In Defense of Alcohol
Zvi says “I think alcohol is best avoided by essentially everyone.”[1] Tyler Cowen says “I don’t think we should ban alcohol, I simply think each and every person should stop drinking it, voluntarily. Now.” I disagree. I think Zvi, Tyler, and others[2] are failing to see the big upsides of using alcohol.
Alcohol is good because of evolutionary mismatch.[3]
Alcohol helps us adapt to a modern environment in which we benefit from socializing with unfamiliar, non-ingroup people, often in uncomfortable environments. It helps us adapt to our modern environment with regards to dating and sex. It helps us adapt to our modern environment with regards to high stress and weak work/social-play boundaries (this is called “unwinding”).
Socialization
1. Alcohol facilitates socialization with unfamiliar and/or non-ingroup people.
1a. Socializing with people who are unfamiliar is hard.
1b. This makes sense evolutionary. We have a tribe of familiar people, and anyone outside the tribe is the outgroup; they are by default an enemy or at least suspicious.
1c. This makes “opening up” – having non-superficial conversations – particularly hard, as non-superficial conversations are higher stakes and create vulnerability.
2. Alcohol facilitates socialization in uncomfortable environments e.g. crowded rooms you haven’t been to before.
3. Alcohol catalyzes bonding.
3a. Bonding the old-fashioned way – spending lots of time together, having ritualistic experiences together, going through trauma together – takes a long time.
3b. We are part of many many more groups than our ancestors were; each of these groups needs bonding.
3c. We don’t have enough time to bond with all these people the old-fashioned way.
Dating and Sex
4. Modern dating requires socialization with unfamiliar and/or non-ingroup people.
5. Furthermore, modern dating usually requires rapid consensual escalation, both emotional and sexual.
5a. Lack of rapid escalation usually leads to “nothing happening”, friendship, or situationship. Consider these dating failure modes:
5aa. First dates that don’t escalate to emotional or physical intimacy.
5ab. Multiple consecutive dates that don’t escalate emotional or sexual intimacy.
6. Alcohol catalyzes bonding.
Unwinding
7. Alcohol delineates work spaces from social/play/relax spaces.
7a. Alcohol is counterproductive for working. This is a feature, not a bug; it keeps the work and social/play spaces delineated.
8. Alcohol helps people socialize and/or play when they’re highly stressed.
8a. It’s hard to socialize and/or play when highly stressed.
8b. In the evolutionary environment, being highly stressed meant that one was actually in danger; there really wasn’t time to socialize or play.
8c. In today’s environment, people become highly stressed due to modern work or environmental (cities, news/media) conditions; socializing and/or playing is often a good thing to do when one is stressed!
Why are rationalists confused about alcohol?[4]
The most salient aspects of alcohol usage are: A. alcohol’s immediate effects, like euphoria, relaxation, disinhibition, stupidity, and hangover; B. alcohol’s long term effects, like general bad health and especially the risk of debilitating addiction; C. deleterious public health effects. But the main value of alcohol is that it makes socialization easier. This value isn’t captured in alcohol statistics, nor are they obvious in the way that the effects of alcohol-qua-drug on an individual are. It’s easy to consider only the salient aspects when considering the risk/reward of alcohol and conclude that it’s not worth it.
- ^
More Zvi quotes on alcohol:
a. “I don’t drink, but I totally understand the idea of “I need a drink” and the idea of a time when one can drink, and think those are important even though I don’t get enjoyment out of alcohol and thus save my calories for elsewhere outside of ritual quantities. It’s weird that I can be in the state of “I need a drink” and still not want one; I appreciate the benefits other people get and want those benefits, but I know I wouldn’t get them. Plus, alcohol is kind of a terrible drug and cause of all life’s problems, so sitting non-symbolic quantities of this one out seems wise.”
b. “I am not saying that there are zero situations in which it is correct to drink alcohol. I would however say that if you think it falls under the classification of: If drinking seems like a good idea, it probably isn’t, even after accounting for this rule.”
c. “As usual, I agree with many of [Tyler’s] key points like avoiding moral nervousness and abstaining from alcohol in particular and drugs in general.”
- ^
Raemon asks (in 2011!), “Is there any particularly interesting analysis of *why* drinking is so important to social interaction?” That question and the underwhelming comments partly inspired me to write this.
- ^
Evolutionary mismatch is why a variation Gwern’s Algernon Argument doesn’t apply. The original ‘law’ is “any simple major enhancement to human intelligence is a net evolutionary disadvantage.” Alcohol is not an intelligence enhancer, but a similar argument could be made replacing ‘intelligence’ with ‘social capabilities’.
- ^
I speculate there’s also something going on where Zvi and Tyler are sufficiently good at socializing without alcohol and/or don’t experience the drug in the same way that most people do. This leads them to underrate the social effects of the drug.
As a Brit who was socialised to binge-drink at least once a week throughout my young adult life, with a default sober state being characterised by a reserved, inhibited nature, I have grappled with this recently.
This year, as per some previous years, I partook in “Dry January” — although this year I extended it to “Dry Q1″ and then slightly longer. I enjoyed some of the sober benefits (no hangover, challenging myself to do self-work to function well in hectic social situations), but missed the joy inherent in feeling the altered state of disinhibition and mental & physical relaxation from the buzz of alcohol.
Indeed, I attended a networking event in May and felt I was lacking the edge to bond well with people I viewed as prospective employers/colleagues. I made the conscious decision to have a vodka redbull and the effect was immediate — my social anxiety dissolved away, and I was cracking jokes, driving conversation, and getting widespread approval.
It validated my theory that the self-work to reach that state of mind in a sober state was too hard, if not impossible, and I should embrace using alcohol in various social situations. I drank on a handful more occasions and had a good time.
However — and I’m going to write about this more in a full post — I had a breakthrough later on in the year. I think partly as a result of my experimentation with sobriety, plus very intentional breaking of the sobriety, I’ve built a mental model that allows me to access the same confidence, comedic expression, and disinhibition I cherished as a result of alcohol, purely through mental instantiation.
Having made this breakthrough I feel like I may never go back to drinking, since both my baseline and upper-bound mental states have raised. I don’t this is a unique phenomenon — I have seen alcoholics that went sober describing a similar thing where after an initial dip — in their “sober adjusting period” — after a while “everything raises”.
All this is to say that your defence of alcohol in my view is the defence of some local maxima, but I strongly believe there is a much greater stable state on the other side of sobriety that is broadly accessible.
I have had a very similar experience. A short break went longer and longer. At this point I had maybe 3 beers and a few sips of wine in 2.5 years.
In the first year I had a few non-alcoholic beers and felt that “social anxiety dissolving away” as if it were real alcohol. I realized much of the benefit was psychological, if anything being drunk works against it. Also, overall I feel sharper. This can come with additional, not necessarily pleasant but useful self-reflection.
I don’t think I’ll ever drink again, although I’m not totally against some other future psychoactive alternative.
Thinking slightly outside the box here… seems that most of the benefits you identify could also be satisfied by a drug (e.g. valium) that has similar effects without being so freaking toxic (though I understand valium is similarly addictive, alas). Maybe we need to bring back recreational valium. Casual pop-culture reading suggests to me that back in the 70s-80s, valium & quaaludes & the like were quite the thing in party circles.
Indeed, it would be great if we could achieve these benefits without the toxicity, and ideally without as much hangover and addictiveness. I think the hardest thing to replicate is the bonding+social aspect; alcohol is a particularly bond- and socialization-inducing drug.
Benzos solve the social anxiety part of socializing, but they don’t really motivate socialization like alcohol does. They also tend to numb emotions, whereas alcohol does the opposite.[1] Barbituate-like drugs like Quaaludes are dangerous in alcohol-like ways (similar risk profile but worse) AFAIK.
GHB has similar effects to alcohol, is far less toxic, and is somewhat(?) less addictive. It does come with its own problems regarding dosing—the therapeutic window is super narrow. I do think it’s a promising alcohol substitute; I’d like to see more research on it (Scott??).
Wait, is that another one of the hidden benefits of alcohol? Emotion enhancement?
I wonder if what makes alcohol superior to pharmacologically-similar drugs like diazepam in terms of socializing and bonding has less to do with the substance and its effects and more to do with the rituals and folklore around consumption.
Partially, I think alcohol just “comes on” much more quickly, and thus the drug and its effects are more tightly-linked mentally. But all of the hocus-pocus around e.g. mixing cocktails or discussing vintages or hops varieties or what-not, and then holding the potion in your hands in its specially-shaped glass, and yada yada… that’s a lot of extra magic juju being added to the spell.
Put diazepam or gabapentin or what-have-you (or, who knows?, placebo?) in some exotically-shaped vehicle and administer it in some public and unusual ritual with its own exacting connoisseurship, and maybe you get everything you need.
Yeah, GHB is kind of nice in being alcohol-like without some of the worst effects. But I think the thin line between effective-dose and unconscious-dose makes it unlikely to fill this niche (remembering a Burning Man 20 years or so ago in which we inadvertently posed as Camp Jonestown Massacre after a couple dozen people took just a little too much and ended up splayed at random locations).
I replied in a different comment with a similar view. I think the issues are more substance-specific with other alternatives being available to consider.
GHB is fantastic in terms of it’s very limited negative health effects but it’s dosing can cause some issues as you mentioned. Those mentioned risks make it ideal for high-trust, safe situations but less ideal for broad replacement of the usage contexts of alcohol. I think there are other options that can and should be explored though.
I’m also generally pro-alcohol-in-moderation, but I seem to recall studies showing that most of alcohol’s social effects are psychosomatic and can be achieved by simply tricking someone into believing they are consuming alcohol. I’ve experienced this myself during times I couldn’t drink but was hanging out with drinkers and having mocktails or NA beer and could feel myself having permission to behave in ways that are allowed when drunk even though I was having no alcohol myself.
Now of course maybe these studies didn’t survive the replication crisis, I’m not sure, but I think there is something to be said for alcohol’s positive effects being more socially programmed than physiologically created.
Hence the massive popularity of Bud Light
I vaguely remember looking at one of those studies and finding that the amount of alcohol used was significantly less than a standard drink, though I don’t have a link now.
In my opinion, there are far more effective psychotropic alternatives that have less negatives and even more pronounced anxiolytic and pro-social effects.[1]
My personal experiences with these alternatives have led me to agree that there are very real societal benefits from cultural acceptance and norms regarding substance usage and that humans have had a relationship with psychotropic compounds for a very, very long time. I think that we have not been evaluating societal norms dictating which substances we can engage with. Alcohol, Tobacco (Nicotine), and Caffeine have maintained the largest acceptance area within the “Substance Use Overton Window [SU-OW]”[2] for hundreds if not thousands of years. This dominance within our cultural norms have made it difficult to adopt potentially better alternatives due to them residing outside the SU-OW.
Some options that I have hundreds of experiences with that have all been better or more effective than alcohol:
- Gabapentin
- Lyrica
- Phenibut/F-Phenibut
- L-Theanine
- GHB/BDO
- Kava
- Kratom
- Tianeptine
Some of the above options are also GABAergics, like alcohol, which avoid the toxic effects of alcohol. Not all of them are created equally and they each have their own matrices of considerations/dangers but I find them all to be better than alcohol.
I think there are many good reasons for us to evaluate our relationship with Alcohol but I am unique in that I am in favor of ethical, intelligent, moderate substance use where others combine the health impact of alcohol with a broader philosophical decision of engaging with substances at all. There are REAL health impacts of alcohol but my values lead me to think we should be evaluating other replacement candidates rather than promoting full sobriety.
I must caveat this by saying that concept of critical, moderate, intelligent substance usage is a very complicated idea with real consequences to consider. It’s not an activity that everyone can or should engage in, but I’ve been able to manage moderated substance usage for 15 years now and I have experimented with 100+ Research Chemicals, Nootropics, Peptides, Supplements and other chemical compounds with psychotropic effects.
I’ve just made this up but I may need to write a post about how there is a specific Overton Window regarding accepted substance abuse with unique features and dynamics affecting it.
I agree that we should be evaluating other replacement candidates.
Phenibut is much more dependence-inducing than alcohol (isn’t the practice with phenibut to use it no more than 2x a week?). Duration of action and addiction aside, phenibut is a fantastic drug, especially with regards to pro-sociality. It would be great if we could create a shorter lasting, less addicting phenibut. (Maybe a drug can be engineered so that redosing within 12 hours has no effect?)
I think Gabapentin and Lyrica are also more dependence-inducing than alcohol, or at least build tolerance faster to their recreational effects.
L-Theanine is way underpowered compared to alcohol and the other drugs on your list.
Kratom and tianeptine have a different cluster of effects; I don’t think they facilitate socializing and bonding like alcohol does. (Consider the stereotypical image of an opium den vs a bar.)
Kava I haven’t researched much. What are your experiences with it?
GHB comes very close to alcohol in effects, and I’m generally a proponent of replacing alcohol with it on an individual level. Do you have personal experience with it?
I worry the risk of occasional mild discomfort as a result of a very resistible slight addiction isn’t being priced in. To the extent that it’s permanent, even rare consumption would create the problem. Many people assume a sufficient buffer of willpower and habit to keep consumption at sane levels, but disregard the total cost in the long term of having to manage this constraint, compared to the alternative where even the slight addiction is completely absent.
Fwiw I would say I experience occasional mild discomfort as a result of a very resistible slight addiction to alcohol, and this cost is trivial compared to the major downsides (and upsides) of alcohol.
I don’t think alcohol as “social lubricant” is unknown in rationalist circles, but let’s assume it was. Does that new information update the utility of alcohol enough to outweigh the costs? Statistics on this are still very influenced by COVID, but I’ve tried to pull data from 2019 where I could find it easily. This is not exhaustive.
Per NIH[1]:
The Alcohol-Related Disease Impact application estimates that each year there are more than 178,000 deaths (approximately 120,000 male deaths and 59,000 female deaths) attributable to excessive alcohol use
According to 2021 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 21.0% of suicide decedents have blood alcohol concentrations of 0.1% or more
Per NHTSA[2]:
In 2019, alcohol-impaired driving fatalities accounted for 10,142 deaths (or 28% of overall driving fatalities)
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-topics-z/alcohol-facts-and-statistics/alcohol-related-emergencies-and-deaths-united-states
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/813120
The question I’m discussing here is not “is alcohol net good for society?” but “is it good for an individual to drink?”. See the Zvi and Tyler comments for the position I’m arguing against.
(I’m open to the point that alcohol is net negative for society / the world. In fact, I think that’s probably true. Regarding individual outcomes, I think:
Using alcohol is on average bad for individuals.
The average (mean) alcohol outcome is heavily skewed by the really bad ~10% tail, i.e. alcoholics and reckless drunks.
For the other 90% of people, using alcohol is on average good.
Using alcohol is on median is basically a wash.
If you consider only the people that enjoy the effects of alcohol, using alcohol is on median good.)