For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ But wisdom is justified by all her children.
— Luke 7:33-35, King James edition
Recently I got into a minor disagreement with a Facebook friend over the issue of drinking alcohol. The friend in question is militantly opposed to any form of alcohol consumption, arguing that its effects are almost always negative. In support of his position, he stated that 10% of all users of alcohol become alcoholics.
I was curious about this statistic because it seemed wildly exaggerated to me. When I looked it up online, I discovered that the statistic derives from a set of criteria used to define alcoholism. If you meet any two of the criteria in a 12-month period, you are identified as an alcoholic.
One of the criteria is a) you had a strong desire for an alcoholic beverage, and another is b) you consumed more alcohol on a given occasion then you'd originally planned. Most of the other criteria were considerably more stringent and reasonable, but remember, you only have to meet two criteria (over twelve months) in order to be defined as an alcoholic.
Now, it seems to me that anyone who enjoys anything will have a "strong desire" for it once in a while and will occasionally overindulge in it. This is true whether you enjoy eating potato chips, having sex, or playing video games. By defining alcoholism so broadly, this list of criteria makes it almost impossible for anybody who consumes alcohol to avoid being considered an alcoholic.
I suspect this is intentional. There's a remnant of the Puritan or Prohibitionist mindset alive in America, which wants to make drinking socially unacceptable. The motivation may not be much different from that of people who want to eliminate the consumption of meat or the use of airplanes or the enjoyment of un-PC comedy, or anything else that annoys them.
As a practical matter, nearly all adults consume at least some alcohol on occasion. So if the 10% statistic were true, one out of every 10 adults you encounter would be an alcoholic. This does not track with my experience, and I doubt it tracks with yours, unless you live on Skid Row. But we're supposed to ignore personal experience when looking at abstract formulations of this sort. After all, the people who come up with these formulations are "experts." And they must be disinterested, because they tell us they are.
Why do I bring up this issue on my blog? There are two reasons.
First, I think that the desire – or even need – to alter one's state of consciousness is hardwired into the human condition. Archaeologists have found that brewing beer and fermenting wine go back to the earliest stages of prehistory. I recently read a book about the pharaoh Hatshepsut (circa 1500 BC), which observed, in passing, that probably all the elites of Egypt in that distant era consumed alcohol (beer) almost exclusively, because it was safer to drink than germ-infested water.
But hygiene is probably a secondary consideration. My guess is that human beings have consumed alcohol and found other ways to alter their state of consciousness throughout history and prehistory. Not only have they consumed beer and wine, but they have ingested peyote, ayahuasca, and other mind-altering substances. Why would this be?
I suspect it comes back to the issues I discussed in the excerpts from my book in progress (in my four previous posts). Our particular method of accessing reality is extremely limited. I think at some level most of us are frustrated by this limitation. Altering consciousness, by whatever method, is a way to explore aspects of reality that would otherwise remain inaccessible – to expand our consciousness and seek some ultimate meaning.
The need for meaning in life is, in my opinion, just as deep and intense as the need for food and water. To satisfy this need, people are willing to ingest substances – whether alcohol or hallucinogenic drugs – that potentially open a window to other realms of experience. They're willing to do so even at some personal risk.
There's another issue: Life is hard.
When I was younger, I hardly ever drank alcohol. I probably went for years at a time without consuming an alcoholic beverage. These days, I drink on a much more regular basis. And I think it's because, as an older person (pushing 60), I've been through more bad stuff. I've had to face the lingering deaths of both my parents, and the deaths of friends and public figures I admired, and numerous personal disappointments and failures. I've had to acknowledge my own mortality and, what's more difficult, the likelihood of a lingering period of senescence and decline. And I've become aware of the sheer deadening weight of stupidity and cupidity and asininity and injustice in the world.
It's extremely difficult to deal with reality every day, without escape or mitigation, especially when reality becomes increasingly oppressive. As Shirley Jackson put it in the opening sentence of her novel The Haunting of Hill House, “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.” I don't see how any mature human being can doubt the truth of this proposition. Those who do doubt it have perhaps led charmed lives, or are in a state of denial, or are somehow disconnected from normal human emotions.
I remember talking to a professional hypnotist I knew in Los Angeles years ago. Clients would come to him asking to be hypnotized so they could quit smoking. Before he obliged, he would ask them, "Are you sure you want to do this? Life has so few pleasures."
That strikes me as an entirely reasonable question. The older I get, the more aware I am of how difficult life can be and how few lasting pleasures it affords. And the more I understand Shirley Jackson's sentiment. And the more unwilling I am to give up the rare pleasures that this life affords, however imperfect they may be.
Recent Comments