Drunk Book Summary - Drunk Book explained in key points

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Drunk summary

Name: Drunk
Rating: 4.5 (562 reviews)
Author: Edward Slingerland

Edward Slingerland

How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization

4.5 (562 ratings)

33 mins

Topics

Change & Evolution Social Psychology Culture Anthropology

Table of Contents

Drunk
Summary of 7 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 7

What’s in it for me? Find out why we evolved to get drunk.

It’s happened for millennia. It’s happened across cultures, across geographic regions, and it continues to happen to this day. Humans have poured an immense amount of time, money, and resources into getting tanked, soused, blasted, ruined, hammered, plastered, wasted – or, for the Brits out there, trollied, trousered, and pissed. In short, since time immemorial, people have been getting drunk.

But why? Sure, a cocktail or two is great – it leaves you feeling giddy and sociable, in back-slapping high spirits, ready to befriend strangers, set aside differences, and maybe hand out a few hugs. Add to this a cocktail or two more, though – and your cognitive control becomes impaired, which can lead to incoherency and aggression and vomiting, not to mention bad tattoos. And when we really overdo it, alcohol becomes a force of devastation: we crash our cars into telephone poles, we die of liver damage, we inflict violence on our loved ones.

That brings us to the question we’ll answer in these blinks: Why did we start getting drunk in the first place – and why have we kept it up for thousands of years?

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why impairing the prefrontal cortex helps us get along;
why we probably discovered alcohol before agriculture; and
why people in Italy and Spain have a lower rate of alcoholism.

Why do we get drunk? Hijack or hangover?

So we know that drinking can have devastating effects. Because of this most scientists agree that our taste for alcohol is an evolutionary accident, a sort of misstep on nature’s part, a behavior that has stuck around even though it offers no real benefit to the species.

But why would such a behavior even exist? Well, as you probably know, there are other behaviors like this – things that humans do even though doing them serves no purpose or, in other cases, maybe used to serve a purpose but doesn’t really serve that purpose anymore.

These behaviors fall into two categories: hijacks and hangovers.

Let’s start with hijacks. A hijack is a behavior that reaps a reward that was originally meant to be generated by another behavior. A great example of a hijack is masturbation.

The act of masturbating serves no evolutionary purpose. It’s pleasurable, and it can lead to orgasm, but orgasm evolved to reward an entirely different behavior – sex, which does serve an evolutionary purpose; it’s how we pass our genes down to the next generation and perpetuate the survival of the species. We human beings – clever creatures that we are – figured out that we could hijack this pleasure, that we could have orgasms without engaging in a species-perpetuating behavior.

So that’s what a hijack is. A hangover, in contrast, is a behavior arising from a drive that was once adaptive but isn’t anymore. For example, we love fatty, sugary snacks – things like french fries and potato chips and candy bars: junk food. The jolts of pleasure we get from eating junk food were originally meant to motivate our hunter-gatherer ancestors to go forth and find sustenance. The problem is that, today, you’ll still get those jolts of pleasure from eating sugar and fat, and this might cause you to overindulge even if you’ve got plenty of healthier food at your fingertips. In short, you’re hungover – acting in a way that benefited people thousands of years ago but doesn’t necessarily benefit you.

So – hijack or hangover? Or could our fondness for intoxication best be explained by another theory altogether?

Why do we get drunk? It’s not an accident.

The author, Edward Slingerland, argues that it is not an accident that we continue to get drunk, that it’s neither a hijack nor a hangover. But it’s worth exploring why many scientists think it is and why they’re wrong.

Let’s poke some holes in the hijack argument first. According to this argument, alcohol hijacks our brain’s natural chemical rewards system. We’ve evolved so that when we engage in an activity that is beneficial to our species – like eating a nutritious meal or having sex – our brain rewards us by releasing chemicals, chemicals that we register as pleasure. Alcohol – or so the argument goes – hijacks this system, triggering the release of chemicals that were supposed to be triggered by actions conducive to our survival.

Why do we get drunk? Because our extreme ecological niche imposes unique demands on us.

The only plausible answer is that drinking must benefit our species in some way. And we know that the cost of getting drunk is massive. So the benefits must be even more massive! But what exactly are they?

To move toward an answer, we have to look at the unique survival challenges that humans face. And that means examining our ecological niche. Every species occupies a particular ecological niche, and we humans are no exception, so what is it? Well, it’s the position we occupy in the world relative to other species. It also refers to the methods we’ve devised for maintaining that position. It includes things like how we find food and shelter, and how we deal with other animals and other humans.

Why do we get drunk? It helps us access our community-oriented side.

You’ve probably heard of the prefrontal cortex. Evolutionarily speaking, it’s the newest part of the human brain. It’s the site of rational thinking – which is to say it’s what makes us unique as humans, allowing us to focus on long-term tasks, process complex information, and engage in abstract reasoning. From here on out, I’ll be referring to this invaluable bit of anatomy as the PFC.

OK, but here’s the thing about the PFC. It’s wonderful, we’d be lost without it, but it’s not great for collaboration and creativity, qualities that – as you know – we need in order to occupy our ecological niche. It’s not great because being purely rational, which is what the PFC is all about, often results in being purely selfish.

Why do we get drunk? It helps us be creative.

Getting drunk isn’t the only way to disable the PFC. It can be disabled by many intoxicants. But alcohol is the undisputed king. It’s easy to consume, easy to make, easy to store, easy to dose. It’s also easy for our bodies to break down and eliminate. And as though all those perks weren’t enough, it pairs deliciously with food. What’s more, unlike other intoxicants – like, for instance, cannabis, which usually produces a more introverted high – alcohol promotes extroversion and group cooperation.

Furthermore, it’s biphasal. That means that, at first, it instills a sense of mild euphoria – similar to the effects of cocaine. Then, as blood alcohol levels peak and start to descend, the PFC goes offline. That’s when we stop processing fear and other negative emotions, and we’re less affected by abstract consequences. In other words, we release our inhibitions and let our minds wander.

Why do we get drunk? It enhances social solidarity, which helped early humans build civilization.

So drunkenness drives creativity and creativity drives cultural innovation. That’s great, but what’s an example of this in action? Well, I’ve got a fun one for you. It’s an innovation that’s as old as agriculture itself – well, actually, it might even be a little older than that, but I don’t want to give too much away.

It’s the story of how we discovered beer.

Summary – and why we must approach alcohol mindfully.

So, drinking. Thousands and thousands of years ago, some hapless, apish ancestor of ours discovered the pleasures of drunkenness, perhaps after eating one too many fermented fruits. This was an accident. But the fact that we’ve continued drinking for millennia is no accident at all. Drinking has benefited our species in many important ways. It helped us become creative, communal, and cultural – the three C’s that enable us to occupy our ecological niche. In fact, drinking may have fueled the formation of our ecological niche, both driving the transition to agriculture and easing that transition’s attendant stresses. Since then, it’s helped us access our more playful, emotional, Dionysian side, which is good for community bonding and creativity, the cornerstones of cultural innovation. In short, alcohol has played a complex social and cultural role throughout human history.

And it continues to play this role. However, there’s no denying the harm it can inflict.

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What is Drunk about?

Drunk (2021) is a scientific and historical inquiry into the evolutionary reasons why humans started getting drunk. Drunk examines how inebriation helped our ancestors evolve into creative, communal, cultural beings, and considers whether or not alcohol is an appropriate tool for the modern age.

In the audio version of these blinks, you'll hear "Also Sprach Zarathustra," composed by Richard Strauss, made available under a Creative Commons Attribution license by Kevin MacLeod. Thanks, Kevin!

Who should read Drunk?

Anyone who drinks
People curious about human behavior
Anyone interested in evolution

About the Author

Edward Slingerland is a Canadian-American sinologist and philosopher. He teaches at the University of British Columbia, and his previous books include Trying Not To Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity.

Categories with Drunk

Psychology Society & Culture History

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