Caught Up In a Vice

I read an article today preaching the dangers that alcohol poses to human health on a global scale, which suggested that the World Health Organization consider issuing some sort of mandate attempting to reign in the problem. According to the article, American alcohol consumption is relatively mild at an average 9.4 liters of ethyl alcohol per year (about two bottles of wine a week). However, in places like Moldova, the average is twice that, and people - beginning at age 16 - consume on average the equivalent of a bottle of wine every other day. Factoring in all causes of death that pass a laugh-test connection with alcohol consumption (including, e.g., cardio-vascular diseases, auto accidents, violence), the article opines that alcohol causes more deaths and represents a greater threat than any other factor to the human condition, including obesity and cigarettes. The kicker on the article is the suggestion that there should be an international convention on alcohol regulation, under which the problem can be addressed.

I'm sure you're not surprised to find that I think it's all a bunch of horseshit.

Humanity has been getting drunk since before the dawn of recorded time. Although the earliest chemically-confirmed beer traces (from Iran) are only about 3,300 years old, safe to say that man was drinking the sauce long before then. The consensus oldest surviving work of literature ever discovered is the Epic of Gilgamesh, circa 2100 BC. A central plot element is King Gilgamesh having to deal with Enkidu, who's causing problems for the good people of Uruk because - among other reasons - he's hammered. The oldest human residential site discovery by archaeologists is Jericho, near the West Bank, which dates back almost to the Holocene era, or about 11,000 years. Evidence suggests that the residents of Jericho were drinking beer at least 6,000 years ago. Some of the earliest non-literary written materials we've discovered include beer recipes and beer trade records. Some of the earliest religous records we've discovered, a Sumarian poem honoring the goddess Ninkasi, contains a beer recipe.

All in all, safe to say that man started brewing the brew about twenty minutes after he figured out how to use a container to store liquids. And we've been using containers to store liquids for a long time. Makes sense too: don't really need to find (or - ultimately - build) containers to store WATER. Why bother. That shit is everywhere. Build your hut by a river and you've got an endless supply. Booze, on the other hand, is worth holding on to.

This trend his persisted through the ages. Ever wonder why the cultivation of grains is so widespread in the world? Beans are just as nutritional and at least as easy to grow. Beans are also much MUCH easier to get from the field to the table, since the hulling process - google it - is relatively easy for beans, and much more difficult for grains. But fermenting grains gets you beer. Fermenting beans just gets you soy sauce or miso. Think it's coincidence that people have always leaned towards grains?

Most people don't realize that when Dr. Louis Pasteur was looking for a way to keep liquid foods from spoiling (pasteurization), he wasn't looking for a way to keep MILK fresh. Incidentally, his method of keeping beer fresh by heating it to kill the bacteria - perfected by Pasteur in 1862 - was being used in simpler form by the Chinese to keep wine fresh as early as the 12th Century, and had spread to Japan by at least as early as the 16th Century. Moving forward through history, see if you can separate the development of industrial refrigeration from alcohol production. 'Cuz you can't. Ideas to keep things cold were certainly there, but it was the need to make and distribute booze that got the ideas off the drawing boards.

People can (and will) talk endlessly about divinity and about angels meeting apes. But for my money, the desire for and act of intoxication is the second-most significant driving force in human social, economic, and scientific development, behind only armed conflict. And this extends far beyond alcohol, of course. Ever heard of the pharmaceutical company Merck? It spent 160 years as an uremarkable family-owned store-front pharmacy in Darmstad before they isolated morphine and started industrial production in 1827. They've done some other things since then. How about the beverage company Coca-Cola? Early (1886) recipes really had only three primary ingredients: water, cocaine, and caffeine. They did okay as a business. On the whole, does this trend really seem like something that you're going to have any success in halting?

Any attempt to reign in man's desire for and act of intoxication with booze is destined for failure or disaster. It's not going to work, except to help build empires for certain families (specifically including those with names like 'Kennedy' and 'Roosevelt.') If it does work, it just means that people are going to turn to even less healthy methods to meet the desire for and act of intoxication. Islam bans intoxication from fermented products. Think it's a coincidence that Muslim regions have been the world capital of opium production since the 7th Century, including (much later) recreational use? (The Koran, by the way, was developed and written from about 611 to 632.)

Of course, there is no cure for stupid, and no lack for either recycling of old ideas, or for crusaders wanting to save us all from ourselves. But how about if we try to focus on scaling back things we have a prayer on? Alcohol use (which somebody, somewhere will inevitably describe as ABuse, regardless of how moderate it might be) is part of the human condition. It predates metalworking ferchrissake, and is a lot more fun for the user. There's nothing the WHO might say or do that's gonna make even a little bit of difference.