If you’ve been following reports in the media recently, you may be a little confused about alcohol and its’ effects. A year ago, the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs published a report on drug harms in the Lancet. They calculated harm scores, to an individual and to society as a whole, and found that alcohol was more damaging than heroin or crack cocaine. And only this week the Royal College of Physicians released a report about alcohol. It provides evidence that our livers need three days alcohol free per week, if we have more than one or two drinks per day. If you drink heavily one evening, you should have a couple of days off before you drink again. From this evidence, it seems that alcohol is bad news.
However, Kate Fox, a social anthropologist based in the Social Issues Research Centre has claimed (in this article for the BBC) that the effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol. She cites evidence that in cultures where alcohol is integrated in to society (such as Spain and France) there are fewer instances of alcohol related disorder than are seen in the UK. She also argues that people can be ‘fooled’ into thinking they’re drunk and acting as if intoxicated, if they’re given a placebo non alcoholic drink they believe to be alcoholic.
Experiments conducted in ‘naturalistic’ settings have found that people can experience some feelings associated with alcohol even when drinking a placebo. A study in Psychological Science has found that at least part of the ‘drunkenness’ we experience is due to expectation. But Bristol University’s Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group run experiments in which people are either given alcohol or a placebo, and they observe that although people cannot tell immediately whether they’ve had alcohol or not, after half an hour they know. The pharmacological effects of alcohol such as cheek flushing and cognitive slowing are not present in those who have been given a placebo, so they can tell they’re not drunk.
But differences between cultures may have some impact on how people react to alcohol. It may be that cultural norms mediate the pharmacological effects of alcohol. Fox believes that governmental warnings about the dangers of binge drinking lead us to believe alcohol will have the disinhibiting effect that we see here in the UK, that might not be seen in other cultures. She claims warnings about the dangers of drinking are too strong. But although culture may exacerbate alcohol’s effects, there are real and important dangers caused by drinking. This is particularly true of binge drinking, but you don’t have to be an alcoholic to put yourself at risk. Liver problems, reduced fertility, high blood pressure, increased risk of various cancers and heart attack are some of the numerous harmful effects of regularly drinking even a little bit above recommended levels (see here for more info). In terms of behaviour, it is accepted that alcohol does increase aggression, aside from the effects of culture, although the mechanisms are unknown. Alcohol affects levels of chemical neurotransmitters in the brain, which in turn affect behaviour, so to say that all behavioural effects are cultural is just as improbable as saying none are.
Although culture may play a part in how alcohol makes us act when we’re drunk, to ignore the pharmacological effects of alcohol is dangerous. Government warnings about the behavioural effects of alcohol may encourage these behaviours to occur, but there is as yet no evidence to support this theory. However, there is ample evidence of real dangers resulting from heavy drinking, and it’s important that the public is aware of them.
NB. This article was written to appear in Bristol University's Epigram magazine (07/11/11)
I think drugs are more harmful than alcohol especially the dmt drug that is the worst one. I have seen a lot of people have lost their precious lives by the dint of it.
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