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America has an alcohol problem, Kate Julian writes for the forthcoming issue of our magazine. There’s more to her reporting than “Booze is bad”; Kate unravels why humans drink in the first place—and how it’s distinctly American to drink in erratic and contradictory ways. This week, I invited Kate to tell us about how she first became interested in this subject, and what she discovered while reporting.
In a story-idea meeting a couple of years ago, I proposed an article about America’s changing relationship with alcohol. Recent studies suggested that drinking might increase one’s risk of cancer and other health problems, and that Americans’ alcohol consumption had been increasing since around 2000. Over the same period of time, I had noticed alcohol seeping into all sorts of previously alcohol-free spaces—supermarkets, movie theaters, even zoos. The idea seemed straightforward: America had a burgeoning drinking problem.
But the more I looked into the topic, the more confusing I found it. Even as some Americans (especially women) were drinking more, others (especially the youngest adults) were drinking less. As for the finding that alcohol might be worse for us than previously thought, for light drinkers, its effects actually appeared quite small. The topic seemed much too complicated to reduce to a straightforward headline. So I set it aside—until this year, when our literary editor recommended that I read and write about Edward Slingerland’s fascinating new book, Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization.
Slingerland argues that drinking has, over many thousands of years, been adaptive, in large part because it is such an effective social lubricant, and helps people bond with one another. But he also cautions that, when alcohol is consumed alone, its benefits disappear. These ideas tracked with what I’d experienced over the course of the pandemic: I’d consumed wine more often than before, but without friends, I’d found it far less fun. As I reported further on the benefits of social drinking, I learned that light-to-moderate drinkers are psychologically healthier than nondrinkers—not because alcohol is itself good for you, but because drinkers have more friends, and friends make us happy. Many of us, I realized, hadn’t mastered this light-to-moderate drinking. Instead, we tended to take an all-or-nothing approach, either overindulging or renouncing alcohol altogether.
I have come to believe that swinging from one extreme to the other—binge, abstain, binge, abstain—is a particularly American pattern, one deeply rooted in our history. Prohibition is an especially dramatic example of this tendency. Treatment for alcohol-use disorder, which is mostly limited to the 12-step-based all-or-nothing model of total abstinence, is another. Recent fads such as “Dry January” follow in a similar spirit.
As we emerge from a year of relative isolation, those of us who have been drinking too much might want to take a hard look at our habits. But we should also be wary of overly broad renunciations. If moderate drinking in the company of others can help us meet people, make new friends, and bond further with existing ones, especially after a time of intense loneliness, now seems like the worst possible moment to discard it.
America Has a Drinking Problem
A little alcohol can boost creativity and strengthen social ties. But there’s nothing moderate, or convivial, about the way many Americans drink today.
The App That Monetized Doing Nothing, by annie lowrey
Inside the meteoric, chilled-out, totally paradoxical rise of Calm
How to Stop Living in ‘Infinite Browsing Mode,’ by Joe pinsker
The pleasures of commitment are deeper and more satisfying than keeping your options open, the writer and civic advocate Pete Davis argues in his new book.
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How Helicopter Parenting Can Cause Binge DrinkinG, by Caitlin Flanagan
The way some white professionals raise their children is exacerbating an alcohol problem on U.S. college campuses.
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