Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cyph0n | Hacker News Reader

If alcohol consumption is crucial to human bonding, how does the author explain friendship and bonding in communities where alcohol is not consumed?

I have never consumed alcohol - historically for religious reasons, but now due to personal convictions - so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

I am of the opinion that it’s much easier to fall into addiction and/or abuse of the drink if it’s available as an option. I am not at all condoning prohibition here; that never worked anywhere it was attempted, and never will. Rather, I am looking at this from a personal level.

I am definitely open to hearing reasonable arguments for drinking, other than the social aspect, which was covered (poorly, imo) by this article.

View on HN

Well,it's all about your culture's relationship with it. In NYC, it can be difficult to socialize at times without alcohol because it's very ingrained in the young professional community. In Istanbul, where it isn't, perhaps it's difficult to socialize as a coffee abstainer.

In neither case is it really that difficult to abstain and still socialize, but presuming you don't have a problem and can drink moderately, I can see why the benefits outweigh the negatives.

Also a non-drinker, and yeah, it really sucks to not drink in the professional American world. Not only does it make me the buzzkill, I honestly hate being around drunk people. Being drunk is really only fun when everyone's doing it together, like the adult version of campfire songs, making it hard to be the odd man out.

For what it's worth, this isn't true for me. Whether I'm drunk or sober, I find it easier than most to socialize, with either friends or strangers. When the company I'm with is drinking, _they're_ better at being social too: having the social energy be more two-sided leads on average to evenings that are more fun.

> it really sucks to not drink in the professional American world.

Can you tell us more about this? Genuinely curious.

You really should not use "Drunk" to mean some one that has had one or two drinks - it shows your huge (presumably unconscious bias) from your upbringing.

If Pepsi was heavily regulated in how they advertise, as the Alcohol Industry is in most parts of the world, then you would be reading about how Pepsi helps social bonding too. Marketing depts these days have hundred different ways of filling people's heads with garbage.

Social drinking has been around far longer than tv commercials and adtech.

So have all sorts of things, both good and bad. Just because something has been around a long time doesn’t mean it should be assumed to contribute positively. The so-called “oldest profession” has been around far longer than almost anything too.

My point was that the assertion in the post I responded to, that the positive view of alcohol is a product of marketing, cannot be correct, because people have been enjoying alcohol long before propaganda was so easily and commonly disseminated in the form of advertisement.

I'm not making the judgement you mention.

> If alcohol consumption is crucial to human bonding

That's not his argument. The argument is that it enhances social bonding.

> I am definitely open to hearing reasonable arguments for drinking, other than the social aspect, which was covered (poorly, imo) by this article.

Well, I can only say that drinking is a lot of fun. It probably provided me some of the best times of my life. Now, fun, happiness, pleasure, joy, are really hard to quantify and compare. In retrospective, I am under the strong impression that my life would be less fun, pleasurable and less joyful without it, though I might be just as happy (or maybe a little bit less, but still quite happy).

Some people fall pray to it from addiction, others seek its pleasures too much and end up with collateral health issues or in accidents due to impairment. I never suffered from it, so it was really just all good fun.

So ya, it's fun. That's all.

P.S.: The fun is partly due to the effects, but also a lot of it is due to the social interactions it creates, as well as being able to get into mixology and craft beers, spirits and all that and geek out on it.

Alcohol lowers your inhibition and sometimes make you do irrational things. But doing irrational things is exactly what people want to do. That's why tens of years after the fact you'll hear people tell stories about crazy things they did in the past. Because it is a social currency. The explanation lies somewhere in game theory, in that having a reputation for irrationality is the rational thing to do, sometimes.

I don't think the article implies that non drinkers can't also bond. Surely you can. You're just missing a lot of opportunities, in the same way that one doesn't have to golf to be a successful CEO but it sure doesn't hurt. And if you're the sort of person who has an addictive personality it's surely worth missing.

It is late here, and I lack the citations at hand (and this thread will have moved on by the time I find them) -- but I once read an intriguing article that suggests that the core aspect to make alcohol drinking functional (in a social, not health way) is a set of rules around its consumption, regardless of what those rules are. The article started with an example of people drinking to what folks in the United States would call excess in the Peruvian highlands, but there was a rule that one could not pour one's own drink but had it had it offered, that it had to be at a drinking event, and a few others. Though folks drank quite excessively at these events, they were well-spaced, did not pursue alcohol outside them, etc.

I could see making a historical case for both basic nutrition and gut health (these can be done with a lot more specificity now days).

There are so many choices of recreational and commercialized drugs in modern times if you remove the strange treatment some substances get over others there are probably better answers for all common uses.

If you don't consider social aspects to be a reasonable argument for drinking, then there is no reasonable argument for drinking. I think the article has to be read in context of how drinking is perceived when discussed in seriousness, which is mostly with sheepish guilt. His argument is, essentially, that the social aspects are valuable enough to justify drinking within reasonable limits. I don't think he argues it's necessary for society to function, it just might be more beneficial than people generally dare to admit to themselves.

It's not crucial per se, but more like one of the lowest hanging fruit out there in getting someone to go out of their way and socialize.

I sometimes socialise with a "high on live" crowd of sober vegans. In the beginning it was a bit weird because I wanted to say "who want to get a drink" but after a while you get used to it. You just stand around and talk about random stuff. Not drinking is actually ok, but I am not going to pretend I like their food. IMHO veganism is a missed-steak.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com