A disturbing question about alcohol made me rethink and emend my concepts about drinking.
Brain Damage?
Till the age of 17, I did not know anything about alcohol except that it was a bitter, tongue-numbing and throat warming drink which I could get a sip of from my dad’s glass on a chilly New Year’s eve. Champagne looked awesome when F1 players bathed each other in white gushing liquid on the podium. White wine was had in beautifully shaped glasses and looked like u were drinking liquid gold. Beer was much frothier than coke and was the bitterest of all the alcohols I had ever tried. I equated it to having liquid bitter gourd (karela). Yes, alcohol for me then was a visual fascination with a repulsive taste.
Then I left my home to do my undergrad in Mumbai and came across alcohol as a ‘drink’ for the first time. I heard there were parties in the hostel where people had ‘daru‘. We were introduced to a new world! Now, alcohol was a fascination for experimentation. At 18, I liked the screwdriver. At 19, I liked Rum and Coke. At 20, I developed the taste for beer (mainly Kingfisher and Fosters). At 21, I was treated to Black Label. Even when we had the liberty to get alcohol for ourselves, I somehow knew my limits and most days I fell asleep after drinking beyond I could. To everyone else’s envy, I never had hangovers. Some people still doubt it, I still doubt it but it’s awesome to have no hangover. Although we drank to get intoxicated, I don’t think we ever did anything extreme to be called the western concept of binge-drinking.
Now at Oxford, alcohol is a similar concept but it has permeated the whole society. In India, we were the minority who consumed alcohol. Here, we are the minority who don’t consume alcohol or don’t consume enough. Of course, our first stop when we came to Oxford was a pub where we had English Ale. Then followed the freshers’ week, and every event had alcohol in some form or the other. And then we had house parties and drinking games. In the first few weeks, I spent on alcohol as much as I spent on food. Fortunately, I was in a mature post-grad environment and things were moderate, unlike the undergrads. Yes, Oxford undergrads drink way too much! What would you expect when every college has atleast 1 bar and it’s own wine-cellar.
The late night scenes were pathetic. Girls swinging, shouting their lungs out, falling over, puking. And there were crazy bike accidents, moonings and naked-man running shows! The thought of alcohol started causing some sort of revulsion in me. And then one fine day, my housemate Alex, mentioned that alcohol killed brain cells! It was something that I had never thought of. Of course, all alcohol related effects were due to some disturbance in brain activity but brain damage was something much more disturbing. Obviously, I googled it and read about it.
The most authentic source of scientific information is this article by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, funded by National Institute of Health. They summarise that brain cells are not killed on drinking of alcohol but on excessive consumption their growth is retarded. These are based on tests done on rats. For alcoholics though, they have good news. There is sign of improvement in brain structure within the first year of abstinence. Some research showed benefits of drinking red wine but these results were doubted later. And then there are unauthenticated articles which say the same thing but also suggest some benefits like helps neurons communicate and eases your way into old age!! One of the articles goes to the extent of clearing doubts over a myth that drunkards “catch fire” more easily than normal people, now that’s like explaining kindergarten kids what can fire do!
Alcohol is a very serious problem and needs to be tackled, specially in the UK. Britain’s women drink way too much, as much as 11 times their German or Italian counterparts. It is so bad here that BBC has a documentary on ‘Drinking with the Girls‘. The summary of the documentary is not even close to how depressed one feels on watching the documentary. The article by NIAAA mentions women are more prone to effects of alcohol than men. They also suggest irreparable damage to the fetus physical, learning and behavioral effects.
Alcohol, I believe is a plague in this society and reforms need to be made to curtail it’s use. Yes people should have the freedom to do what they want but with alcohol, the damage is seen later in life often when it’s too late and thus people don’t care much. These reforms can be at 2 levels, governmental and cultural. It would be easy to impose governmental policies to bring this reform but cultural reform is a big question in itself.
Nice article Akshat, and good research! I do think one has to differentiate between alcohol being a part of everyday life — pervasive but benign — and alcohol becoming a detriment to society. The latter is certainly the case in the UK (and Australia too) but from my experience the former is true in many places where alcohol is cheaper, more readily available, and even more of a cultural norm than the UK (much of Europe, for example). So in my opinion the problem is not with availability or pricing, but is rooted at a deep cultural level. Alcoholism is a symptom of a societal illness, and treating the symptoms won’t help the underlying problem. This was discovered in Australia recently when the government tried to curtail alcoholism by taxing the class of drinks that young people consume, with the only effect being that young people switched to hard liquor!
That is a good point Alex and I believe it is very much true. Cultural reforms as I mentioned are a whole different question. It’s way more complicated and so much more individualistic that there will never be a general solution to it. May be a set of global leaders who could pave way for getting rid of vices such as alcoholism is soon going to be a necessity.
A very well written article, this is. The research that you did on it is impressive.
Where to start?
As a British woman, I enjoy alcohol being part of our culture. I have seen student drinking habits, I have seen working adults’ drinking habits. I have also compared drinking culture in my travels around Europe and in the USA and Canada. It starts off similar to our Euro counterparts. Older children are given a small glass of wine with dinner. The education of how to behave in public, how to eat in a restaurant, these cultural teachings I believe are very important in teaching young people about behaviour and about alcohol. Parties at home when you are young, you see your family intoxicated. There is nothing sinister about it, it is a safe, loving environment. Yes they might be embarrassing, acting silly, showing themselves up, but you accept that they are having fun, and you are happy for this to happen. How great that we have this freedom, and ability to let our hair down, without societal pressure that it is immoral. My first drinking experience was excessive and bad. The motivator was probably wanting to do what my peers were doing, joining in, not through peer pressure, just because that’s what we were doing, and I hadn’t drank that before. I was glad of the effect which was to put me off dark spirits for the rest of my life. Life as a student has a particular alcohol relation. The best of it is that it is social. The best conversations can result from loosening tonuges with a few drinks. Drinking games are often, perhaps always bonding experiences. Drinking in the day time is a luxury students can take advantage of because of their schedules. Student drinking in Oxford is very different from any other university I know. Here, the establishment tries to as the family used to, make alcohol normal, an everyday part of life. This is a bourgeois thing, sure, but it is intended as a good thing. If normalised, alcohol will not be abused, that is the thinking here I guess. I love it, it makes me feel that students are being accepted as adults, into a special world. Onto binge-drinking. I do look down on people, students or full time workers, who drink and make fools of themselves in public. I do not like having to see it. However, I can not put my standards onto others. Akshat, I gather you are more concerned that women are exhibiting lewd behaviour. This is probably for the same reason I find it distasteful. We have a notion of being lady-like. This notion, for much of society, is no longer relevant. This is a separate discussion about sex and gender – let’s have that talk another time soon. Now, they are not acting how I would like ladies to act. Guys don;t act as gentlemen either. Are they having fun? Yes, usually. Even when I hear arguments and loud fighting, I smile because that’s life, that is for them, what they do. It helps if you can empsathise and think yea I remember having a stupid shouting match once, or I remember those drunk telephone conversations. I can see the fun side of it, the learning experience, I mean, I like how it makes life colourful. People need a release, they need to vent. The drunkest, loudest, most raucous people I see are full time workers. They earn the right to let their hair down Saturday night, having worked Mon-Fri. As long as they don’t harm anyone, or property, I don’t have a problem with it. I think the problems I see with behaviour are there regardless of alcohol. Things like lack of respect for property, people drop litter, urinate in public. That’s because they just don’t care, someone else will clean it up. Whether this owes to their home situation I cannot say.
Alcohol is a plague? No I have to disagree. I think that is too strong a statement.
Drinking while preganant is an entirely different topic, and should not be used as evidence against drinking in general.
Firstly, I would argue with your concept of ‘fun’. I believe there is no necessity to have alcohol to have fun. Intoxication is just a drug to a weak mind.
I don’t think that a child would be happy to be embarrassed by his own parents. In India, at least, we idealize our parents. We are taught what is wrong and what is right and we see our parents adhere to it themselves. But drinking away and doing silly things would be a nightmare for a kid like me.
Why is it necessary to have alcohol to ‘let your hair down’? Is it just to find an excuse for doing that and then saying or doing disgusting things that you would normally (not toxicated) not be able to do?
You agree that your first drinking experience was bad. You gave into peer pressure and had excessive alcohol. Although, you were among the sensible ones to walk away from that kind of drinking, many don’t. Why give ourselves the chance to fall in such situations and test the weakness of our mind on a worthless achievement? It made you keep away from ‘dark spirits’, Would you do the same exercise if you knew that you would only gain the knowledge that ‘dark spirits’ are not your thing?
I do not disagree about conversations and a little alcohol is all that you need for those but more than often it leads to more drinking and most lose control. But I fail to understand what you mean when you say ‘it makes me feel that students are being accepted as adults, into a special world.’ or when you say ‘I like how it makes life colourful’. There are so many beautiful, benign ways of making life colourful, why choose alcohol for doing that beautiful job?
I do agree that ‘Alcohol is plague’ is an overstatement. But I feel that the human race would progress much more without alcohol.
I think the question here is when and where the state should intervene for people’s “own good” — in this case curbing alcohol usage. It’s a tricky question.
Jenna: I agree with your arguments in the case of alcohol, but I don’t think the decision of state intervention is simply a question of whether people have a right to enjoy the substance. To see this, try applying your argument to some other more dangerous substance, like, say, heroin. You could equally well argue that heroin is a way for people to let their hair down; that they deserve it after a hard week’s work; and that being exposed to heroin use from a young age is good cultural training. Obviously this is completely wrong! Heroin is so damaging and addictive that the state is right to intervene for people’s “own good”.
Alcohol is also damaging and addictive, but much less than heroin. The question is therefore not one of absolutes (“should the state ban all addictive and/or damaging substances?”) but one of ballance (“how damaging/addictive is alcohol and to what extent should the state intervene?”). In my opinion, alcohol usage should essentially be a personal liberty, but the state should make what attempts it can to curb the negative social impacts. This might include things like alcohol education at a young age, regulations to ensure drinks are labelled with their alcohol content, and so on, many of which are already being done.
Akshat: There is indeed no necessity to have alcohol in order to have fun but the point is that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with drinking alcohol and having fun, if one so chooses.
I’m skeptical about whether it’s true to say that “most lose control”. Out of all the thousands of people that go out for a drink on a Friday in Oxford, surely the vast majority do not in fact lose control, although of course those that do are far more noticeable. Further, I do not think that “losing control” — which is a fair characterization — is so easily condemned. If individuals choose to get drunk then on what basis do we condemn them? Violence and damaging property are separate issues, not to be confused with act of getting drunk itself.
I do agree that alcohol has some detrimental effects on society, and that the state should work to mitigate some these in some ballanced sense. However, I have no moral objection to the act of drinking or getting drunk itself.
A very well-crafted argument Alex, I believe you have concluded this piece finely. Alcohol like the issue of caffeine we discussed the other day, comes down to individual choices. Yet when looked at from the governance point-of-view, I believe it is necessary for the state to take more steps than it is taking now.