10 ms·

I hate to be That Guy Who Argues With Everything, but I will. I'm a big fan of Huxley and Brave New World, but he wasn't particularly visionary with Soma. Dr

I hate to be That Guy Who Argues With Everything, but I will. I'm a big fan of Huxley and Brave New World, but he wasn't particularly visionary with Soma. Drug use goes back as far as humankind does because people have been trying to cope with the stress of life since there have been people. If you're looking for a drug that helps with the anxieties of everyday life, alcohol would have my vote. It's been used for thousands of years, for better or worse. Alcohol use comes with lots of problems, of course, but that doesn't stop it from being the socially acceptable drug of choice. As for Valium, it seems odd this article even makes a big deal about it. Valium (and benzodiazepines in general) aren't prescribed as much these days because of their addictive potential. Their spike of popularity came and went in a few decades, roughly 1960-1980. Benzos are still popular in illicit use, but a key point of Soma was that it wasn't illicit---it was sanctioned by the state.

Alex3917 7y ago
> Valium (and benzodiazepines in general) aren't prescribed as much these days because of their addictive potential. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/01/25/688287824/steep-climb-in-benzodiazepine-prescribing-by-primary-care-doctors https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/01/25/6882878... What were the prescription rates in the 60s?
- flatline 7y ago
  Ridiculously high. A quick search reveals that: > After about ten years on the market, Valium had been prescribed to 59.3 million patients [0] The US population in 1970 was about 200 million. A significant portion of the adult US population took valium at some point during the 60s/70s. [0] https://www.valiumaddiction.com/history-of-v.htm https://www.valiumaddiction.com/history-of-v.htm
  - Alex3917 7y ago
    Interesting. The NYT says 59.3 million prescriptions, not patients. [0] If so the number of patients would presumably be significantly lower, since it is in fact addictive. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/01/archives/article-16-no-title-americans-are-spending-almost-half-a-billion.html https://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/01/archives/article-16-no-ti...
    - flatline 7y ago
      Interesting that the numbers are the same, I think it’s just coincidence, they are measuring different things on different time scales. It peaked in 1978 with several billion pills being dispensed in a single year. I had a psych professor that said that 70% of US adults were on Valium at some point during the 70s. Anecdotal but I think it’s in the right ballpark.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    Ridiculously high. Ridiculously high because they were touted as safer alternatives to the then popular barbiturates. Benzos are safer, it just turns out that benzos also have not-so-great long-term effects.
- drongoking 7y ago
  I'm genuinely surprised. Maybe it's just for psych ailments (e.g. anxiety) that use has declined. > the biggest rise in prescriptions during this time period was for back pain and other types of chronic pain. Now I'm doubly surprised. Some benzos have muscle relaxant properties but I've never heard of them prescribed for pain. (I've never experienced benzo withdrawal but I've heard it claimed to be as bad as opiate withdrawal.)
  - Alex3917 7y ago
    > Some benzos have muscle relaxant properties but I've never heard of them prescribed for pain. Back pain is thought to be mostly psychological, so it makes sense. Also, if you have minor tears or congenital defects in tissue around your spinal cord then anxiety can cause inflammation, which can then cause your spinal fluid to push against your actual spinal cord and cause all sorts of problems. (Or something like this, I'm not a doctor but that's the basic idea.)
    - misterman0 7y ago
      >> Back pain is thought to be mostly psychological Do you have a credibility source to back that up?
      - Cougher 7y ago
        I'm very skeptical of this. A common claim that's long been floated around the medical community, most recently in the "evidence-based" medical community, is that if there isn't a hard test for a condition, then it's psychosomatic. It's an arrogant and abusive conclusion that's also ironic: we don't have a diagnostic test to prove it, so the cause is something that also doesn't have a diagnostic test.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        It does sound a bit like archaeology and ascribing religious purpose to any structure or artifact we cannot identify as something else.
shams93 7y ago
What is interesting is that the same family owned company that created oxycontin also created valium originally. Amazing to think of how much damage one family owned business has done (Purdue Pharma) to an entire nation.
- rtpg 7y ago
  As someone who has had to deal with restrictions on other drugs I need to function, I’m always a bit reticent to go full in on “this drug is evil” narratives. Is Oxycotin particularly addictive in itself in ways it could otherwise not be? Or is this about general painkiller addiction plus the pharmaceutical company taking advantage of this to push it out too much? In other words, is there a way to tackle this problem that doesn’t cut access for people who actually need this stuff?
  - unixhero 7y ago
    Who needs that stuff?
    - Infinitesimus 7y ago
      People with severe, chronic and often debilitating pain for one
    - tim58 7y ago
      I'm not sure about Oxycotin specifically, but people in severe pain generally should receive medication to alleviate it. I've had severe burning. Pain medication greatly reduced the amount of suffering that occurred.
      - wp381640 7y ago
        The newer formulations - especially those that are slow release and combined with naloxone, are fine and have their use. The problem is the 20+ years of overprescribing straight up plain and crushable oxycontin that for a time was better than heroin
  - 7y ago
nostrademons 7y ago
Yeah, Huxley was writing almost a century after the Opium Wars, which managed to reduce the greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts within a few decades. Laudanum (10% tincture of opium) was extremely common within the late 19th and early 20th century Anglo-American world. The reason soma continues to resonate in literature is because it reflects fundamental truths of how the world works. Huxley didn't create or predict the pill-popping epidemic, he had a rich tapestry of former pill-popping epidemics to draw on.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- claudeganon 7y ago
  >the Opium Wars which managed to reduce the greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts within a few decades. This too sounds familiar... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-22/deadly-chinese-fentanyl-is-creating-a-new-era-of-drug-kingpins?utm_source=url_link https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-22/deadly-ch...
  - nostrademons 7y ago
    Yup. There's a certain irony how, a century and a half after Britain and the U.S. managed to reduce the greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts and trigger a civil war and the fall of the empire, the rump state of that civilization is now reducing the new greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts, triggering the fall of its empire and a potential civil war.
    - roenxi 7y ago
      There is a really interesting tension in the world of propaganda - I see it in the modern Hong Kong situation. The better job the propagandists do of minimising Tienanmen for example the more likely China is to get Tienanmen-like protests again. From that perspective, Western democracies have really struggled to assimilate their long history of toppling other nations and benefiting from their resources into the cultural framework. That probably leaves a vulnerability to being toppled in the same way.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
While it post-dates BNW my friends and I often joked that Rollerball was the first (film) reference to MDMA. Mind you the party scene wasn't a rave but the dancing and the touch sure make a good case for ecstasy.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
Valium isn't prescribed as much because it's off patent and the drug reps don't ply doctors to make sales for the competition.
narag 7y ago
Also there's a very important difference: Soma is described as non-addictive, no hangover. It's a way to control society but keeping it productive at the same time. Any drug that causes "epidemics" that result in death or defeating from work would be useless. You can argue that it's enough that most people keep working though, even if a fraction gets trashed. Edit: if anything, social media or other addictive distractions are more like soma.
- Mijka 7y ago
  Just to build up on previous comment and yours, "social media or addictive distractions" is also a thing known for a long time. "Panem et circenses" is a known latin expression about providing to the masses the 2 biggest basics (food and entertainement) to appease it, sometimes used to show a decline.
  - steverb 7y ago
    Or you could just say "bread and circuses" which is the common english idiom.
    - agustif 7y ago
      He was making a point about the oldness of the saying though, putting it in it's original latin helps deliver his point I guess
  - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    SOcial MediA... Hmm
  - QuanticSausage 7y ago
    It seems to me that the direct translation is "bread and circus".
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dominotw 7y ago
Is the name soma based on the hindu soma [1] by any chance? I alwawys wondered but never got a chance to find out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(drink) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(drink)
- drongoking 7y ago
  Yep. Huxley was heavily into Hinduism. "The original soma, from which I took the name of this hypothetical drug, was an unknown plant (possibly Asclepias acida) used by the ancient Aryan invaders of India in one of the most solemn of their religious rites." (_Brave New World Revisited_, Aldous Huxley)
  - dominotw 7y ago
    thank you.
newnewpdro 7y ago
Caffeine, not alcohol, is by far the most socially acceptable drug of choice. Alcohol's definitely #2 though.
- elil17 7y ago
  While caffeine is technically a drug, it's just very different than alcohol and other drugs. People can go to work, spend time with family, and even make important life decisions without caffeine getting in the way. The same is not true for alcohol, cocaine, meth, etc. (Nicotine is similar, I imagine, though I've never actually used it)
  - IggleSniggle 7y ago
    I dunno. I think it's whatever society will tolerate. It used to be pretty common in America to drink on the job. Plenty of folks worked/work and do cocaine. Heck, Freud was a huge cocaine addict, and he's still widely celebrated for his stim-induced work!
    - elil17 7y ago
      I guess my opinion comes mostly from my own experience (friends/family on coke/meth have lead to problems in my life). I’d be glad (but surprised) if that was not most peoples experience
      - IggleSniggle 7y ago
        To be clear, I think alcohol, cocaine, and even caffeine do cause significant stressors on a life, to varying degrees and in different ways. They just aren't mutually exclusively with being highly productive in any given field. Alcohol may be better aligned with physical labor, where there's some benefit from not noticing as much when you hurt + adrenaline spikes as it wears off. Cocaine probably aligns better with writing, when word vomit helps get something down that can later be edited. Neither has a particularly great track record with living a happy life. Sometimes taboo makes it worse than it needs to be, though. An addiction, treated as a crime, leads to an even more desperate addict.
oska 7y ago
> Drug use goes back as far as humankind does because people have been trying to cope with the stress of life since there have been people. I do not think the second half of your statement is true. Certainly there was drug use in hunter/gatherer societies but it was mostly shamanistic/ritualistic use, not 'stress relief'. The example that you give of alcohol only really came on the scene with the advent of farming, which remains a small fraction of the history of humankind.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  Wikipedia claims 10,000 to 5,000 years BC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_drink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_drink So you’re potentially correct, though we don’t know if fermentation was used earlier, either intentionally or opportunistically.
- Nursie 7y ago
  > Certainly there was drug use in hunter/gatherer societies but it was mostly shamanistic/ritualistic use, not 'stress relief'. Can we really say this? Are we sure that finding a patch of 'those' mushrooms wouldn't have just meant party time? We know that (for instance) animals seem to seek them out...
  - oska 7y ago
    Ok, I just did a bit of searching for studies on hunter-gatherer use of drugs. This paper [1] supports my characterisation of being mostly for shamanistic/ritualistic use. And this paper [2] suggests that drug use also had medicinal benefits. But that is from a modern hunter-gatherer society that has undoubtedly been influenced by outside societies (indeed the drug they smoke has been imported from another continent), so I'm not sure how indicative of pre-historic hunter-gatherer use it is. Where I remain dubious is the assertion that drugs have always been used for 'stress relief'. My feeling is that stress - as we understand it - was not something much experienced by hunter-gatherer societies. [1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140512155025.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140512155025.h... [2] https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/wsu-wrs052915.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/wsu-wrs05291...
raxxorrax 7y ago
I think there is a difference to the common drug consumption in the past. People believe psychotropic drugs to be medicine since they have or had a subscription. True in some cases, but the awareness of using a drug is different. People also take them not only to cope, but to help them learning, sleeping, concentrating... That goes beyond traditional use in my opinion. Plus, access to these drugs is much easier than in the past and taking them has become trivially normal. It is also the first weapon to deployed if some kids are deemed to be unruly. Nobody would think of giving them alcohol however.
buboard 7y ago
> have been trying to cope with the stress of life since there have been people Did they? Alcohol was associated with feasts - not particularly stressful situations. Alcoholism , OTOH has a ~50% genetic contribution.
- tapland 7y ago
  > Alcohol was associated with feasts Was it now? Alcoholic beverages were seen as a nutritious (!!!) staple food from it's discovery until recently. It was also the only thing to drink in areas that lacked clean water (and one cared about avoiding it). And yes, people have been trying to deal with people since there were people. And people have always been stressful.
  - mywittyname 7y ago
    Alcohol has a ton of calories, it's cheap & easy to make, and keeps really well. The fact that it takes the edge off is just a bonus. Even without the effects of alcohol, beer is the perfect food for feeding slaves and soldiers.
  - noelwelsh 7y ago
    Adding to this, it was common to drink very low alcohol beer, called small beer. It was usually below 1% alcohol, so very different to beer or wine that people typically drink these days.

Alex3917 7y ago

> Valium (and benzodiazepines in general) aren't prescribed as much these days because of their addictive potential. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/01/25/688287824/steep-climb-in-benzodiazepine-prescribing-by-primary-care-doctors https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/01/25/6882878... What were the prescription rates in the 60s?

flatline 7y ago
Ridiculously high. A quick search reveals that: > After about ten years on the market, Valium had been prescribed to 59.3 million patients [0] The US population in 1970 was about 200 million. A significant portion of the adult US population took valium at some point during the 60s/70s. [0] https://www.valiumaddiction.com/history-of-v.htm https://www.valiumaddiction.com/history-of-v.htm
- Alex3917 7y ago
  Interesting. The NYT says 59.3 million prescriptions, not patients. [0] If so the number of patients would presumably be significantly lower, since it is in fact addictive. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/01/archives/article-16-no-title-americans-are-spending-almost-half-a-billion.html https://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/01/archives/article-16-no-ti...
  - flatline 7y ago
    Interesting that the numbers are the same, I think it’s just coincidence, they are measuring different things on different time scales. It peaked in 1978 with several billion pills being dispensed in a single year. I had a psych professor that said that 70% of US adults were on Valium at some point during the 70s. Anecdotal but I think it’s in the right ballpark.
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  Ridiculously high. Ridiculously high because they were touted as safer alternatives to the then popular barbiturates. Benzos are safer, it just turns out that benzos also have not-so-great long-term effects.
drongoking 7y ago
I'm genuinely surprised. Maybe it's just for psych ailments (e.g. anxiety) that use has declined. > the biggest rise in prescriptions during this time period was for back pain and other types of chronic pain. Now I'm doubly surprised. Some benzos have muscle relaxant properties but I've never heard of them prescribed for pain. (I've never experienced benzo withdrawal but I've heard it claimed to be as bad as opiate withdrawal.)
- Alex3917 7y ago
  > Some benzos have muscle relaxant properties but I've never heard of them prescribed for pain. Back pain is thought to be mostly psychological, so it makes sense. Also, if you have minor tears or congenital defects in tissue around your spinal cord then anxiety can cause inflammation, which can then cause your spinal fluid to push against your actual spinal cord and cause all sorts of problems. (Or something like this, I'm not a doctor but that's the basic idea.)
  - misterman0 7y ago
    >> Back pain is thought to be mostly psychological Do you have a credibility source to back that up?
    - Cougher 7y ago
      I'm very skeptical of this. A common claim that's long been floated around the medical community, most recently in the "evidence-based" medical community, is that if there isn't a hard test for a condition, then it's psychosomatic. It's an arrogant and abusive conclusion that's also ironic: we don't have a diagnostic test to prove it, so the cause is something that also doesn't have a diagnostic test.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        It does sound a bit like archaeology and ascribing religious purpose to any structure or artifact we cannot identify as something else.

shams93 7y ago

What is interesting is that the same family owned company that created oxycontin also created valium originally. Amazing to think of how much damage one family owned business has done (Purdue Pharma) to an entire nation.

rtpg 7y ago
As someone who has had to deal with restrictions on other drugs I need to function, I’m always a bit reticent to go full in on “this drug is evil” narratives. Is Oxycotin particularly addictive in itself in ways it could otherwise not be? Or is this about general painkiller addiction plus the pharmaceutical company taking advantage of this to push it out too much? In other words, is there a way to tackle this problem that doesn’t cut access for people who actually need this stuff?
- unixhero 7y ago
  Who needs that stuff?
  - Infinitesimus 7y ago
    People with severe, chronic and often debilitating pain for one
  - tim58 7y ago
    I'm not sure about Oxycotin specifically, but people in severe pain generally should receive medication to alleviate it. I've had severe burning. Pain medication greatly reduced the amount of suffering that occurred.
    - wp381640 7y ago
      The newer formulations - especially those that are slow release and combined with naloxone, are fine and have their use. The problem is the 20+ years of overprescribing straight up plain and crushable oxycontin that for a time was better than heroin
- 7y ago

nostrademons 7y ago

Yeah, Huxley was writing almost a century after the Opium Wars, which managed to reduce the greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts within a few decades. Laudanum (10% tincture of opium) was extremely common within the late 19th and early 20th century Anglo-American world. The reason soma continues to resonate in literature is because it reflects fundamental truths of how the world works. Huxley didn't create or predict the pill-popping epidemic, he had a rich tapestry of former pill-popping epidemics to draw on.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
claudeganon 7y ago
>the Opium Wars which managed to reduce the greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts within a few decades. This too sounds familiar... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-22/deadly-chinese-fentanyl-is-creating-a-new-era-of-drug-kingpins?utm_source=url_link https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-22/deadly-ch...
- nostrademons 7y ago
  Yup. There's a certain irony how, a century and a half after Britain and the U.S. managed to reduce the greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts and trigger a civil war and the fall of the empire, the rump state of that civilization is now reducing the new greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts, triggering the fall of its empire and a potential civil war.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    There is a really interesting tension in the world of propaganda - I see it in the modern Hong Kong situation. The better job the propagandists do of minimising Tienanmen for example the more likely China is to get Tienanmen-like protests again. From that perspective, Western democracies have really struggled to assimilate their long history of toppling other nations and benefiting from their resources into the cultural framework. That probably leaves a vulnerability to being toppled in the same way.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

While it post-dates BNW my friends and I often joked that Rollerball was the first (film) reference to MDMA. Mind you the party scene wasn't a rave but the dancing and the touch sure make a good case for ecstasy.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

Valium isn't prescribed as much because it's off patent and the drug reps don't ply doctors to make sales for the competition.

narag 7y ago

Also there's a very important difference: Soma is described as non-addictive, no hangover. It's a way to control society but keeping it productive at the same time. Any drug that causes "epidemics" that result in death or defeating from work would be useless. You can argue that it's enough that most people keep working though, even if a fraction gets trashed. Edit: if anything, social media or other addictive distractions are more like soma.

Mijka 7y ago
Just to build up on previous comment and yours, "social media or addictive distractions" is also a thing known for a long time. "Panem et circenses" is a known latin expression about providing to the masses the 2 biggest basics (food and entertainement) to appease it, sometimes used to show a decline.
- steverb 7y ago
  Or you could just say "bread and circuses" which is the common english idiom.
  - agustif 7y ago
    He was making a point about the oldness of the saying though, putting it in it's original latin helps deliver his point I guess
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  SOcial MediA... Hmm
- QuanticSausage 7y ago
  It seems to me that the direct translation is "bread and circus".

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dominotw 7y ago

Is the name soma based on the hindu soma [1] by any chance? I alwawys wondered but never got a chance to find out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(drink) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(drink)

drongoking 7y ago
Yep. Huxley was heavily into Hinduism. "The original soma, from which I took the name of this hypothetical drug, was an unknown plant (possibly Asclepias acida) used by the ancient Aryan invaders of India in one of the most solemn of their religious rites." (_Brave New World Revisited_, Aldous Huxley)
- dominotw 7y ago
  thank you.

newnewpdro 7y ago

Caffeine, not alcohol, is by far the most socially acceptable drug of choice. Alcohol's definitely #2 though.

elil17 7y ago
While caffeine is technically a drug, it's just very different than alcohol and other drugs. People can go to work, spend time with family, and even make important life decisions without caffeine getting in the way. The same is not true for alcohol, cocaine, meth, etc. (Nicotine is similar, I imagine, though I've never actually used it)
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
  I dunno. I think it's whatever society will tolerate. It used to be pretty common in America to drink on the job. Plenty of folks worked/work and do cocaine. Heck, Freud was a huge cocaine addict, and he's still widely celebrated for his stim-induced work!
  - elil17 7y ago
    I guess my opinion comes mostly from my own experience (friends/family on coke/meth have lead to problems in my life). I’d be glad (but surprised) if that was not most peoples experience
    - IggleSniggle 7y ago
      To be clear, I think alcohol, cocaine, and even caffeine do cause significant stressors on a life, to varying degrees and in different ways. They just aren't mutually exclusively with being highly productive in any given field. Alcohol may be better aligned with physical labor, where there's some benefit from not noticing as much when you hurt + adrenaline spikes as it wears off. Cocaine probably aligns better with writing, when word vomit helps get something down that can later be edited. Neither has a particularly great track record with living a happy life. Sometimes taboo makes it worse than it needs to be, though. An addiction, treated as a crime, leads to an even more desperate addict.

oska 7y ago

> Drug use goes back as far as humankind does because people have been trying to cope with the stress of life since there have been people. I do not think the second half of your statement is true. Certainly there was drug use in hunter/gatherer societies but it was mostly shamanistic/ritualistic use, not 'stress relief'. The example that you give of alcohol only really came on the scene with the advent of farming, which remains a small fraction of the history of humankind.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Wikipedia claims 10,000 to 5,000 years BC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_drink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_drink So you’re potentially correct, though we don’t know if fermentation was used earlier, either intentionally or opportunistically.
Nursie 7y ago
> Certainly there was drug use in hunter/gatherer societies but it was mostly shamanistic/ritualistic use, not 'stress relief'. Can we really say this? Are we sure that finding a patch of 'those' mushrooms wouldn't have just meant party time? We know that (for instance) animals seem to seek them out...
- oska 7y ago
  Ok, I just did a bit of searching for studies on hunter-gatherer use of drugs. This paper [1] supports my characterisation of being mostly for shamanistic/ritualistic use. And this paper [2] suggests that drug use also had medicinal benefits. But that is from a modern hunter-gatherer society that has undoubtedly been influenced by outside societies (indeed the drug they smoke has been imported from another continent), so I'm not sure how indicative of pre-historic hunter-gatherer use it is. Where I remain dubious is the assertion that drugs have always been used for 'stress relief'. My feeling is that stress - as we understand it - was not something much experienced by hunter-gatherer societies. [1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140512155025.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140512155025.h... [2] https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/wsu-wrs052915.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/wsu-wrs05291...

raxxorrax 7y ago

I think there is a difference to the common drug consumption in the past. People believe psychotropic drugs to be medicine since they have or had a subscription. True in some cases, but the awareness of using a drug is different. People also take them not only to cope, but to help them learning, sleeping, concentrating... That goes beyond traditional use in my opinion. Plus, access to these drugs is much easier than in the past and taking them has become trivially normal. It is also the first weapon to deployed if some kids are deemed to be unruly. Nobody would think of giving them alcohol however.

buboard 7y ago

> have been trying to cope with the stress of life since there have been people Did they? Alcohol was associated with feasts - not particularly stressful situations. Alcoholism , OTOH has a ~50% genetic contribution.

tapland 7y ago
> Alcohol was associated with feasts Was it now? Alcoholic beverages were seen as a nutritious (!!!) staple food from it's discovery until recently. It was also the only thing to drink in areas that lacked clean water (and one cared about avoiding it). And yes, people have been trying to deal with people since there were people. And people have always been stressful.
- mywittyname 7y ago
  Alcohol has a ton of calories, it's cheap & easy to make, and keeps really well. The fact that it takes the edge off is just a bonus. Even without the effects of alcohol, beer is the perfect food for feeding slaves and soldiers.
- noelwelsh 7y ago
  Adding to this, it was common to drink very low alcohol beer, called small beer. It was usually below 1% alcohol, so very different to beer or wine that people typically drink these days.