
Social and Cultural Aspects of Drinking - fanf2
http://www.sirc.org/publik/drinking4.html
======
LarryL
A very interesting read.

I did not know that alcohol effects varied that much between societies &
context/circonstances.

I found especially surprising the part about how in some cultures drunkenness
is used as an excuse for violent behaviour while it's NOT elsewhere. I don't
drink myself, but I've seen a lot of other people's behaviour in France (being
loud, more or less belligerent, removing clothes, etc.), but had not realized
it could be otherwise in other countries.

I've always thought that being drunk (or drugged) was NOT an excuse for bad
behaviour (especially picking fights): that's much too easy/convenient to
justify oneself like this! Now, I've learned that I was even more right than I
thought!

~~~
naravara
I'd have liked to have seen more specifics on which cultures were which. I've
experienced the drinking cultures from India, Japan, China, France, the US,
Argentina, Brazil, and England and in ALL of them drinking alcohol was
correlated with what they called "disinhibition" and aggression.

The amounts of each of these things varied, but it's not like it was ever
fully absent. So basically, is this is a dependency on cultural norms separate
from everything else or does alcohol correlate with any specific about
economic development that makes people behave this way?

~~~
skate22
If i had to take a guess, I would imagine above all else, the reasons people
start drinking are going to vary from one culture to another (on the average).

Ive heard the expression: drunk people speak sober thoughts (meaning they hold
back less)

People who get drunk to cele brate act different than people who get drunk to
cope with something (from what ive seen)

If in one culture it was only socially accepted to get drunk to celebrate, i
would expect different behaviour than a culture who only views drinking as a
way to cope

Just my uninformed theory

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brighteyes
This is important information, but it's also easy to misinterpret, which I've
seen a lot of on twitter.

That alcohol has different impacts in different cultures certainly supports it
not having a single "natural" affect on humans. But:

1\. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a single "natural" effect inside a
single culture. In a culture where alcohol is strongly tied to violence, it
may have such an effect regardless of a person aware of that fact or even
trying to counteract it.

2\. That doesn't mean alcohol doesn't actually have a single "natural" effect
on humans - it's possible cultures manage to overcome that effect through
effort. (Though, this is certainly less likely than the alternative.)

~~~
watwut
Both can be true simultaneously.

If you being drunk excuses being aggressive, you will have lower incentive to
even attempt to control aggressivity while drinking. You will also be more
likely to drink before executing plan to be aggressive/violent - to give
yourself excuse and reason. If alcohol excuses, you will also drink so that
you give yourself social permission to do stuff you know you should now and
that would make you look badly if not drunk.

In opposite culture, you will not purposfully drink to enable social
permission and you will attempt to regulate behavior while drinking.

That is independent of whether alcohol actually makes you more aggressive and
how much it naturally lowers inhibitions. Even if it does, the culture will
affect how much.

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beenBoutIT
It's interesting to note that alcohol is both socially acceptable and
neurotoxic, with direct effects on nerve cells. If ancient man had discovered
Testors cement before alcohol we would undoubtedly be living in a world of
glue huffers who demonize drinking alcohol in cautionary PSA films.

~~~
__jal
That idea seems to hinge on the notion that the cultural acceptance of alcohol
intoxication somehow "filled a niche" that would otherwise have been filled by
some other intoxicant.

The first problem to overcome if one wishes to support that idea is that
alcohol had other uses than getting plastered. Weak ciders were ubiquitous
before refrigeration because they were safe to drink when the local water
wasn't. It was also a pain reliever before there were many others and used as
a disinfectant.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Cider makes a horrible disinfectant, it would be just as effective to pour
apple juice over everything.

You need distilled alcohol (>25% ABV), without sugar, before it starts being
an effective disinfectant.

~~~
krageon
I could be reading it wrong, but I think the grandparent jumped back to
speaking about alcohol in general somewhere along his line of reasoning
(without specifically saying where).

