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A pint sized history of alcohol

Going all the way back to ancient China, there are wine jars dating to 7000 B.C. that show wine was being created from fermented fruit, rice and honey.

In ancient Egypt, there are more signs of the use of alcohol back to 4000 B.C. It seems beer was a staple in the diet, much like bread would be considered later on. It was made in homes daily, and considered one of the foods of life. The Egyptians also learned how to create wines, as depicted on paintings found in the region. The Egyptians worshiped Osiris, one of their gods who represented wine.

In 2,700 B.C. Babylonians appreciated their alcohol, worshiping wine gods and goddesses as they drank and offered up beer and wine.

In India, alcoholic beverages made of rice meal were created and used by the population between 3000 B.C. and 2000 B.C.

On the other side of the planet, Native American carvings show many of their civilizations had alcoholic beverages that were much like the beers of today.

In Britain, 5% proof ales, ciders and mead were the staple drinks of the lower classes from at least the 8th century. This was because of unsafe water supplies contaminated by sewage. The alcohol was regulated and taxed by the church.

The first endemic rise of alcohol "abuse" occurred in the 18th century during the industrial revolution when large numbers of people from rural communities were drawn into urban slums for unskilled labour. This destroyed the lifestyle of the rural classes and the informal social controls and regulations they had developed around alcohol consumption. At the same time new technology was created around alcohol production.

The distillation of juniper berries resulted in 60% proof gin becoming widely available. This was new, experimental and had no historical or cultural regulations of use. Gin became the escapism for the masses living in deprivation and working long hours in factories. From 1700 – 1735 the amount of gin that was taxed rose from half a million to 5 million gallons. This did not include the illicit market of an estimated 50 million gallons. In 1736 the Gin law was passed resulting in riots and a rise in consumption.

The upper classes were being introduced to coffee in the late 1600's and early 1700's. Lloyds coffee houses sprung up and became centres for intellectual discussion, business and famously the introduction of the large insurance market. As people moved away from the depressant effect of daily alcohol use which affected their cognitive abilities to a stimulant drug that increased their powers of concentration the trade market grew.

During the industrial revolution a new social order emerged in order to increase production. Conformity was drilled into the masses as part of an agenda of "betterment". Spiritual reforms, legal reforms and a new civility of behaviour was introduced and adopted by the new middle classes under the temperance agenda. Those who did not conform were by default, unreasonable, unproductive, criminal and spiritually degenerate. Heavy alcohol use was now shameful, weak and showing a lack of control as opposed to a bad habit.

In the early 1900s a similar thing happened in America. Prohibition went into effect, outlawing the sale of alcohol. But the trend didn't last long. It was repealed in the 1930s

In Britain in the 19th century, global trade and domestic chemistry had generated a boom in more exotic intoxicants (Jay 2000) Opium, nitrous oxide, morphine, cocaine and hashish were used on a scale not rivalled in this century.

The Temperance movement

In 1832 Joseph Livesey and seven Preston workingmen signed a pledge that they would never again drink alcohol. Other groups of working men followed the example of Livesey and his friends and by 1835 the British Association for the Promotion of Temperance was formed.

At first temperance usually involved a promise not to drink spirits and members continued to consume wine and beer. However, by the 1840s temperance societies began advocating teetotalism. This was a much stronger position as it not only included a pledge to abstain from all alcohol for life but also a promise not to provide it to others.

One of the most important figures in the temperance movement was the Catholic priest, Theobald Matthew, who persuaded thousands of people in Ireland to sign the pledge. Members of the British Women's Temperance Association were also responsible for persuading men to promise never again to drink alcohol. The Band of Hope, a temperance organisation for working class children that had been founded in Leeds in 1847, also helped to increase the number of teetotalers.

Quakers and members of the Salvation Army also played an active role in trying to persuade the House of Commons to pass legislation to restrict the sale of alcohol. In some parts of Britain public houses were forced to close on Sundays and permission was rarely granted to allow new ones to open. The National Temperance Federation that was formed in 1884 became closely associated with the Liberal Party, whereas the Conservative Party tended to support the interests of the drink trade.

Nonconformists were very active in the temperance movement. By the 1870s most of the young ministers abstained from alcohol. A survey in 1886 of 1,900 Baptist ministers revealed that 1,000 were total abstainers. Another study during that period showed that 2,500 out of 3,000 Congregational ministers had signed the pledge. It has been estimated that by 1900 about a tenth of the adult population were total abstainers of alcohol.

George Cruikshank, Life in London (1821)

In How the Poor Live George Sims explained why he was a supporter of the Temperance Society (1889)

Drink is the curse of these communities; but how is it to be wondered at? The gin-palaces flourish in the slums, and fortunes are made out of men and women who seldom know where tomorrow's meal is coming from.

Can you wonder that the gaudy gin-palaces, with their light and their glitter, are crowded? Drink is sustenance to those people; drink gives them the Dutch courage necessary to go on living; drink dulls their senses and reduces them to the level of the brutes they must be to live in such places.

The gin-palace is heaven to them compared to the hell of their pestilent homes. A copper or two, often obtained by pawning the last rag that covers the shivering children on the bare floor at home, will buy enough alcohol to send a woman so besotted that the wretchedness, the anguish, the degradation that await her there have lost their grip. The drink dulls every sense of shame, takes the sharp edge from sorrow, and leaves the drinker for awhile in a fools' paradise.

The offspring of drunken fathers and mothers inherit not only a tendency to vice, but they come into the world physically and mentally unfit to conquer in life's battle. The wretched, stunted, misshapen child-object one comes upon in these localities is the most painful part of our explorers' experience. The country asylums are crowded with pauper idiots and lunatics, who owe their wretched condition of the sin of the parents, and the rates are heavily burdened with the maintenance of the idiot offspring of drunkenness.

In 1891 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence began work as a social worker in a working-class area of London. She wrote about her experiences in her book My Part in a Changing World.

Drunkenness was extremely common... It seemed for many the only refuge from depression and misery. The effect of drunkenness upon the ordinary relationship of husband and wife, parents and children, was disastrous. There was a woman whose husband used to knock her about badly when in drink. But he went to the Mission Hall in the district, was converted and signed the pledge. All went well for some time until she again turned up with several bruises. "Oh, Mrs. Smith, has your husband taken to drink again?" She replied: "Oh, no, that was another lady what done that! Since my husband went to the Misson Hall, he ain't like a husband at all - he is more like a friend!"

There was a particular point of view with regard to wife-beating. A friend of mine was once walking along the street and she passed a woman with a black eye. At the same time two other women passed, and one of them remarked: "Well, all I can say is, she is a lucky woman to have a husband to take that trouble with her." Another woman who had gone through a similar experience remarked: "Well, it ain't pleasant to be knocked about, but the making-up is lovely."

Treatment

In America in the 1930's Dr William Silkworth was the first to develop a treatment programme for alcoholics. He believed addiction was an innate allergy unique to certain individuals.

William Wilson was one of his patients – he didn't succedd with Dr Silkworth but instead combined Silkworths ideas with the Calvinist temperance movements' and founded the Alcoholics Anonymous fellowship in 1935. "God and disease became fused in a promise that adherence would ensure cure through a divine and personal revelation." (Harris 2005)

In Europe drug and alcohol treatment has liberalised but still concentrates on the so called innate psychological and physical need for substances without reference to social context (Alexander and Hathaway 1996)

Research shows drug and alcohol users only receive sympathetic responses if they are trying to change.

As a result they have become adept at telling workers what they need in order to get the service they require.

Today many eminent researchers are aware that putting addiction into a social context is highly unpopular.

"It does not take long for a psychologist or social scientist working in the addiction field to discover that he or she is treading on religious ground and that science and salvation like oil and water don't mix" (Alan Marlatt 1983)

Short term Alcohol effects.

Alcohol affects the brain like an anaesthetic. In fact, one of the very first anaesthetics ever used in medicine – ether – is based on alcohol.

As with anaesthetics, the more alcohol taken the more of our brain it shuts down.

The abilities we acquire last in life, like controlling our behaviour, are the first to be lost.

The abilities we acquire first in life, like being able to breathe, are the last to go.

The stages of intoxication

Stage 1 – A social lubricant

After one or two drinks (1-3 units), we're more talkative and our heart rate speeds up a little, giving us an 'up' feeling. This is the effect that people refer to when they say alcohol makes them feel more sociable. The 'warm feeling', or flushes, is caused by alcohol in the blood making small blood vessels in the skin expand, allowing more blood to flow closer to the surface and lowering blood pressure at the same time.

Stage 2 – Tipsy

After a couple more drinks (4-6 units) we feel light headed and our co-ordination and reaction times are impaired. Our ability to make decisions is also slowed down. All of these effects are caused by alcohol acting on nerve cells all around the body and making them work more slowly. Driving will be illegal (and dangerous) and operating machinery a bad idea.

Stage 3 – Drunk

Another few drinks (7-9 units) and most people will show definite outward signs of alcohol's effects. Reaction times are much slower, vision becomes blurry and speech is slurred. Drinking more than eight units at a time seriously overloads the liver. If we take care of ourselves in the days to come, it should repair itself but for tomorrow a hangover is pretty much guaranteed.

Stage 4 – Legless

Drinking more than 10 units has most people staggering about the place. Accidents are commonplace – as are fights caused by bumping into people who're easily upset by such things. This amount of alcohol will be affecting cells all over the body. In an effort to rid itself of the poison, the body tries to pass the alcohol out mixed with water in our urine. This is why alcohol makes us go to the loo a lot and is the cause of the dehydration that gives us morning-after headaches. Alcohol also attacks the gut, causing stomach upsets, heartburn, sickness and diarrhoea.

Stage 5 – Unconscious or dead

Drinking more than 30 units ( about twelve pints of strong lager) is enough to knock most people out. From there, it's a short step to heart failure and breathing slowing to a stop. Even when people are already unconscious, alcohol in the stomach can continue to be absorbed and can reach lethal levels. People can also be sick and suffocate on their vomit.

For these reasons, it's crucial never to leave very drunk people on their own.

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