The history and ecology of why we get drunk

'Walking the Chalk' by Charles Deas. (Image: via Wikimedia Commons)

In Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, which won the Oscar for best international feature film this year, some schoolteachers test a theory that consistently high blood alcohol levels bring about greater relaxation and contentment. For them, this leads to varying outcomes; for human beings as a whole, however, alcohol has always played an outsize role.

This is what Edward Slingerland sets out to explore in Drunk, his pithily-titled new book. As the subtitle has it, it examines how we sipped, danced, and stumbled our way to civilisation.

It’s a wide-ranging work that draws on archaeology, anthropology, history, neuroscience, literature, and genetics to provide explanations for our determination to get sloshed. Though it can be repetitive and digressive, it’s also illuminating and effervescent.

Slingerland points to the use of alcoholic beverages almost from the start of recorded time. There are several instances: drinking beer is one way in which Enkidu from the Epic of Gilgamesh becomes “civilised”; nomads of Central Asia have made alcohol from fermented mare’s milk since antiquity; and, of course, there’s soma, the ritual drink of the Vedic Indo-Aryans. Given all this, archaeologist Patrick McGovern has only semi-facetiously suggested that we should be referred to as homo imbibens.

There are two common theories to do the evolutionary role of alcohol, which Slingerland refers to as the hijack and hangover hypotheses. Hijack theories see alcohol and other intoxicants as triggering reward systems in our brains, which evolved to encourage adaptive behaviour. Hangover theories look at certain psychological features as those that once served an adaptive purpose but have since outlived their usefulness.

Both theories have been disputed by scientists for several reasons. Among them are the social and physical downsides of intoxicants, as well as insights gained by studying primates with genetic similarities. Why then, continues Slingerland, are humans are the only species that deliberately, systematically, and regularly gets high?

He searches for answers in the “ecological niche” that humans occupy. Success in this sphere requires individual and collective creativity, continuing cooperation and bonding, a tolerance for strangers and crowds, and a degree of openness and trust. Because it loosens the grip of the pre-frontal cortex on cognitive control, intoxication becomes a way to promote these very traits.

This, it would seem, is enough to offset its deleterious effects. In terms of creativity, the fondness for and abuse of alcohol among writers, poets, musicians, and artists is well-known. (In the long term, however, as Scott Fitzgerald pointed out: “First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.”)

On the same lines, one of the primary functions of alcohol and other intoxicants for many is to temporarily do away with what social psychologist Mark Leary called the “curse of the self,” the goal-oriented, anxiety-prone inner commentator “who is always getting in the way of our ability to simply be and enjoy the world”. As Bernard Shaw put it: “Alcohol is the anaesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.”

Creativity and selfhood apart, Slingerland also notes that the link between drink and fellowship remains powerful in cultures across the world. He mentions anthropologist Dwight Heath’s observation that it has always played a bonding function in situations where otherwise isolated individuals are required to get along: sailors in ports, loggers emerging from the woods, cowboys gathering at a saloon.

There are also instances of epic binges serving as potent symbols of loyalty in medieval Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic tribes. An echo of this is to be found in the marathon drinking sessions among Chinese businessmen today to promote guanxi, or trustworthiness.

Slingerland concludes that as social apes, we would find it challenging to do without alcohol, both individually and communally. However, the book isn’t a rallying cry to rush to the drinks cabinet and start imbibing.

He isn’t blind to alcohol’s ravages: the scourge of addiction, the serious effects of over-consumption on health, the tragic consequences of drunk driving, and the violence and misogyny it can engender. There’s also a case to be made that alcohol’s effects amplify social divisions, from age-old patriarchy to the attitudes of today’s tech-bro club.

Faulkner may have said that “civilisation begins with distillation” but for Slingerland, it’s this process that has made us go off the rails. Unlike wine and beer produced by fermentation for countless centuries, distillation creates spirits that are far more potent, making us prone to grimmer side-effects.

Add to this the sense of isolation that modern society can breed, and the consequences can be serious. “In a world awash with powerful distilled spirits, and where drinking increasingly takes place in the privacy of one’s own home, alcohol may indeed be more dangerous than helpful.”

Mindful drinking, and nurturing a culture akin to that of southern Europe where it is a moderate, widely-accepted, and social activity, are some of the ideal goals. Of course, there have always been other ways to get high but, as Slingerland points out, unless these are widely available, safe, legal and convenient, it’s alcohol that will remain the drug of choice.

Intoxication, then, is Janus-faced. Yet, the reasons that it has persisted over time can’t simply be wished away. “Let us, therefore,” as Slingerland writes, “embrace Dionysus with appropriate caution, but also with the reverence that he is due”. Cheers.