Science Advocacy
Science Advocacy
The Internet Wants to Know:
In short: it truly depends on … You.
An artist, a science fiction writer, a heavy metal guitarist, a surgeon, a mad scientist, or your local FedEx delivery driver will have different perspectives towards alcohol indulgence. Your family physician wouldn’t recommend his patients or you drinking large amounts of alcohol, because physicians witness and treat the physical and mental illnesses related to alcohol abuse. On the other hand, there is published literature showing that alcohol has been prominent in the lives of highly creative people including artists, writers, and musicians. However, from a toxicological perspective, this issue is often raised as a question of whether there is a specific “dose” of alcohol that could clearly delineate the line between the adverse and beneficial effects on a person’s overall health and wellbeing – but there isn’t a single dose that balances those effects for every person.
From a scientist’s perspective, alcohol is a challenging drug to study because it tickles a wide range of receptors in the nervous system, and there are strong individual differences in how different brains (or neural circuitries) respond to alcohol. From a neuropsychologist’s perspective, alcohol is difficult to describe in context of psychoactive experiences, because an individual’s response to alcohol depends to a great extent on their “mindset” and “setting” (or environment). When drunk, one will act differently when winning beer pong competition at a friend’s party versus watching “The Wolf of Wall Street” at home while sipping on Scotch.
From a cultural angle, drinking is often used as a “social lubricant” to foster interaction and fellowship. As you might know, in Russian culture excessive drinking is a sign of masculinity among men. This strong cultural practice has led to a high number of early deaths among Russian men, which is mainly due to alcohol overdose, especially vodka. However, in many European cultures, drinking small amounts of alcohol during business parties is socially acceptable and it’s perceived as rude if you don’t drink with your boss. Of course, the threshold of the dose of alcohol measured in social settings varies from culture to culture.
Physiologically, the effects of alcohol are clearer: there’s plenty of evidence that alcohol use increases the risks of liver cirrhosis, many cancers, and stroke. A study performed in 2009 by Naomi Allen, a scientist from University of Oxford in England, investigated the relationship between moderate alcohol consumption and the incidence of breast cancer in women. Allen’s group recruited 1.3 million women in the United Kingdom and tracked their alcohol consumption for over 7 years. Dr. Allen and her colleagues showed that the risk of breast cancer is increased by 12% with each extra 10 g of alcohol/day (10 g = 1 drink). Overall, these investigators attributed about 11% of all observed cases of breast cancer to alcohol. Additionally, there are the societal costs of booze: heavy drinking is generally seen as destructive and often causes social havoc in form of broken families, addiction and violence. In 2016, over ten thousand people were killed in DUI accidents. Furthermore, studies show that there is a consistent relationship between alcohol use and violent behavior.
However, some medical findings have been supportive of positive effects of alcohol. A study reported in 1997 by Micheal Thun, an epidemiologist from the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, recruited roughly half a million subjects – both men and women – and showed that alcohol consumption in moderation is associated with a reduction in overall mortality. There was a 16% reduction in death rate in drinkers vs. nondrinkers in men and a 15% reduction in mortality in women. So, even though alcohol increases the incidence of cirrhosis, cancer and stroke, counterintuitively, alcohol consumption in moderation may actually decrease overall mortality. This could be explained simply that happier people live longer – alcohol use in moderation may be a stress reducer: If you go to a tavern, drink with friends, and discuss your problems, and let off steam, you are less likely to be depressed. It could also be that people who drink in moderation exercise moderation in other areas of their lives as well, such as exercise and consumption of healthy food. However, Micheal Thun notes that these findings should be interpreted carefully. An important caveat of this study was that the research participants were middle-aged/elderly and from middle and upper-middle social classes – and socioeconomic status can profoundly affect health outcomes.
There is a small but intriguing body of literature on the relationship between alcohol and creativity, and some studies investigating the link between alcohol consumption and creativity contend that alcohol might provoke creative thoughts, new insights or even serve as an agent of “mystical transport.” Indeed, anyone who has observed a drunk person knows how “creative” alcohol can make folks. A brief survey reveals that amongst writers, heavy users of alcohol include F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and Charles Bukowski; of artists, there were Edvard Munch, Mark Rothko, Picasso; and of musicians, there were Billie Holiday, the booze-loving Lynyrd Skynyrd members and the AC/DC singer – Bon Scott.
This raises questions such as would F. Scott Fitzgerald be able to write “The Great Gatsby” without being inspired by attending all those wild parties involving booze? Or, if the band members of Lynyrd Skynyrd were able to come up with the song “Whiskey Rock-A-Roller, if it weren’t for their fondness for Jack Daniels?
Of course, it’s not always gold records and great American novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald was notorious for his heavy drinking, and he died at an early age from alcohol-related conditions. We would have probably heard more AC/DC albums on a scale of “Back in Black,” if Bon Scott did not tragically overdose on alcohol.
If we were to give alcohol a scorecard, there would certainly be more negative marks because of the massive evidence regarding the effects of alcohol on public and individual health. However, artistic and clinical attitudes towards alcohol consumption certainly differ. In the words of Paracelsus (the 16th century “father” of toxicology): it is the dose that makes the poison.
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References:
Alcohol and creativity:
Beveridge & Yorston. Journal of the Royal Society of medicine 1999
Post. Br J Psychiatry 1996
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Alcohol intake and breast cancer in women:
Allen et al. JNCI 2009
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Alcohol and cancer:
Rehm et al. Lancet 2009
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Alcohol and mortality:
Thun et al. NEJM 1997
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Statistics for DUI:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/2016-may-go-down-as-one-of-the-worst-years-for-drunk-driving-deaths/
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Alcohol and aggression:
https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh25-1/12-19.htm
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Alcohol and masculinity in Russian men:
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Socioeconomic status and health:
Adler et al American Psychologist 1994
