Alcoholism Is Not an Accident

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There are enough disadvantages to drinking that there really needs to be very meaningful benefit. But those benefits have not been adequately explored until until now. Alcohol is actually, in many ways, the uber intoxicant. And it's because it has definite advantages s as a social drug. Its an interesting cultural moment for this, because the reputations of cannibus and other hallucinatons have really been meaningfully rehabilitated.

Do we have alcohol to thank for civilization? The answer, according to Edward Slingerland’s new book, “Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization,” is a resounding yes. Edward, who’s a professor at the University of British Columbia and self-proclaimed “philosophical hedonist,” says that far from being an evolutionary fluke, our taste for alcohol is an evolutionary advantage — one that we’ve relied on for millennia to help us lead more social, creative, and pleasurable lives.