The Paradox of Fermentation

December 14, 2022 10:52 AM

It seems to have been the emergence of globalized trade routes over the next few centuries that precipitated a new demand for fortified wine and other forms of alcohol that could travel across the ocean, packing as much potential drunkenness into the smallest spaces possible ... Hard liquor, in this light, is just one of the many scourges imposed on us with the rise of global capitalism, a centuries-long epidemic, a legal poison, normalized, for the most part, by the efficiency of its cultural laundering — cocktail recipes, jokes, advertisements, the eternal promise of “fun”. from Gone Bad, Come to Life by Justin E.H. Smith [Previously]
posted by chavenet (41 comments total)

I hear parts of what this guy is saying, but there is, perhaps, for at least some people, a middle ground to be found between "I am confident in saying that I will never again in my life consume alcohol" and "I woke up some time later covered in vomit, and somehow naked."
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:00 AM on December 14, 2022 [18 favorites]

I now understand that the proper conduct of the second half of life is to approach something like what the Tibetan Buddhists call tukdam, to do less and less, but only to sit and meditate, and to breathe once every century or so, so that by the time you actually die there will be scarcely any change to register.

I don't feel like this guy trucks in a whole lot of "middle ground" on most subjects tbh
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:11 AM on December 14, 2022 [33 favorites]

when reindeer seek out mushrooms on the tundra with a high psilocybin content

the reindeer eat Amanita muscaria, not Psilocybes (I think)
posted by atoxyl at 11:19 AM on December 14, 2022 [9 favorites]

I subscribe to Smith's newsletter and I often enjoy it, but he really does tend to turn everything that happens to him into evidence of some vast, complex struggle that only he is qualified to understand.
Probably an occupational hazard for professional philosophers but this Smithcentric cosmology can look a bit weird to anyone not called Justin E.H. Smith.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:21 AM on December 14, 2022 [13 favorites]

Also I'm pretty sure Dean Martin wasn't talking about the exhilaration of drunkenness, but rather making a self-deprecating joke about hangovers.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:23 AM on December 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

As with science in general, its motive is fundamentally perverse

Sorry, but fuck off.
posted by Phanx at 11:23 AM on December 14, 2022 [28 favorites]

Well he did manage to convince me (someone who drinks maybe six alcoholic beverages a year and who came into the article sympathetic to the idea that alcohol may not be a net good) that alcohol will not make happy anyone deeply invested in their own lack of happiness.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 11:26 AM on December 14, 2022 [7 favorites]

It's much more fun to read this aloud with the "Old Tymey" voice often used by Conan O'Brien.
posted by djseafood at 11:35 AM on December 14, 2022 [4 favorites]

Unlike the partisans of AA, I am confident in saying that I will never again in my life consume alcohol.

Oh, dude. Been there, done that, a bit less volubly and at length but there you go.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:36 AM on December 14, 2022 [7 favorites]

This post is interestingly timed for me because I'm just finishing up reading Edward Slingerland's Drunk. It treats with some of the same topics, like our evolutionary relationship with intoxicants, but in contrast with Smith's piece:

* it's meticulously researched
* it comes to the topic with the bias of a hedonist
* it's written to provide thoughts and facts relevant to people who, to thatwhichfalls' point, aren't called Justin E.H. Smith

If the topic interests you, but maybe not if you're personally struggling with alcoholism, I suggest Sligerland's book.
posted by gurple at 11:48 AM on December 14, 2022 [15 favorites]

I have loathed this author for many years and here is one very small example of why:

(самогон, they call it in some of the places my conferences took me, literally “self-fire”, the burnt water you make in your bathtub)

Samogon is samo-gon, where gon is a form of gnat' "to make [someone/something] run" but also "to boil"--so "self-boil." It just means "homebrew." It has nothing to do with fire. This attempt to posture as someone who knows about Russian culture (oooOOooooOOOoo he even put it in Cyrillic!!) is so incredibly typical, it's practically a calling card.
posted by derrinyet at 12:07 PM on December 14, 2022 [27 favorites]

I live in ethanol land, but consume none. I have blind family members who got this way via ethanol. I sit down in a restaurant, a group of strangers, work-mates file in and sit quietly at a long table, order drinks, wait, start to imbibe. Gradually they bond to the feel of ethanol coursing through their collective, sensation. Their voices rise, they are coarse, laughing harder and harder, proving that intoxication is fun, strangers no mode, they are a poison family now, having an intimate gathering, at which they all share their love of a substance, couched in many extravagant flavors, elixers which all turn on one molecule, a fuel, you can buy at the gas pump. It's pronounced Fer-neť, it's pronounced Lill-laý, it is aged, smoked, shaken not stirred. "I'll have lemonade," I say, yes and dressing on the side.
posted by Oyéah at 12:30 PM on December 14, 2022 [6 favorites]

I've tried a cold glass of water after mowing the lawn, I've tried lemonade and soda pop, but nothing quite hits like a cold beer. As to the hard stuff, if I'm nakedly honest it feels like I'm convincing myself that whisky has some redeeming qualities but after trying more than a few dozens I'm not sure it's worth the effort.
posted by elkevelvet at 12:43 PM on December 14, 2022 [5 favorites]

I know I'm possibly biased (I am a beer writer after all), but yeesh... It's a fine and lovely thing to not drink. It's a fine and lovely thing to drink (within reason, naturally)

But this guy is so far up his own nose that those who would be allies go "what a self-important yutz!" His diction is insufferably arrogant and the worst of Fraiser Crane's self importance.

I think the pandemic showed a lot of people where the ragged thin line lies between reason and madness, ethanolly speaking. It's why there's such a growing trend in the NA/LA market in the US, finally. I'm good with that and happy to have options!
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:04 PM on December 14, 2022 [7 favorites]

I both 100% share his opinion about alcohol, which I firmly believe is the worst curse upon humanity, and want to drink myself into a stupor after reading his self-important (and unduly parenthetical) prose about it.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 1:25 PM on December 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

Smith does mention that alcoholic beverages could be safer than the local water, but grudgingly: "Beer might be 'unhealthy', but if your choice is between that and the water from a pond covered with lily-pads, then take the beer." (I kind of think the problem in an ancient or medieval city on a river wasn't lily pads.)

But beer was healthy, especially prepared in ancient ways. As Jessica Zinskie says there, "Grains are better suited to making beer rather than bread because malted and subsequently fermented grain releases sugars in a more usable form for the body." Here's another article about re-creating Egyptian beer. Or here's a recent book by anthropologist John Arthur on beer in indigenous societies. As just one example, he points to a (modern) African society where sorghum beer provides 40% of people's protein and calorie intake.

Alcoholism is a terrible thing, and it's good that Smith can live entirely without it. But there's no need to distort history or other civilizations to paint alcohol as a complete evil.
posted by zompist at 1:49 PM on December 14, 2022 [15 favorites]

Even just reading the excerpt above, it has a strong "everything I dislike is the fault of capitalism" energy. Which is kind of a red flag in terms of intellectual credibility for me.

Not that capitalism hasn't spawned many bad things, but there's a type of anti-capitalism that just goes off the deep end into simplistic conspiracy theorizing.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:55 PM on December 14, 2022 [8 favorites]

this guy must be a true delight at a party
posted by Ferreous at 2:06 PM on December 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

this guy must be a true delight at a party

I'm sure he comes off as great because everyone he's talking to is drunk.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:26 PM on December 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

I mean if I were around someone pontificating like this I'd want a few drinks in me post haste
posted by Ferreous at 2:34 PM on December 14, 2022 [10 favorites]

That someone could refer to anyone as puffed-up and then use &c. in the same essay is just lol. lmao.

Also dude is still extremely, incredibly depressed IMO.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 2:35 PM on December 14, 2022 [6 favorites]

the efficiency of its cultural laundering — cocktail recipes, jokes, advertisements, the eternal promise of “fun”.

Hard Liquor and Hand Gun night!
posted by clavdivs at 2:41 PM on December 14, 2022 [5 favorites]

I love kombucha, which contains little alcohol, but still contains some.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:47 PM on December 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

Most of us here can hammer out a pithy remark or share an interesting story on a regular basis without exploding into hark-at-me self-indulgent purple prose. We can handle our keyboards, some people can't.
posted by adept256 at 2:54 PM on December 14, 2022 [7 favorites]

In the summer of 2021 we were in Oostende, and I ordered a marmite full of mussels. When they arrived, I tasted one and sensed that the broth had a white-wine base. I spit it out and refused to eat the rest, even though presumably all of the alcohol had been burned off in cooking.

What a waste of tasty mussels.
posted by coffeecat at 2:56 PM on December 14, 2022 [7 favorites]

I hate the taste of grapes on principal!
posted by adept256 at 2:59 PM on December 14, 2022 [4 favorites]

I have been, some might say, irrationally vigilant these past two years.

Yes, some might say that, given that you claim to have literally spit out food at the faintest whiff of alcohol.

Indeed, science is lately showing that there is likely no healthy amount of alcohol (i.e., none is actually better than moderation, when controlling for things like income, education and pre-existing health conditions), but it's also not so awful that eating food that used some alcohol in the cooking process is going to poison your veins. It's also fairly impossible to avoid ALL alcohol. Even a banana contains trace amounts -- about equivalent to a typical 0.5% "non-alcoholic" beer, in fact! But the amount is effectively zero and your body can handle it with ease.

(So, actually, the "no healthy amount" mention earlier is specifically in reference to alcoholic beverages, not alcohol more generally which can be found by eating a piece of fruit that is ripe enough to have become every-so-slightly fermented in a way that normal people would not notice.)

I once went a year without drinking alcohol (though, probably ate food that was cooked with some). I felt great, and enjoyed exploring the growing world of non-alcoholic craft beer. I have also gone through periods in which I drank far too much, far too often. I tended to feel like crap. On balance, going without was a better experience if the two extremes were the only options. In reality, they are not and I'm happy to mix both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages into the rotation even during this festive period.

Certainly, there is nothing wrong with being a teetotaller, but this article just reads like next level wankery.
posted by asnider at 3:03 PM on December 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

Not only is the prose overly weighty, that first Munch painting is a 22 MB PNG.

I prefer Robert Altman's succinct words: I was a heavy drinker. But the alcohol affected my heart rather than my liver. So I stopped. And I miss it. I really like that kind of life. I smoke grass now.
posted by credulous at 3:06 PM on December 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

at least if he is telling the truth in his poetry — chapeau to him

Did anyone else hear an unwritten "Milady!" after this?
posted by gimonca at 3:14 PM on December 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

"Hi Self Absorbed, I'm Dad!"

I'm approaching 50. I don't drink or go out as much as I used to, but i still know the thrill of a Saturday night filled with possibilities and intrigue. The problem, my dear Smith, isn't the wine. It's you.
posted by 1adam12 at 3:42 PM on December 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

I just want to know how this dude thought his mussels were going to be cooked? With chicken broth? Plain water? White wine is the classic preparation.
posted by jeoc at 4:15 PM on December 14, 2022 [8 favorites]

no healthy amount

means specifically that any level of consumption of alcoholic beverages may be a net mortality risk, when the confounders are properly controlled for, largely because of cancer risk. So it might apply to traces of alcohol in food, but that’s an even more incremental risk than one beer a month or whatever.

But that also seems irrelevant to Smith’s concern which seems to be more… actually I don’t know what it is, beyond overcommitment to the sobriety bit.

Honestly I almost enjoyed this piece - I can deal with a bit of pretentious foolishness and he’s clearly hamming it up on purpose - but he also couldn’t help inserting a bunch of cultural or historical tidbits that, as I and others already observed, aren’t even factually correct, the net effect of which bugged me. Like I can’t even say I’m learning something from this silliness.
posted by atoxyl at 4:23 PM on December 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: the net effect of which bugged me.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:30 PM on December 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

I do feel him on this:

Unlike the partisans of AA, I am confident in saying that I will never again in my life consume alcohol.

I haven’t seen Maia Szalavitz around here in a while but her idea of substance abuse disorders as a thing that many people eventually grow out of is a framing that I identify with and that has worked pretty well for me.
posted by atoxyl at 4:31 PM on December 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

The cultural/historical tidbit about spirits being related to trade networks and capitalism is the orthodox history of them, by the way. The economics of distillation, which need specialised equipment, and fuel and sugars and a grain base, only really make sense in a financialised way, that is if you're producing as a cash earner, or as an export, or as part of a large-scale Atlantic trade in sugars, which, well. But the notion that spirits are about packing the maximum drunkenness into the smallest volume is only partly right; they're a commodity, which depend on social relations

In early colonial NSW (a brutal and bloodsoaked prison farm at the edge of the world) rum became a form of cash, a means of savings, a trade-privilege granted to favourites, a capital store that could be borrowed against, and not least a prison ration and a wage. And it wasn't really about 'fun' because nothing was 'fun', it was a normalised dulling work drug in exactly the same way coffee is for office workers, speed is for truck drivers, and opiates are for the work-injured, in our own era. Instead, rum lost its potency in NSW when it became developed as a capitalist place; when social relations of work and production got more complex than chain gangs. Fermentation has lots of paradoxes.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:04 PM on December 14, 2022 [8 favorites]

the reindeer eat Amanita muscaria, not Psilocybes (I think)

You are correct Atoxyl and what's more, from what I have read, they will head full speed in the direction from where the scent of the yellow snow provided by a local human inhabitant has come and, lo, over said human should they be in the way.

Related

What Ever Became of the Drunken Bee?

I'd heard of drunk bees but not what happened to them when they got home. A rather draconian social policy have they.
posted by y2karl at 5:24 PM on December 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Well....I think I sort of enjoyed reading that. I started out not so much but then I sort of just started taking it all not very seriously and felt like I could detect a vein of self loathing which kind of put the posturing pedantry in a frame of almost self satire.

Addressed as something serious it really is a bit ridiculous and self centered. I think it is a real shame that some people cannot drink without destruction, I think it is lousy that there isn't a good way around this difference by which I mean it has got to be oppressive that drinking is so normalized that having it be a problem is treated like some sort of moral failing at enjoying life. Sort of the reverse of the puritanical panic at inebriation.
posted by Pembquist at 5:56 PM on December 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

I forced myself to rtfa before commenting, but he conflated all kinds of things.
To start - distillation doesn’t require grain, just some form of sugar (as from fruit).
And he buried the lede when he talked about compactness. Spirits take up much less storage space than simple ferments, in addition to packing a much stronger punch. This has local advantages as well as for shipping. In colder climates, it protects the product from freezing and ruining its container.
The development of what we know as the pot-still was indeed developed in the Middle East as a way of distilling floral essences. Some clever Europeans saw the advantage when applied to fruit wines, and brandys were born.
He’s also conflates all fermentation with alcohol, overlooking the advantage that fermentation in general provided humankind before widespread refrigeration (most of our history) - food preservation. So pickles, krauts, miso, and preserved meats and fishes - all these are things have virtually no alcohol.
After reading, I thought this a very high-handed self-congratulatory bit of prose about the author’s rejection of Demon Drink. You do you, dude.
posted by dbmcd at 8:35 PM on December 14, 2022 [5 favorites]

like the entire point of going to oostende is to eat mussels sauteed in wine with a side of fritjes, drink a duvel, and contemplate the north sea. the entire essay is performative sobriety in ways that seem to have not-super-positive implications.
posted by logicpunk at 8:47 PM on December 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

The last time I was in Antwerp the final evening with friends started with buckets of mussels, frites, and fine wine. It finished with one final clear memory of being fascinated by the green fire of the absinthe being prepared for me. The next day was horrible; I regret nothing.
posted by interogative mood at 8:02 AM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'd never heard of this person before but, when someone calls themself Justin E.H. Smith like that, I already feel like they're a pretentious twat. I struggled through the article and never lost that feeling. I'm also not any kind of historian or scientist, but the historic 'facts' quoted didn't ring true even to my uneducated ears.

I enjoy a cold cider of a summer evening and have been known to overindulge (sometimes significantly) on rare occasions. If the enjoyment I get from that trims a few days from my life, well, that seems a fair trade. This guy seems to ache for the longest possible life completely devoid of joy or happiness and I just don't see how that can satisfy anyone - there's a paradox there that you can't live that life and be happy and I'm not sure you can even be content in that state, so what's the point?
posted by dg at 1:21 PM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]