Notable links, questions for you
Will alcohol ever go the way of the cigarette?
Hello all,
Could future generations turn away from alcohol, the way that tobacco has faded so drastically in recent decades? This is a reasonable question on the face of it, considering all the skeptical energy being directed toward alcohol: varieties of moderation, sober-curiosity, quit-lit, dry January, a booming non-alcoholic drinks industry (which I love… see below), governments modifying drinking recommendations downward, etc. But when I was asked about this topic in an interview not too long ago, I realized that I was skeptical. There’s some evidence that human alcohol use dates back to 7,000 BCE. In contrast, while tobacco has relatively deep cultural roots, the machine-rolled cigarette only dates to the 19th century. Alcohol use is woven more deeply into our society. Any changes here are unlikely to match the dramatic decline seen in tobacco use.
I had an interview about this question that stuck with me for a while. I used to do a better job of sending out “latest news” like this on my newsletter more regularly, and they do lead to good questions, so here—without further fanfare and after a quick scan of my brain and inbox (apologies to any I’ve missed)—are some links from the past months that I thought could be worthwhile. Interesting? Let me know.
That interview about the place of alcohol in society was part of a larger piece reported by folks at the Australian Broadcasting Company.
Back in April, I had a chat with the excellent Awais Aftab of Psychiatry at the Margins. We talked about the complex and often ambiguous nature of addiction, the importance of not thinking ahistorically (i.e., not blindly applying our current explanatory models onto past eras), routes into interdisciplinary perspectives of addiction, and the concept of recovery.
I received a kind mention in a year-end reading list on JSTOR Daily, the magazine of the academic publisher, which in a fun twist was penned by the inimitable Morgan Godvin, who some of you will know for her writing and advocacy about drug policy and harm reduction.
I also chatted with Elise Loehnen as part of a lovely series on addiction (other interviewees included Holly Whitaker, Maia Szalavitz, and Carrie Wilkens, and I heartily recommend the whole series). For my part, we talked a lot about addiction supply industries and the broader social forces influencing our understandings of will, responsibility, and self-control.
Years after COVID (and the Omicron wave in particular) put the kibosh on any in-person events for my book launch, I finally had a lovely launch event at Salted Books in Lisbon, with the brilliant Susana Moreira Marques. The NY Times calls her work an “example of the best contemporary Portuguese writing available in translation.” Read her.
I mentioned non-alcoholic drinks so let me sneak in a little recommendation. My favorite these days is Vera Ginø, which is technically sold as a “non-alcoholic gin” but in reality tastes orders of magnitude better than the actual alcoholic drink. Do you really want something that tastes like actual gin? I’ll pass. Vera is from Slovenia but you’ll see it around on websites and in local stores.
Finally, let me play with these Substack features a bit. I'm always curious about and surprised by who's on the other side of the screen. How many of you work in fields related to mental health? Clinicians, counselors, and otherwise. I know from your notes that there are a few, but let’s try a poll.
As usual, you can always hit reply and write back to this newsletter to be in touch. Always great to hear from you. ‘Till next time.
This is very interesting, thank you for sharing it. I found the ABC podcast to be a fascinating discussion. It is interesting to wonder if, in 50 years, we'll be scratching our heads that drinking was ever so normalized as it is today (you could drink on a plane? they served wine at baby showers??). What I really appreciated was your discussion of the unhelpfulness of thinking of alcoholism as a binary thing. AA has been very helpful to me over the past year even though my story is nowhere near the extremes that are described in the Big Book or in meetings. But, I find that AA has a more nuanced view of alcoholism than it initially appears. Most of the discussion is about thought patterns - and I readily relate to those - rather than to how "far down" you have gone. I find a common thread in how people think about alcohol, relate to it, come to depend on it, even with a wide variation in the level of adverse consequences they experience.
This raises a question for me, which some of your links might help me answer (but I'll put it here anyway in case someone reading is inclined to answer): Are cigarettes more addictive, or at least more universally addictive, than alcohol?
I have never smoked, because I am from a generation that doesn't smoke. (I was, relatedly, raised in school on the idea that Just One Cigarette would--not just could, but WOULD--addict you for life.) I know a ton of people older than me who smoked when they were younger, who now never ever smoke at all - I'm not sure I've met more than one or two people in my life who would say something like, "Well, I have a cigarette a couple times a month, but overall I don't smoke anymore." There doesn't seem, in my little piece of the culture, to be any kind of pseudo-sober approach to cigarettes. You're smoking all day or you're not smoking at all.
While alcohol addiction/consistently poor control over alcohol habits has certainly affected people in my life, the vast majority of people I know who drank a lot in their youth, including me, now drink occasionally, almost never to excess, and have reduced their alcohol consumption over time with relatively little effort. The thought "Eh, I'd like to drink less" is followed, for myself and most people I know, with... just drinking less. By contrast, I have never known someone to say, "I'll take it down from 5 cigarettes a day to 1 and hold the line there" - it's always cold turkey. They always swear if they had just one they'd be back to their old habit immediately.
So my question is: Are there way more casual/occasional smokers than I'm aware of? Is there actually some difference in the substances here, where cigarettes addict a way bigger proportion of people who use them than alcohol, to the point that cold-turkey is the only option for most smokers in a way it isn't for most drinkers? Or is this just a cultural difference, where casual/occasional nicotine use is actually totally possible, we've just been hammered with the idea that total abstinence is necessary in a way we haven't yet been with alcohol?
Thanks for the no-alcohol gin rec, by the way!