Social and Cultural Aspects of Drinking

http://www.sirc.org/publik/drinking4.html

by fanf2 • 8 years ago

58 16 8 years ago

LarryL• 8 years ago

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• 8 years ago

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• 8 years ago

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

beenBoutIT3• 8 years ago

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.

ravenstine2• 8 years ago

Water is also neurotoxic in the right amount.

ravenstine2• 8 years ago

Some people think I'm trying to be funny, but seriously:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyponatremia

Under "Causes": Excessive drinking of fluids.

When sodium levels in the blood become very low, water enters the brain cells and causes them to swell. This results in increased pressure in the skull and causes hyponatremic encephalopathy.

My point being the fact that something is "neurotoxic" says little about its practical safety.

__jal• 8 years ago

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• 8 years ago

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.

sxv• 8 years ago

Nah. Huffing glue doesn't help one get laid. Or maybe it does but I somehow have doubts about the reproductive success of such a society.

beenBoutIT3• 8 years ago

You must not have read "Always Running" in high school. Interesting look at modern day glue huffing in East LA. http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Always-Running/Luis-J-...

brighteyes• 8 years ago

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• 8 years ago

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.

Social and Cultural Aspects of Drinking

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