by Al Drinkle
Richard handed the book to me and said, “I think you should read this". The first time that this happened I found myself holding Baudelaire's Paris Spleen, and thus in the 15 years hence I've never declined his literary recommendations. This time, the book was Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization, written by a UBC Philosopher named Edward Slingerland. It's a fascinating and engaging read, and its brilliant message couldn't be more timely.
North American society has an odd relationship with alcohol. It's generally scorned due to our deeply-rooted puritanism (here's an example), and yet there are certain situations, like bachelor parties, sporting events or the last day of university, that if taken in isolation would indicate that we're a proud binge-drinking culture. One of these extremes probably perpetuates the other, although this reduces us to the “chicken and egg” scenario. Regardless, consumption per capita is down, and particularly amongst young people which reflects a startling international trend. Twenty-somethings in Europe are also highly “sober curious”, and I'm increasingly told by many in my orbit that they're practising “Dry January”, “Sober October” or some other whimsically-named iteration of binge sobriety. None of this is categorically bad, of course, and additionally there's a notable percentage of people to whom alcohol presents a great danger. Such people should certainly refrain from engaging with alcohol on a permanent basis, and they should have everybody's support in doing so.
From a physiological standpoint, alcohol is being legally and medically stigmatized to a merciless extent. There’s serious discussion of burdening bottle labels with the similarly ghastly medical warnings and photos that attempt to deter people from smoking cigarettes. Wine bottles would be no exception, regardless of how prestigious. And did you know that despite a 39-year high for inflation rates, the Canadian government is set to increase taxes on alcohol by a further 6.3% on April 1st? Considering that costs of production, materials and shipping have increased exponentially over the last 24 months, I wish that this was a tasteless April Fool's Day joke, and I wonder how the industry in general is expected to sustain it all. It's also worth noting that candy bars, ice cream and fast foods remain unburdened by any special taxes.
Furthermore, the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction recently updated their 2011 Low Risk Drinking Guidelines to align themselves with other international medical standards. The CCSA claims that no amount of alcohol is safe for humans, and outlines a foreboding continuum of risk for anybody stupid enough to imbibe despite this advice. I'm confident that the majority of our readership exceeds two drinks per week, beyond which the CCSA claims that alcohol-related consequences begin to come into play. One mistake of such proclamations is the assumption that biomedical consequences stand as ironclad arbiters as to why humans do anything in the first place. What about driving motor vehicles? What amount of driving is considered “safe” for humans before we take on “driving-related risk”?
For my entire career, wine publications were quick to disseminate “scientific evidence” offering glimmers of hope that alcohol, or at least wine, provided some modicum of physical health benefits. You know the routine; alcohol has some sort of cholesterol limiting capacity, or red wine is good for your red blood cell count, or whatever. The CCSA and other medical organizations claim that this is complete bullshit, and they're probably right… but what do you and I care? This was never the reason that we drank! To the kind of person who can effectively integrate alcohol into their life without significant negative consequences, we know that the mental, emotional and social benefits of modest drinking are more than enough to outweigh the bodily risks. Some of us even enjoy the way that certain alcoholic beverages taste! This is where Slingerland and Drunk come in, and our lifestyles are in desperate need of his carefully-researched and articulately-argued defence.
Slingerland begins by questioning why, despite the demonstrable evidence of its toxicity, the use of alcohol has survived cultural vilification as well as evolution. He debunks various traditional answers to this question while providing a complex theory of his own, which makes up most of the book. It involves a multifaceted exploration of human history, including detailed considerations of anthropology, religion, agriculture, neuroscience, and the curious degree to which we homo sapiens are singularly strange primates. Slingerland makes the case for alcohol in regards to how it has benefited humans as cultural, creative and communal primates, and credits it for expediting civilization as we know it. He considers alcohol’s contributions to art, politics, business, friendship, intimacy, and to my great delight, celebrates its obvious but often denigrated role as an agent of pleasure and ecstasy. Very little of this is conjectural, though, the framework of the book being reinforced by exhaustive historical and scientific research.
However, Drunk isn't simply a 300-page veneration of alcohol. Almost a fifth of it addresses the myriad downsides of the drug, Slingerland making no attempt to sugarcoat the various horrors resulting from its misuse. He explains that many of the examples of why alcohol could be indisputably defamed is due to what he calls “the twin banes of modernity", namely distillation and isolation. After detailed exploration of the pitfalls, Slingerland strikes an admirable balance of cautioning against the inauspicious dangers of alcohol use (particularly for individuals to whom, for very complex reasons, it's an indisputable risk), without discrediting the formative role that it's played in our lives for countless thousands of years.
Drunk is eloquently-written, highly-informative, thought-provoking and entertaining. Most importantly, as alcohol, its responsible devotees and the innumerable individuals who make a modest living from it are facing challenges from seemingly all fronts, the book's arrival couldn't be more timely. Slingerland's resounding message is that despite alcohol's biomedically-deleterious effects, it still has a crucial and beneficial role to play in many of our lives. I would highly encourage you to read the book and to buy a copy for your friends. (Recognizing that most people don't read these days—and congratulations to you for being an exception—a concise summary of Slingerland's arguments, presented by the author himself, can be seen and heard here.
Lastly, before you purchase Slingerland's book from Amazon, please consider instead procuring it from a local, independent purveyor. At the time of writing, both Shelf Life and Pages Kensington have copies available, and the Cookbook Company's got them on the way.
