“We are inveterate pleasure seekers, promiscuously grabbing little jolts of ecstasy whenever and wherever we can,” believes Edward Slingerland, a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Drawing on evidence from history, anthropology, literature, genetics, cognitive neuroscience, psycho-pharmacology and social psychology, Slingerland argues that our desire to get drunk “played a crucial role in sparking the rise of the first large-scale societies. We would not have civilisation without intoxication.”
In Drunk, a punchy, witty, very easy-reading book, he ponders just why humans crave a drink. By “enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, and pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to co-operate with strangers”, intoxication has helped to solve several basic human challenges, he writes.
About four in every five New Zealand adults drink alcoholic beverages.
Sheer pleasure is one of the key contributions of intoxicants to our lives, says Slingerland. Alcohol is used to flee “the harshness of everyday life”, creating a short-term psychological shift that makes us happier and more sociable. “We delay gratification, accept complex suboptimal compromises, work long days at boring jobs, and endure tedious meetings. We are particularly in need of having our unconscious ‘opened like a flower’ – at least on occasion.”
Writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley believed “the urge to escape from selfhood and the environment is in almost everyone all the time”. Slingerland argues this urge finds its outlet “in spiritual practices, like prayer, meditation, or yoga, and also in our drive to drink and get high”.
He recognises the dangers of excessive consumption, “which quickly leads to slurred speech, violent arguments, maudlin expressions of love, inappropriate touching, or even karaoke”. Slingerland is especially worried about two things: distilled liquors such as gin and vodka, because they can get you “very drunk, very fast”, and a rise in solitary drinking at home, “outside social control or observation”.
He points to a shift in common attitudes to alcohol in the mid-19th century. Previously viewed as a component of the good life, it came to be seen “exclusively through a medicalised lens of addiction and public health impacts”. Since then, defenders of alcohol use have often focused on its supposed health benefits, but this approach “suffered a massive body blow” from a 2018 study, published in the Lancet, that “concluded definitively that the only safe level of alcohol consumption was zero”.
In response to the research, some people stressed alcohol’s important individual and social functions; others argued many things are not good for you, but you do them anyway, because they are fun. Sir David Spiegelhalter, a Cambridge University risk specialist, noted that data for moderate drinkers showed a very low level of harm. “Given the pleasure presumably associated with moderate drinking, claiming there is no ‘safe’ level does not seem an argument for abstention … Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but nobody would recommend abstention.”
Intoxication is its own justification, believes Slingerland. “Whatever other physiological processes are going on while we drink, our brains are experiencing intoxication symptoms, and the pleasure, satisfaction and relief that that affords were the reasons we scrabbled through the drawer for the corkscrew in the first place.”
To illustrate alcohol’s social benefits, Slingerland notes the bonding effect of UK pub culture. A study led by anthropologist Robin Dunbar found people who frequently visit their neighbourhood pub “had more close friends, felt happier … were more embedded in their local communities and more trusting of those around them”. Slingerland concludes: “All things considered – liver damage, calories and all – a spot of social drinking is good for you.”
DRUNK: How we Sipped, Danced and Stumbled Our Way to Civilisation, by Edward Slingerland (Little, Brown Spark, $45)
Wine of the week
Seifried Nelson Chardonnay 2020 ✭✭✭✭
Offering fine value, this stylish, barrel-aged wine is developing well, with mouthfilling body and fresh, ripe, peachy flavours showing very good complexity and depth. (13.5% alc/vol) $20.
