing from 91 newsletters" this last week.
posted by achrise at 7:29 AM on June 6, 2021


I think of "never drink alone" as one of the rules for set and setting to help avoid negative outcomes with alcohol

That's funny because I am almost 100% a solitary drinker (I mean, often there are people in the house because I'm married with a kid, but I'm say, watching a movie and drinking beer by myself). It never occurred to me that it was something I shouldn't do.

When I do drink with other people, I think I drink more, because when the drinking starts as part of the socializing, then it doesn't stop until the socializing stops also. Wheras I might just take 3 beers with me to watch the movie and then stop drinking when they're gone.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:41 AM on June 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


It's interesting to read this thread. I'm currently on a week-long binge and I have not eaten in days. Alcoholism is a monster.

For those interested, I stopped binging three days ago. This morning, I took the time to read up on the effects of delirium tremens. "Oh, that's why I started seeing things for the last few days!" This is knowledge I would rather not have needed. Hopefully, I'll be to keep experience in mind and never touch alcohol again.
posted by SPrintF at 9:07 AM on June 7, 2021 [9 favorites]


Random thoughts:

These days I don’t really like “being drunk” without something to do.

Sometimes I can get really motivated and clean the entire house but sometimes my "something to do" is lying on the couch playing iPad games and watching John Oliver.

Even drinking in bars has become less social in recent years. Striking up conversations with strangers has become almost taboo.

I'm all about striking up conversations with strangers!! Pre-pandemic I would take myself out to dinner on Saturday nights and sit at the bar and read stuff on my phone but also banter with the bartender and anyone next to me who was amenable. That's my custom on Thanksgiving and Christmas as well. I talk to homeless people, I talk to neighbors, I talk to cashiers, I talk to every person around me unless they don't want me to.

Recently I was crossing the street and stopped and looked both ways and the guy across the street did the same thing. We paused for a few seconds in the crosswalk and I said something like, "Wow, you are the only other person in Portland who looks both ways before crossing the street," and we shared a laugh.

I think moderation isn't something humans do well, full stop. We like excess. When we find something makes us feel good--be it booze, drugs, food, etc--why wouldn't we want to feel like that more?

The first time I ever got drunk was at the end of my senior year in high school and the only way I can describe it is that I felt "floaty." I've been chasing that feeling for so long that I can barely remember it.

the best way to end the dangerous behaviors is to treat the disease, rather than punishing the person suffering from it.

I dislike labelling it as a disease but not punishing it is clearly the right answer.

I'm currently on a week-long binge and I have not eaten in days. Alcoholism is a monster.

I'm right there with you SPrintF, though I see you've stopped drinking for a few days. I once saw an NP who only prescribed my meds and she suggested that I drink a shot every morning to avoid the DTs. WTF lady?

I feel like a big thing that's unsaid when we talk about alcohol is sugar.

When I get hungry I want food, but I can quench hunger with the sugar in booze.
posted by bendy at 4:49 PM on June 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


Rock on with your bad self SPrintF!
posted by bendy at 4:54 PM on June 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


I recently spectated an online dramatic recital of testimony given by a young Andrew Weil in a Japanese cannabis possession trial where he stated that he gave strong cannabis doses to naive volunteers in a laboratory setting, and they reported none of the giggly stoned intoxication experienced by veterans who knew what to expect.

If I recall correctly, in his original study of marijuana Weil found that no one gets high alone the first time or in company, for that matter, and, furthermore, one has first to eat, smoke or drink the cannabis preparation in the presence of an experienced user in order to achieve lift off thereafter.

In high school, a friend read that there was LSD-6 in Heavenly Blue morning glory seeds and ground up three seed packets and downed them in a strawberry milkshake.

Nausea and hurling soon ensued, followed by an explosion of colored halos around streetlights and swirling shifting images when he stared at the cover of a Mimi & Richard Fariña album and intense appreciation of the music therein.

When he got to college and actually dropped acid, his experiences were different because he was surrounded by people who describing his experiences as he reported them -- sounds like you're really rushing, what a flash and so forth.

That and similar reports from friends about their first times with psychedelic drugs alone and in company makes one wonder how much our altered states are mediated by the people around us, by what they say and the words they use as if we are not what we think but rather what other people think.

Which, seems to present, well, kind of a bummer, all things considered...
posted by y2karl at 7:35 AM on June 11, 2021 [4 favorites]


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