The Arbitrary Acceptance of Alcohol
The drug that kills the most is the one we question the very least
I discovered drugs a little too early. But in many regards, it’s probably for the best that I did. Not because they’ve played a strictly positive role in my life — that’s certainly not true. But because if I hadn’t discovered marijuana and mushrooms, it might have been alcohol or opioids that I fell for instead. And while psilocybin and weed aren’t drugs I’d advocate for just anyone using, they’re objectively more benign than more accepted ones. Simply stated, fewer people would die if alcohol weren’t such a blithely welcomed ill of the world.
The double standards we have around psychoactive substances are a cause for concern. What’s accepted and legal is often arbitrary.
I’ve always had an addictive relationship with dopamine. Whether cellphones, video games, or sugar, I fell head over heels in love with the little rushes that each offered. I have little doubt that if I’d discovered alcohol at the wrong time, I’d be one of the ones frequenting bars and devolving into incoherence on a near-nightly basis.
One of the strangest things about alcohol is the way its deleterious side hides itself. The side effects that come with an alcohol high are objectively serious. The broad societal acceptance of slurred words, crippling hangovers, and drunken stumbles into busy streets conceals the seriousness of the drug. It’s such a recognizable sight that people become as blind to it as the very birds in the sky. The effects of alcohol are a fixture for most Americans, and we’re hardly the country that suffers from the alcoholism disease the worst.
The culture of denial around the drug is so powerful that there are swaths of people proud to extol its virtues. Many will even kid themselves and claim with a straight face that “Alcohol isn’t even a drug!”
Sometimes it seems like a majority of drinkers feel this way. They’ll consume their isopropyl-scented poison with a bald-faced indifference to the fact that these chemical concoctions are drugs in every sense of the word. They’ll go to the bathroom as their bodies will forcibly eject the liquid invader from their system, and once they’re finished vomiting, they’ll sometimes even return to the party.
The feat is so common that there’s a name for it. “Puke and rally, baby!” they’ll say with a booming bravado as they crack open a new beer and wash down the regurgitated chunks of food that remain in their mouths. It’s an act I’ve been familiar with since middle school. I doubt Americans are the first to name this disconcerting sort of relience. As an adult it’s exhausting to still see people playing this game. Even as a budding traveler, this binge-drinking culture can be hard to escape.
To even refer to alcohol as a drug is enough to elicit scoffs in certain circles. But nearly every time someone mentions that they like to drink, I feel the urge to ask whether that’s the only drug they use. Sometimes I’ll let the question slip. Not only because I’m curious how they’d answer it, but because it feels essential to remind people that alcohol is a drug.
In many regards, it’s almost arbitrary that alcohol was the drug to find its way into the lives of the masses. In another world, things would have turned out another way.
But in some regards, it makes total sense that the drug we would favor would be the one that doesn’t open minds — but cripples the capacity for critical thought. We’re a mass that likes our opiates. And while alcohol isn’t an opioid, the stupefaction it offers its users is often one and the same.
Life is hard; numbing feels good. I shouldn’t be shocked that people love alcohol the way they do. I can only be the “disappointed parent” who wants better for this world. It’s dangerous for people to be so freely accepting of this poison, and one need only look at the sheer number of alcohol-related deaths to see it for themselves. In the United States alone it’s 140,000 people every year.
But alcohol isn’t 100% devoid of value. Opioids, too, serve a select purpose. In the right doses and in suitable circumstances, a beer or two has something to offer. I enjoy the frivolity that overtakes me when I’m a little tipsy.
At best, alcohol is a drug that lowers inhibitions, lubricates a crowd, and enhances certain sensations. But there’s hardly a joy that can be found in these ethanol-derived beverages that can’t be found more efficiently and less detrimentally elsewhere. Even in the realm of illicit drugs, there are infinitely more “taboo” substances that are a hundred times less likely to kill.
Each time I go to a bar, I’m confronted by the aching realization that everyone around me is a diluted and less thoughtful version of their ordinary selves. I’ll watch people I like in more sober circumstances devolve into something unfamiliar. With each passing drink, sophisticated conversation becomes a more and more distant dream.
By the time fifth beers are downed, a thoughtful talk with a friend is a faraway concept floating cruelly out of reach. To be the odd, sober one out at these parties can be an utterly grating ordeal. Even if I were stoned enough to leave an elephant struggling to stand, I could scarcely feign patience with the stumbling, slurring, incongnoscente found in any bar in America.
Drunk people are often oblivious to even their own oblivion.
Recently, I spent a few days traveling through Central America with a group of new friends. And on that first night I met them, they acknowledged that — though they sometimes drink — they don’t ever like to reach a place of incompetence. And each night afterward, I watched them drink themselves into exactly that. And each time it happened, I’m fairly certain they weren’t even aware of what had happened — of how impossibly inept they became.
None of my new friends seemed to have a clue that they’d thoroughly broken what felt almost like a sober-hearted guarantee. I believed them when they told me they had their limits.
Maybe moderation doesn’t come easily to all travelers, but needless to say, we parted ways after arriving in Bacalar. If it had been heroin they consumed in such stupefying quantities, few would excuse it. But when someone takes the alcohol train to arrive at that same, swaying delirium, it’s plainly pardoned.
My “rationally-consuming” companions had cavalier attitudes toward the cases worth of beers they drank daily. Each new margarita would soften doubts toward their successors. With five margaritas each under their belts, whatever restraint they’d had an hour prior fled across the Guatemalan border and was slovenly dancing in a crowd of maraca-shaking strangers.
My thoughtful friends from a few nights prior would dissipate like clockwork as the first drinks wound their way toward sixth and sevenths. Like werewolves under the spell of a full moon, they’d drink themselves into incapacity each night before the sun had even set. And when they’d awake again, it was to the aftermath of creatures who’d spent their prior nights in drunken rampages they could hardly remember.
With each new drop consumed, they were less able to gauge their changes in behavior. They were less able to converse in meaningful ways. And when their conversations turned toward more serious subjects, they lacked the grace and eloquence to do their thoughts justice. Whatever they spewed in place of coherent thought would be mostly forgotten by the following morning. And then, these “friends” who earnestly believed they valued clarity would begin the cycle anew before the afternoon had even arrived. They’d nurse hangovers from the previous night by simply sowing new ones.
I wish I could say that during my weeks abroad these three were the only in-denial alcoholics I encountered. But it began to grow into a sitcom-esque routine that whoever agreed with my general conceptions of alcohol had a shockingly nonchalant attitude about drinking themselves into a coma later that same night.
The relationship to alcohol that people have is one that transcends borders. Different cultures have slightly varied approaches. Some expose their kids to alcohol at early ages in hopes of staving off unhealthy relationships with the substance later in life. But one aggravating commonality between all the places I’ve gone has been the peoples’ unhealthy relationship with this very same substance.
Like the cigarettes that have lingered a century too long, our relationship with alcohol demands reexamination. But when prohibition doesn’t work, perhaps the best we ever can hope for is moderation.
I'm an alcoholic, although I quit about 10 years ago, and hated to do it. I loved to drink, but now that I don't there's no missing involved. The two best things I have ever done are 1) quitting smoking, and 2) quitting drinking. Brilliant article, Ben, and an important one.
I learnt in high school chemistry that alcohol can be a solution.