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Great summary, sounds like an interesting book about a guy I know almost nothing about.
I've heard some arguments that alcoholism actually has a strong and also long-lasting culturally inheritable and transferrable component, though to some extent the genetics also come into play (as a point of fact I think the evidence gets stronger every year on the genetic side, I see 60% bandied about). The social and cultural and even historical side is more fun to talk about of course. It's also hard to totally disentangle these perspectives, including evolutionary one's. One illustration: it's easy to forget that early colonists had very, very potent alcohol, and actually boozed it up a LOT themselves at the time. Native Americans only had access to weaker, allegedly often ceremonial beers (had some form alcohol like literally every human society). But strength of alcohol is not everything. I've seem some claims for example that even how violent you get while drunk is often intertwined with cultural and societal expectations more so than actual biology, though some tendencies in certain people are hard to miss. There are definite patterns that seem to occur with drinking, such as binge drinking, anxiety drinking, drinking alone, purely social drinking, and more, some of which are not possible with certain alcohols. As a nondrinker myself, not even once (religious reasons), some of the context is a bit inscrutable to me, though others might say this is actually a helpful lack of personal bias. And to be perfectly honest, though I appreciate alcohol has a sometimes helpful social role, overall I just look at the people whole lives are ruined by it and I can't really say I think it's a good trade, in a vacuum, when we weigh the pros and cons. Like, if alcohol didn't exist, and I said "hey so I'd like to introduce this thing which is pretty fun and helps socially for 70% of people, 20% won't touch it, and 10% will become alcoholics, I don't think I'd make that trade, would you? I'm not really an abolitionist for practical reasons, but I certainly sympathize.
As an aside, from a culture war perspective, it's pretty interesting that Native American Indians drinking way, way too much is actually not at all a taboo in the way some other negative minority group traits are. Though maybe this author considers it to be. And some really interesting factoids about ethnic theories in sports over the years.
Pete Brown claims, in Man Walks Into a Pub, that at Burton Abbey c. AD 1000, that the daily allowance for each monk was one gallon of strong ale and one gallon of weak ale.
I wonder what the life expectancy there was.
How did they avoid passing out and sleeping through Matins?
Nine liters of liquid daily doesn't sound realistic for any value of ABV down to zero.
Maybe gallons were smaller back then.
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This sounds reasonable. Russia, the UK, Japan all expect you to get absolutely smashed when you're out drinking and your inability to control your intoxication is seen as your personal failing. Whereas, say, Germany or Georgia have a more healthy attitude of "we've gathered here to have good fun together and if we let one of us get sloshed and make a fool of himself it's our common failure", which results in both different approaches to the drinking in general (different drinks and different rituals) and to the management of individual members that can't hold their liquor.
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