Cheers! Here Are All the Reasons Drinking Is Great
Kids in the UK are going off alcohol.
Not one but two articles in this week’s Spectator have to do with drinking — more exactly, its falling popularity with the young. A quarter of 16-to-25-year-olds say they will never touch the stuff again. They say it makes you lose control. As others have noted, that is sort of the point. But they give other reasons. It us expensive compared to, say, water. They have other ways to entertain themselves: TikTok, for instance, or Netflix. And it is unhealthy. According to an article in the Lancet, no amount of alcohol is ‘good for you’.
Interesting phrase, ‘good for you’. What neither the Lancet nor the many papers that repeated its claims considered how drinking can encourage healthy, even vital forms of behaviour. There was a famous study, cited in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, on two immigrant populations in America. These groups had similar diets but wildly different levels of physical wellbeing. Why? Well, because the healthy group was more socially cohesive. Its members felt that they belonged. They had shared values. They spent time together. Consequently, they were happy and healthy. No wonder the psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist has said that joining a religion is better for your health than giving up drinking and smoking at the same time. It brings people together. So does drinking.
Iain McGilchrist has said that joining a religion is better for your health than giving up drinking and smoking at the same time.
Furthermore, for some of us — perhaps many of us — drinking is how we get through the week. The thought of a glass of wine after work can be a powerful motivator. So long as alcohol remains the servant and not the master, so to speak, it can be very helpful for lessening the stress that naturally accumulates during a long day and easing us into the evening. We are told we should find other ways to make the switch between ‘work and life’ (as if work was not part of life, by the way). But not everyone has the time or the energy or the means to go to a yoga class (or whatever) after work, ‘healthier’ though that would undoubtedly be. What she can do is pour herself a nice big glass of Primitivo and get some much-deserved rest, which in turn will give her the strength to get up and go to work tomorrow.
Perhaps our fictitious Primitivo drinker does not go to work. Perhaps she is a creative type. Drinking can help there, too. The extent to which drinking played a part in Hemingway’s success is a point of dispute. He is often credited with saying ‘Write drunk, edit sober’; but in his letters to a young correspondent, he takes a rather puritanical line on drinking and working, saying they are not, under any circumstances, to be mixed. But what is not in doubt is that many writers, musicians, artists and other creative types have done some of their best work while absolutely sloshed. Speaking for myself, a glass of wine can be just what you need to get those words down.
Which is a very instrumental way to look at drinking. Throughout this little polemic, I have not mentioned the fact that drinking is enjoyable. It can improve food. It can improve a social gathering. It can make boring people interesting. I could also mention the role that wine, in particular, has played in the history of our civilisation. Of course, it is a central part of the Eucharist in the Catholic tradition. The wine is transformed into the literal blood of Jesus, in what is called transubstantiation. Wine becomes a bridge to the transcendent. Wine also fuelled the symposia of Ancient Greece, where philosophers would gather to get sloshed and have deep conversations. The idea was people might be induced to say things they would not say sober.
Wine also fuelled the symposia of Ancient Greece, where philosophers would gather to get sloshed and have deep conversations.
So, in the right measure and so on, drinking is great. It irons out the creases in social life. It brings people together and smooths interaction when they are. It marks special occasions. It marks special occasions — births, baptisms, marriages, deaths — and makes those events easier for the shy and socially inept. It inspires the creative and helps others get through a tough day. It improves food. If abstaining from drinking for health reasons means you spend more time alone, in front of a screen, scrolling through TikTok or binge-watching a series, then a nice cold pint is arguably better for you. Loneliness, after all, is as bad for your health in the long term as smoking.
While we are on the subject, I cannot help but wonder where the current vogue for health comes from. We now have trans-humanist tech-bro types, who want to live forever. And then there is the younger cohort, who have turned their back on drinking, smoking and (I read) having sex. And inspite of this emphasis on personal health, you cannot help but notice how thoroughly miserable people are. Needless to say there will be many reasons for this; but focusing overly on how much you sleep, how many calories you take in, the amount of water you drink, etc. seems to me not to be a great help if you want to be happy, and more like a recipe for constant fretting and controlling behaviour. You know what helps when you feel that way? A drink.
