Sovereign Synthesis

The ultimate abolition of power monopolies must necessarily entail the elimination of all legal restrictions on alcohol and a relaxed, non-stigmatic attitude toward drinking, regardless of age. Would this likely lead to a society full of out-of-control drunks? Hardly! Alcoholism is least common in cultures wherein alcohol is least taboo – even to the point of kids being taught to drink from a young age.

“Italians, like Jews, are a group whose members tend to drink and to have low rates of alcohol problems. The attitudes and behaviors of Italians in the United States are a reflection of those in Italy, where children are introduced to alcohol as part of their regular family life and learn to drink moderate amounts while still young. In both countries, alcohol is commonly drunk with meals and is considered a natural and normal food. Most people agree that alcohol in moderation, for those who choose to drink, is necessary, and that abuse is unacceptable and results in immediate sanctions. People are not pressured to drink, and abstention does not offend others; drinking reflects sociability and social cohesion rather than a means to achieve them. Very few people drink for the physiological effect, and most people take alcohol for granted, with no mixed feelings or uncertainty about it.” Hanson, D.J., “The United States of America,” pp. 300-315 in Heath, D.B., ed., International Handbook on Alcohol and Culture, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1995, p. 309.

“In Italy, in contrast to America, drinking is institutionalized as part of family life and dietary and religious custom; alcohol (wine) is introduced early in life, within the context of the family, and as a traditional accompaniment to meals and a healthful way of enhancing the diet. Drinking is not, as it is in America, associated with transformation of status from adolescence to adulthood; alcohol use is not an illicit activity for Italian youth; and heavy, consistent use of alcohol in Italy does not carry with it the same `problem’ connotation that it does in America. Such an approach to the socialization of alcohol use should make it less likely in Italy than in America that drinking will be learned as a way of trying to solve personal problems or of coping with inadequacy and failure.” Jessor, R., et al., “Perceived Opportunity, Alienation, and Drinking Behavior Among Italian and American Youth,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1970, Vol. 15, 215-222 (quote pp. 215-216).

“Clearly, alcohol is not placed in a separate moral category in the Spanish cognitive map but rather constitutes one class of beverages among others, all of which are sold in the same establishment and generally have some degree of association with food consumption. Martinez and Martin (1987, p. 46) well summarize the integral position of alcohol in Spanish culture: `The consumption of alcohol is [as] integrated into common behaviors as sleeping and eating.’” Rooney, J.F., “Patterns of Alcohol Use in Spanish Society,” pp. 381-397 in Pittman, D.J., and White, H.R., eds., Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns Reexamined, Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, New Brunswick, NJ, 1991, pp. 382-383.

“[Chinese-Americans] drink and become intoxicated, yet for the most part drinking to intoxication is not habitual, dependence on alcohol is uncommon and alcoholism is a rarity…. The children drank, and they soon learned a set of attitudes that attended the practice. While drinking was socially sanctioned, becoming drunk was not. The individual who lost control of himself under the influence of liquor was ridiculed and, if he persisted in his defection, ostracized. His continued lack of moderation was regarded not only as a personal shortcoming, but as a deficiency of the family as a whole. Barnett, M.L., “Alcoholism in the Cantonese of New York City: An anthropological study,” pp. 179-227 in Diethelm, O., ed., Etiology of Chronic Alcoholism, Charles C Thomas, Springfield, IL, 1955.

“The protective social processes [that put the Jew in a special lifelong relationship with alcohol] are as follows: (1) association of alcohol abuse with non-Jews; (2) integration of moderate drinking norms, practices, and symbolism for oneself and significant others during childhood by means of religious and secular ritual; (3) continual reiteration of moderate drinking through restriction of most primary relationships to other moderate drinkers; and (4) a repertoire of techniques to avoid drinking more than one wants to drink amid social pressure.” Glassner, B., and Berg, B., “How Jews Avoid Alcohol Problems,” American Sociological Review, 1980, Vol. 45, 647-664 (quote p. 653).

“In the Jewish culture the wine is sacred and drinking is an act of communion. The act is repeated again and again and the attitudes toward drinking are all bound up with attitudes toward the sacred in the mind and emotions of the individual. In my opinion this is the central reason why drunkenness is regarded as so `indecent’–so unthinkable–for a Jew.” Bales, R.F., “Rates of Alcoholism: Cultural Differences,” Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 1946, Vol. 6, 480-499 (quote p. 493).

“Jewish alcohol socialization practices virtually duplicate the five conditions that are correlated cross-culturally with nonabusive drinking patterns and low rates of alcoholism.” Zinberg, N.E., “Alcohol Addiction: Toward a More Comprehensive Definition,” pp. 97-127 in Bean, M.H., and Zinberg, N.E., eds., Dynamic Approaches to the Understanding and Treatment of Alcoholism, Free Press, New York, 1981, p. 111.

“…drinking itself cannot cause the many problems associated with alcohol, since orthodox Jews clearly demonstrate that virtually every member of a group can be exposed to drinking alcoholic beverages without suffering from drinking pathologies. Drinking norms, along with socio-cultural ritualism, are instituted early for the orthodox Jew. Alcoholic consumption, while occurring frequently and regularly throughout the Jew’s lifetime, is closely related to social and religious ritual, which in turn provides the substance for his cultural lifestyle.” French, L., and Bertoluzzi, R., “The Drunken Indian Stereotypes and the Eastern Cherokees,” pp. 15-24 in Hornby, R., ed., Alcohol and Native Americans, Sinte Gleska University Press, Mission, SD, 1994, p. 17 (citing Snyder, C., Alcohol and the Jews, Free Press, Glencoe, IL, 1958).

“…The Protestant fundamentalist churches, which have no culturally defined role for alcohol, i.e., those which advocate abstinence, have the highest probability rate for drinking pathologies. Of these groups, the southern Baptists have the highest drinking pathology probability rate. The probable reason for this is that they isolate attitudes toward drinking from other inhibitory and controlling aspects of the personality…. [These conditions] necessitate that drinking be learned from dissident members of the group or members of other groups who may suggest and reinforce utilitarian drinking attitudes.” French and Bertoluzzi, “The Drunken Indian Stereotypes,” p. 17.

“With the Irish, the treatment is tried–and untrue. All his life the kid has been hearing of the evils of the drink, and how his loving mother suffered at the hands of his rotten father because of it. And, at the end of the threnody, `Ah, but it’s in the blood, I guess.’ [After the boy gets drunk] the wrath of God descends. The priest comes into the house. He makes it clear that what you have done is worse than the violation of a vestal virgin. The mother of the house sobs quietly. The old man, craven, orders another beer at the corner saloon…. If a system has been devised to produce a confirmed alcoholic to exceed this one in efficiency, I know it not.” McCabe, C., The Good Man’s Weakness, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1974, pp. 31-32.

“It is consistent with Irish culture to see the use of alcohol in terms of black or white, good or evil, drunkenness or complete abstinence.” Vaillant, G.E., The Natural History of Alcoholism, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1983, p. 226.

“Clearly, it is within the cultural context that genetics and familial considerations of Indian alcoholism become meaningful. Not only was distilled alcohol unknown to this group prior to white contact, severe controls administered by the federal government through the General Indian Intercourse Act (1832-1953) denied American Indians the opportunity to establish acceptable drinking norms. Given this situation, subcultural, deviant drinking norms emerged to fill the therapeutic void alcohol seems to offer. And since a de facto policy of enforced abstinence still prevails in Indian/white interaction these deviant drinking patterns continue to the present.” French, L., “Substance Abuse Treatment Among American Indian Children,” pp. 237-245 in Hornby, R., ed., Alcohol and Native Americans, Sinte Gleska University Press, Mission, SD, 1994, p. 241.

“The major colonial powers exported to those areas of the globe that fell under their control not only models of drunken behavior but also a host of beliefs about the effects of alcohol on human beings. It may be that the widespread belief in alcohol as a disinhibitor is nothing but an ethnocentric European folk belief foisted on subject peoples around the world during the heyday of colonialism.” Marshall, M., “`Four Hundred Rabbits’: An Anthropological View of Ethanol as a Disinhibitor,” pp. 186-204 in Room R., and Collins, G., eds., Alcohol and Disinhibition: Nature and Meaning of the Link (Research Monograph No. 12), U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Rockville, MD, 1983, p. 198.

“…the Italian samples, as expected, had wine most frequently for their first drink, more than twice as often as the Boston sample.” Jessor, R., et al., “Perceived Opportunity, Alienation, and Drinking Behavior Among Italian and American Youth,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1970, Vol. 15, 215-222 (quote p. 217).

“Most of the sample first tasted wine, and nearly the entire sample report that most drinking in their parents’ homes involved wine….Our interviewees tend to drink only a glass or two of wine when they do drink, and they tend to view wine as quite apart from intoxicating alcohol, indeed as almost nonalcoholic.” Glassner, B., and Berg, B., “How Jews Avoid Alcohol Problems,” American Sociological Review, 1980, Vol. 45, 647-664 (quote p. 657).