Mixed up: Alcohol and Society

[rousseau]

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(18)30432-2/fulltext

The gist of the article: we currently live in a drinking culture with lax, nonchalant attitudes about binge drinking, which are causing health epidemics across the world. In the same way we treated smoking some decades ago.

I walked through a supermarket recently and saw candles saying “Wine not?”, greeting cards with “On your marks, get set, prosecco!”, and t-shirts emblazoned with “You've got to be gin it to win it.” When I reached the pharmacy, I saw a sign saying that alcohol is the leading cause of ill health, disability, and death among people aged between 15–49 years in the UK.

It strikes me that, when it comes to alcohol, we're living a direct recreation of the push-pull, contradictory attitudes to smoking in 1980s Britain. We knew by then that smoking was collectively killing us, yet candy cigarettes were for sale in the shops, smoking was still regarded as cool and relaxing, and those who quit smoking were sneered at for being boring, smug, and sanctimonious.

As the years roll on, we are faced with more irrefutable proof that alcohol is creating a global health epidemic, and killing millions of us: the latest of which is the report in The Lancet Psychiatry, on the global burden of disease attributable to alcohol and drug use in 195 countries and territories. This report showed that, in 2016, there were 100·4 million estimated cases of alcohol dependence, and that the deaths of 2·8 million people worldwide were attributable to alcohol. It is easy for the whirl of big data to obscure the effect of human loss, so when you splice that huge figure down, it amounts to 320 deaths per hour. Or, in the 60 s it takes you to make a cup of tea, another five people have died from alcohol. Furthermore, 99·2 million disability-adjusted life years (95% uncertainty interval 88·3–111·2)—which can be thought of as lost years of healthy life—could be attributed to alcohol use.

These data are shocking; but another report—from the University of Adelaide, Australia—showed that, when it comes to alcohol, drinkers aged 30–65 years are generally still not concerned about the health risk. “Health was not identified as a significant consideration”, the report concluded.

Why? I think this is because of that very contradiction that I saw in the supermarket. From dozens of everyday messages about alcohol, I would estimate that nine-tenths are positive. Socially, drinking is the accepted default, whereas non-drinking (despite having surged in popularity) is still treated with suspicion. The culture around alcohol is a marketeer's dream. The Lancet Psychiatry report included a line that I think is absolutely crucial: “regulation of availability and marketing can substantially reduce alcohol-related harm.”

That, right there. Availability, I think, will only reduce with a drop in demand, so let us take on marketing. It is incredible—disturbing, even—that there are still no health warnings on alcohol, despite projections that liver disease is set to overtake heart disease as the leading cause of death in the UK by 2020. Really think about that. All we have is the lame, blame-dodging “drink responsibly”, which places the problem directly at the feet of the drinker. “It's not our fault you misused our luxury product!”, shrugs the alcohol industry.

In the UK, alcohol is a national treasure. While advocates against the status quo should continue to unroll startling health data to the public, we have another task that is equally important: dismantling the glorification of alcohol. Regulating the messages on billboards and products and, more perniciously, on card racks and in gift shops. The messages on t-shirts, candles, coasters, and fridge magnets; everywhere you look. The endorsement and enabling of binge drinking sells, because so many of us do it.
As the report points out, we know that regulation of the messages in alcohol marketing works, so why aren't we doing it? Why can I still buy greeting cards with a Venn diagram stating, with ill-judged humour, that “moments of absolute genius” occur between one and two bottles of wine, when drinking between one and two bottles of wine per night is, quite literally, potentially lethal?

Every time we buy each other one of these cards or alcohol-endorsing trinkets, we are effectively acting as the unpaid marketing wing of the alcohol industry. Every time we push somebody into a drink they don't want, or try to upturn their decision to quit, we are perpetuating this twisted social more.
We need to call time on encouraging binge drinking, we need mandatory health labelling on alcohol, and we need to start seeing alcohol for what it truly is: a gamble with one's health.

Now I'm not a person who wants to ban drinking in any shape or form, or who would advocate for prohibition. But the further I get out of drinking culture the stranger it looks to me. Being drunk is such a normalized part of our world that I'm convinced alcoholism is far more prevalent than people realize. Alcoholism doesn't have to look like getting out of bed and having a shot of vodka, sometime's it's just having two beers every evening.

And advertising for booze, the sale of booze, everything, is pervasive. I have no problem with people drinking and having a good time, but I sometimes wonder if the choices that a lot of drinkers are making are informed. Do people realize that they may be alcoholics? Do they realize the health impacts of what they're doing? etc

In that way drinking is analogous to smoking these days.

 

[James Brown]

I'm not so sure. Years ago I read someone's observation that decades ago it was common for comedians to pretend to be drunk for laffs, but today's comedians don't do that anymore. That was a sign that attitudes toward drunkenness are shifting from polite embarrassment to distaste.

But I totally agree that alcohol advertising is pervasive. How a recovering alcoholic deals with it is beyond me.

 

[Horatio Parker]

I'm not so sure. Years ago I read someone's observation that decades ago it was common for comedians to pretend to be drunk for laffs, but today's comedians don't do that anymore. That was a sign that attitudes toward drunkenness are shifting from polite embarrassment to distaste.

But I totally agree that alcohol advertising is pervasive. How a recovering alcoholic deals with it is beyond me.

Charlie Chaplin made his early reputation playing a drunk.

 

[Tharmas]

But I totally agree that alcohol advertising is pervasive. How a recovering alcoholic deals with it is beyond me.

As a recovered alcoholic, I can testify that in early recovery alcohol ads seemed absolutely pervasive and insidious. I wasn't tempted to drink by them, but was sort of amazed at how I could see they were targeting alcoholics. As this review points out, most of the alcohol sales go to 10% of the drinkers, i.e. the alcoholics. As I sobered up and learned a lot about my own drinking habits and the psychology behind them, I could see that the ads were deliberately trying to push buttons in me - all the wrong ones.

 

[rousseau]

But I totally agree that alcohol advertising is pervasive. How a recovering alcoholic deals with it is beyond me.

As a recovered alcoholic, I can testify that in early recovery alcohol ads seemed absolutely pervasive and insidious. I wasn't tempted to drink by them, but was sort of amazed at how I could see they were targeting alcoholics. As this review points out, most of the alcohol sales go to 10% of the drinkers, i.e. the alcoholics. As I sobered up and learned a lot about my own drinking habits and the psychology behind them, I could see that the ads were deliberately trying to push buttons in me - all the wrong ones.

As I alluded to in my post, I wonder how far you could extend that label and how our perception of what it means to be an alcoholic affects how much we drink.

I think most people envision an alcoholic as someone who is fall down drunk almost every day, and yet my experience with alcohol suggests that the 'dependency' can be slightly more veiled. About 5-6 years ago I certainly wasn't drinking 10 drinks a day, maybe more like 10/week, but I was definitely addicted to alcohol. Was it seriously impacting my life? Not really, but a lot of my money was funnelling toward alcohol companies, and one way or another I'd have been more productive and probably happier and healthier if I wasn't drinking at all.

So I think a more apt definition of alcoholic would be a person who doesn't have control over their drinking. Can you go a weekend without a drink? A week? If not you're addicted, even if that addiction is benign. And so the proportion of people buying alcohol because they're addicted is likely much higher than we realize.

And this type of addiction is pernicious. It goes unnoticed as we're drinking three pints at a hockey game, a six pack at a friends house, and so on. Because alcoholism has been framed as the 'fall-down drunk, drinking a bottle of whisky per night' type, the people with more subtle addictions don't even notice their habit.

 

[barbos]

I'm not so sure. Years ago I read someone's observation that decades ago it was common for comedians to pretend to be drunk for laffs, but today's comedians don't do that anymore.

Just yesterday I was watching YouTube and stumbled upon this:

 

[rousseau]

I'm not so sure. Years ago I read someone's observation that decades ago it was common for comedians to pretend to be drunk for laffs, but today's comedians don't do that anymore. That was a sign that attitudes toward drunkenness are shifting from polite embarrassment to distaste.

But I totally agree that alcohol advertising is pervasive. How a recovering alcoholic deals with it is beyond me.

Yea, I'd agree attitudes are shifting, although I do think they're still nonchalant. If not lax toward the 'abrasive' drunk, definitely lax toward the 'just had three beers at the hockey game' drunk. I can show up at a London Knights OHL game and the alcohol vendors are everywhere, for many people in the crowd it just goes without saying that you're going to have a couple drinks.

From an everyday perspective, doesn't seem like a big deal, but if you were an alien looking at it you have thousands of people in a building over-drinking and not even noticing they're doing so.

I don't know if there's much of a take home, though. I think most people have proven that they want to drink, fair enough. But I do think as a fly on the wall drinking culture can look a little strange.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

So I think a more apt definition of alcoholic would be a person who doesn't have control over their drinking. Can you go a weekend without a drink? A week? If not you're addicted, even if that addiction is benign. And so the proportion of people buying alcohol because they're addicted is likely much higher than we realize.

And this type of addiction is pernicious. It goes unnoticed as we're drinking three pints at a hockey game, a six pack at a friends house, and so on. Because alcoholism has been framed as the 'fall-down drunk, drinking a bottle of whisky per night' type, the people with more subtle addictions don't even notice their habit.

Where does the two-drinks-a-day advice come from? We hear it everywhere, like that's the first commandment of drinking, but where did it originate? Is there science behind it? I know quite a few people, as we all probably do, who are functional alcoholics. Personally I look forward to weekends and alcohol, even though I know it's not good.

There is a recent mega study demonstrating that any level of drinking is bad. I'm certain that any level of eating cookies or cake or pie is bad also. As stated in the article, any level of driving a car is also bad.

Maybe the clinical guidance should be two-drinks-a-month, not two per day. At least with alcohol there aren't any second hand effects like smoking.

 

[bilby]

The evidence suggests that 4 - 6 drinks (4 - 6 x 10g EtOH) per day is as safe as zero, and that around 1 drink/day is optimal for health.

https://health.spectator.co.uk/the-great-alcohol-cover-up-how-public-health-bodies-hid-the-truth-about-drinking/

That's 35 'standard drinks' per week, or around 44 UK 'units' per week - almost three times the current UK government recommendation, which seems more designed to generate an official 'problem' that qualifies for a taxpayer funded 'solution' than to reflect actual impacts on mortality due to alcohol consumption.

 

[bilby]

So I think a more apt definition of alcoholic would be a person who doesn't have control over their drinking. Can you go a weekend without a drink? A week? If not you're addicted, even if that addiction is benign. And so the proportion of people buying alcohol because they're addicted is likely much higher than we realize.

And this type of addiction is pernicious. It goes unnoticed as we're drinking three pints at a hockey game, a six pack at a friends house, and so on. Because alcoholism has been framed as the 'fall-down drunk, drinking a bottle of whisky per night' type, the people with more subtle addictions don't even notice their habit.

Where does the two-drinks-a-day advice come from? We hear it everywhere, like that's the first commandment of drinking, but where did it originate? Is there science behind it? I know quite a few people, as we all probably do, who are functional alcoholics. Personally I look forward to weekends and alcohol, even though I know it's not good.

There is a recent mega study demonstrating that any level of drinking is bad. I'm certain that any level of eating cookies or cake or pie is bad also. As stated in the article, any level of driving a car is also bad.

Maybe the clinical guidance should be two-drinks-a-month, not two per day. At least with alcohol there aren't any second hand effects like smoking.

There are plenty of second hand medical effects of drunkenness. Just ask somebody who was hit by a drunk driver.

 

[J842P]

So I think a more apt definition of alcoholic would be a person who doesn't have control over their drinking. Can you go a weekend without a drink? A week? If not you're addicted, even if that addiction is benign. And so the proportion of people buying alcohol because they're addicted is likely much higher than we realize.

And this type of addiction is pernicious. It goes unnoticed as we're drinking three pints at a hockey game, a six pack at a friends house, and so on. Because alcoholism has been framed as the 'fall-down drunk, drinking a bottle of whisky per night' type, the people with more subtle addictions don't even notice their habit.

Where does the two-drinks-a-day advice come from? We hear it everywhere, like that's the first commandment of drinking, but where did it originate? Is there science behind it? I know quite a few people, as we all probably do, who are functional alcoholics. Personally I look forward to weekends and alcohol, even though I know it's not good.

There is a recent mega study demonstrating that any level of drinking is bad. I'm certain that any level of eating cookies or cake or pie is bad also. As stated in the article, any level of driving a car is also bad.

Maybe the clinical guidance should be two-drinks-a-month, not two per day. At least with alcohol there aren't any second hand effects like smoking.

There are plenty of second hand medical effects of drunkenness. Just ask somebody who was hit by a drunk driver.

Indeed, in terms of societal effects, alcohol is the elephant in the room.

 

[Politesse]

Or even longer term things. I used to be a regular volunteer for an afterschool literacy program, grades 3-6. We didn't take special-ed students (there were other local programs for that) and the main client school was in a seemingly affluent neighborhood, so our students were all more or less an average sample or slightly above it in terms of potential academic attainment but had fallen far behind on reading and writing standards for whatever reason. I can't tell you how many times "whatever reason" turned out to be running the household in lieu of a drug-addled parent (and alcohol was always one of the drugs), because we took no objective metrics on that. But, I can tell you from the book discussions we had with the students, it was clearly a majority of them, at least in every small group I ever led.

I'm not sure what I think our nation's alcohol policy ought to be, because I think a outright ban would obviously be the best solution and is just as obviously a political impossibility. Throwing shit-tons of money at recovery and prevention problems is necessary, but just as obviously not actually working.

 

[ronburgundy]

I'm not saying that alcohol use isn't a problem. My own mother was a violent drunk from my birth until I was 30. But like other societal problems, it is made worse not better by efforts to overstate it and inflate its prevalence using loose definitions to include everyday behaviors that are qualitatively quite distinct, and ignoring the various complex ways that the variables are related beyond the claimed problem being the cause.

Alcoholism doesn't have to look like getting out of bed and having a shot of vodka, sometime's it's just having two beers every evening.
.

But that definition of alcoholism makes the term largely meaningless, which is also a problem with the article and most claims related to the health issues around alcohol. Claim of the prevalence of alcohol dependence are nearly always inflated by use of such loose and inclusive definition of "dependence". And claims of the causal role of alcohol in negative outcomes are always inflated by the use of correlation data to draw causal inferences, a problem which cannot be overcome no matter how many complex stats are used because there are never measures of all the needed confounding covariates and the measures of the ones that are used are always just indirect error-filled proxies for the actual causal influences. For example, never do they have measures of all the various mental health issues that contribute both to negative outcomes and have a side-effect of alcohol use. And measures like SES or income are used as proxies for all the countless factors related to living in stressful, unhealthy environments, but such proxies only capture a portion of the variance in the actual day-to-day events. In fact, getting back to my mother (paging Dr. Freud), ubeknownst to any of us back in the 70's, she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and her alcoholism was more of a byproduct and not the major cause of most of the harm and costs she incurred to herself, us, and society.

Yes, alcohol use is sometimes a causal of negative outcomes, but sometimes it is an effect of those outcomes, and sometimes it is an incidental byproduct of other things that cause the negative outcomes. IOW, the association results from every possible type of underlying relation and throwing in a few proxy measures for some of the other factors only slightly reduces the severe over-estimation of any X-->Y causal association. Plus, most such studies, including the LANCET study mentioned, start with an unscientific bias that if alcohol is in any way associated to a bad outcome, like an automobile accident, that the outcome is "attributable" to alcohol. They often follow rules of legal culpability where if any driver in an accident has any amount of alcohol in their system, the accident is coded as alcohol-related, even if any objective analysis would put the other driver or other factors at fault. Even when efforts are made to adjust for the probability difference in accidents involving alcohol use vs. none, the needed controls for confounding factors are never fully available, which range from the easier ones like time of day to the nearly never measured or available like distractors in the car like unruly kids to the quality of the the vehicles tires and brake systems, to the mental health of the drivers, all of which are likely to have non-causal statistical associations with alcohol use. And even when its use causes a person some negative outcomes, that is not sufficient to qualify it as a "disorder" is a meaningful sense, any more than it is a "disorder" to choose to do any of the infinite things that increase the probability of some negative outcomes, from living in a city and it's many health risk to eating red meat to owning a cat despite having mild allergies.

There remains a kind of puritanical attitude about drug use that leads us to be too quick to label it in the most problematic terms that we don't for other acts done for pleasure or personal satisfaction that also have some possible negative effects. We need more intellectual rigor and use of scientifically principled and empirically grounded definitions of such terms as "disorder", "dependence", etc..

 

[steve_bank]

Alcohol appeared early in human civilization.

In the 19th century in America alcohol was consumed daily as a pain killer in hard farm work. In the late 19th century alcoholism align with opium adduction became epidemic. Opium was a trade commodity. It led to prohibition and govt regulation of drugs. We are awash in movies, TV shows, and TV ads that equate alcohol with youth and vitality.

It is essentially insidious propaganda like repetitive programming sating with the young. James Dean appearing in a movie with a cigarette pack rolled up in a T-shirt sleeve was mimicked by young men.

Modern video advertising is essentially brainwashing. Reputation of image and message getting embedded in the brain. The movie Animal House undoubtedly popularized binge drinking as fun.

 

[ronburgundy]

Alcohol appeared early in human civilization.

In the 19th century in America alcohol was consumed daily as a pain killer in hard farm work. In the late 19th century alcoholism align with opium adduction became epidemic. Opium was a trade commodity. It led to prohibition and govt regulation of drugs. We are awash in movies, TV shows, and TV ads that equate alcohol with youth and vitality.

It is essentially insidious propaganda like repetitive programming sating with the young. James Dean appearing in a movie with a cigarette pack rolled up in a T-shirt sleeve was mimicked by young men.

Modern video advertising is essentially brainwashing. Reputation of image and message getting embedded in the brain. The movie Animal House undoubtedly popularized binge drinking as fun.

Pop media and advertising have little to do with alcohol consumption. IF they did, the US would lead the world in consumption since we lead the world in amount of media and advertising consumption. Yet in per capita consumption, the US is actually behind most of the developed world, including the UK, most of Western Europe, Russia, and Australia.

Humans in every corner of the globe have figured out how to turn everything they can into consumable alcohol and have been doing it for longer than they have been making leavened bread. Most humans who have the freedom, means and access to drink alcohol do so on a semi regular basis. This is because intoxication has innate appeal to most humans.

Binge drinking was popularized as fun by the fact that it is fun, as are many things that are also harmful. Animal House was a reflection of already existing reality. Keg party ragers had been going on among high school and college students well before 1978.
If anything binge drinking among adolescents and young adults in the US is increased by restrictive attitudes about alcohol consumption and prohibitions against them consuming it. They are never allowed to have any, so when they get the opportunity they go whole hog.

 

[steve_bank]

That is utterly ignorant.

If I say King Of Beers or cola what comes to mind? You are programed with unconscious connections. That is what addertising does. Before WWII and the Nazis propaganda was a common term in advertising.

 

[ronburgundy]

That is utterly ignorant.

If I say King Of Beers or cola what comes to mind? You are programed with unconscious connections. That is what advertising does. Before WWII and the Nazis propaganda was a common term in advertising.

Yes, I have that word association, and yet haven't drank Budweiser in 35 years, despite that association being far stronger now than when I did drink it at age 16, and despite that association being as strong in my mind as it is in people who drink it everyday, and it is also strong in the minds of people who never drink beer or drink alcohol at all.

The very fact you could expect that I have that association and yet have no idea how much I drink of Budweiser or in general is because there is very little relationship between such word associations created by that advertising and what alcohol people drink, and even less on how much they drink or if they drink at all. The influence of such ads is largely limited to getting people who are already going to drink alcohol and drink something very close to that specific type of alcohol at that price point to be slightly more likely to choose a specific brand rather than randomly choose between Bud and Miller. Even that brand loyalty effect is very weak, but the sheer amount of beer consumed due to its innate appeal means that the weak effect can mean millions in extra profit for a specific brand.
Since 99% of the people who see the ad will be unaffected, it is only profitable to advertise if that 1% amount to alot of people, which is why 99% of TV ads are by already large companies whose product is readily available to everyone who might see the ad. Only then, does an impact on 1% of viewers result in a net profit of advertising.

Again, if your theory that ads and media were a major cause for the prevalence of drinking or even if there was any sizable causal impact of such ads on drinking, then the countries, such as the US, where people are exposed more of such advertising b/c we watch more TV would drink more per capita. It doesn't matter that these countries differ in other ways. A meaningful impact of advertising would still produce a modest correlation with the US near the top of alcohol consumption. Yet this is not only not the case, but it is the opposite of what is true, with the US watching more alcohol ads yet drinking less per capita than almost all countries in Europe plus Russia, Australia, and Canada.

The same is true when you look at these variables at level of states within the US. The 10 states with highest per-capita consumption are New Hampshire, North and South Dakota, Wisconsin, Vermont, Montana, Colorado, Delaware, Alaska, and Idaho (not counting Nevada b/c Vegas makes it highly atypical) . Yet, 4 of those 10 states are among the lowest in TV viewing, while another 4 are also below average. In contrast, with the exception of the unusual case of Mormon controlled Utah, the 5 states with the lowest levels of TV ad exposure at are all above the national average and mostly near the very top in per capita alcohol consumption (e.g., AK, KS, OK, GA, KY, and WV). IOW, if anything there is a negative correlation at the state and national levels between amount of exposure to TV alcohol ads and amount of alcohol consumption, which doesn't bode well for your theory that ads are a primary cause of alcohol use.

Notice what does relate to which states drink the most? How cold and rural they are. People drink mostly because it is naturally fun and feels good to do so and they don't need Budweiser to tell them this. That is why the less other forms of entertainment and distraction there are due to being in rural areas where its often too cold to be outdoors, the more people use drink as a form of entertainment.

 

[rousseau]

I'm not saying that alcohol use isn't a problem. My own mother was a violent drunk from my birth until I was 30. But like other societal problems, it is made worse not better by efforts to overstate it and inflate its prevalence using loose definitions to include everyday behaviors that are qualitatively quite distinct, and ignoring the various complex ways that the variables are related beyond the claimed problem being the cause.

Alcoholism doesn't have to look like getting out of bed and having a shot of vodka, sometime's it's just having two beers every evening.
.

But that definition of alcoholism makes the term largely meaningless, which is also a problem with the article and most claims related to the health issues around alcohol. Claim of the prevalence of alcohol dependence are nearly always inflated by use of such loose and inclusive definition of "dependence". And claims of the causal role of alcohol in negative outcomes are always inflated by the use of correlation data to draw causal inferences, a problem which cannot be overcome no matter how many complex stats are used because there are never measures of all the needed confounding covariates and the measures of the ones that are used are always just indirect error-filled proxies for the actual causal influences. For example, never do they have measures of all the various mental health issues that contribute both to negative outcomes and have a side-effect of alcohol use. And measures like SES or income are used as proxies for all the countless factors related to living in stressful, unhealthy environments, but such proxies only capture a portion of the variance in the actual day-to-day events. In fact, getting back to my mother (paging Dr. Freud), ubeknownst to any of us back in the 70's, she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and her alcoholism was more of a byproduct and not the major cause of most of the harm and costs she incurred to herself, us, and society.

Yes, alcohol use is sometimes a causal of negative outcomes, but sometimes it is an effect of those outcomes, and sometimes it is an incidental byproduct of other things that cause the negative outcomes. IOW, the association results from every possible type of underlying relation and throwing in a few proxy measures for some of the other factors only slightly reduces the severe over-estimation of any X-->Y causal association. Plus, most such studies, including the LANCET study mentioned, start with an unscientific bias that if alcohol is in any way associated to a bad outcome, like an automobile accident, that the outcome is "attributable" to alcohol. They often follow rules of legal culpability where if any driver in an accident has any amount of alcohol in their system, the accident is coded as alcohol-related, even if any objective analysis would put the other driver or other factors at fault. Even when efforts are made to adjust for the probability difference in accidents involving alcohol use vs. none, the needed controls for confounding factors are never fully available, which range from the easier ones like time of day to the nearly never measured or available like distractors in the car like unruly kids to the quality of the the vehicles tires and brake systems, to the mental health of the drivers, all of which are likely to have non-causal statistical associations with alcohol use. And even when its use causes a person some negative outcomes, that is not sufficient to qualify it as a "disorder" is a meaningful sense, any more than it is a "disorder" to choose to do any of the infinite things that increase the probability of some negative outcomes, from living in a city and it's many health risk to eating red meat to owning a cat despite having mild allergies.

There remains a kind of puritanical attitude about drug use that leads us to be too quick to label it in the most problematic terms that we don't for other acts done for pleasure or personal satisfaction that also have some possible negative effects. We need more intellectual rigor and use of scientifically principled and empirically grounded definitions of such terms as "disorder", "dependence", etc..

Alcohol appeared early in human civilization.

In the 19th century in America alcohol was consumed daily as a pain killer in hard farm work. In the late 19th century alcoholism align with opium adduction became epidemic. Opium was a trade commodity. It led to prohibition and govt regulation of drugs. We are awash in movies, TV shows, and TV ads that equate alcohol with youth and vitality.

It is essentially insidious propaganda like repetitive programming sating with the young. James Dean appearing in a movie with a cigarette pack rolled up in a T-shirt sleeve was mimicked by young men.

Modern video advertising is essentially brainwashing. Reputation of image and message getting embedded in the brain. The movie Animal House undoubtedly popularized binge drinking as fun.

Pop media and advertising have little to do with alcohol consumption. IF they did, the US would lead the world in consumption since we lead the world in amount of media and advertising consumption. Yet in per capita consumption, the US is actually behind most of the developed world, including the UK, most of Western Europe, Russia, and Australia.

Humans in every corner of the globe have figured out how to turn everything they can into consumable alcohol and have been doing it for longer than they have been making leavened bread. Most humans who have the freedom, means and access to drink alcohol do so on a semi regular basis. This is because intoxication has innate appeal to most humans.

Binge drinking was popularized as fun by the fact that it is fun, as are many things that are also harmful. Animal House was a reflection of already existing reality. Keg party ragers had been going on among high school and college students well before 1978.
If anything binge drinking among adolescents and young adults in the US is increased by restrictive attitudes about alcohol consumption and prohibitions against them consuming it. They are never allowed to have any, so when they get the opportunity they go whole hog.

I don't disagree with any of this, but I think there is still a point to be made.

To me, advertising's biggest effect is to normalize alcohol use. It isn't necessarily the associative, unconscious signals, but rather the idea that alcohol is an unquestionable part of human life. With that in mind, I'd argue that a sizable component of those who drink, do so only because they haven't considered the possibility of doing otherwise. Drinking is such a pervasive and accepted part of almost every culture in the world that people accept it as a way of life.

Ok, granted, people like alcohol because it's a lot of fun. But almost the entirety of humanity in 2018 will go through their lives without a single person saying to them: 'you know, maybe you only like alcohol because you're addicted to it, and you'd probably be happier if you just stopped'.

Yes the normalization and culture exists because we put it there, but there is no reason why we can't make gains to change this culture, or if not, just make people more aware of what their own relationship with alcohol actually is, and what the real health effects are.

Also, granted it's not clear to me that any of that would make an iota of difference.

 

[bilby]

Alcohol IS a normal part of human life. For almost all of the last 5,000 years (or more), daily alcohol consumption was the norm for everyone* who was too old to drink their mother's milk.

This modern idea that you might spend some waking hours completely sober really only began to get any widespread traction with the industrial revolution, as it rapidly became clear that operating heavy machinery was a task best performed with a clear head, at least if you wanted to survive the experience.

Even then, beer was provided and/or considered perfectly normal at lunchtime for many workplaces until the late 20th Century. One place I worked as recently as the 1980s, it was practically mandatory for all the office staff to have a few pints with the boss at lunchtime in the pub next door.

These days having a few pints at lunchtime would get you fired.











*Apart from the odd religious nutter. Charles I was so keen to dodge puritan rumours that his wife was pushing him towards catholicism, that he let it be known that he drank only water. This was considered seriously unusual at the time; His subjects almost invariably drank beer for hydration, and gin to get drunk.

 

[rousseau]

Alcohol IS a normal part of human life. For almost all of the last 5,000 years (or more), daily alcohol consumption was the norm for everyone* who was too old to drink their mother's milk.

This modern idea that you might spend some waking hours completely sober really only began to get any widespread traction with the industrial revolution, as it rapidly became clear that operating heavy machinery was a task best performed with a clear head, at least if you wanted to survive the experience.

Even then, beer was provided and/or considered perfectly normal at lunchtime for many workplaces until the late 20th Century. One place I worked as recently as the 1980s, it was practically mandatory for all the office staff to have a few pints with the boss at lunchtime in the pub next door.

These days having a few pints at lunchtime would get you fired.











*Apart from the odd religious nutter. Charles I was so keen to dodge puritan rumours that his wife was pushing him towards catholicism, that he let it be known that he drank only water. This was considered seriously unusual at the time; His subjects almost invariably drank beer for hydration, and gin to get drunk.

Smoking was also once a pervasively normal part of society.

I don't disagree that alcohol should be an intrinsic part of the human experience, but there is some subtlety there that we aren't accounting for.