“False Ideas” About Alcohol

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30568, 10 October 1964, Page 1

“False Ideas” About Alcohol

“There is really only one valid reason for drinking any form of alcohol, and that is enjoyment. If it is not enjoyed, it is likely to have harmful, even disastrous, effects,” says a new Health Department free pamphlet, “The Uses and Abuses of Alcohol.”

“The following ideas about alcohol are pretty widely held, but they are all false,” ■says the pamphlet. “1. ‘You can’t come to any iharm if you stick to beer.’ “This is not true. What does the harm, is the alcohol, not the fluid it is diluted with. You only have to drink a little more beer than whisky to become an alcoholic. “2. ‘Mixing drinks is harmful.’ “Again this is a mistaken idea. What matters is the amount of alcohol one drinks, not the form in which one drinks it. It is true that at a party where drinks are mixed freely, more than the average amount of alcohol is likely to be drunk; but it is the quantity that matters. “3. ‘Alcohol is a stimulant.’ "This is not so. Alcohol dulls thought and judgment. Because it dulls our judgment, it sometimes leads us to think that we have been livened up and are doing better than usual. “4. ‘Alcohol is a food.’ “Only very small amounts of alcohol can be used by the body as food. Large amounts interfere with the absorption of certain essential vitamins

and can cause serious diseases of the nervous system. “5. ‘Drinking makes men jolly.’ “It doesn't. It will make some men jolly, but it will make the morose man sadder and more disagreeable. A sound rule is never to drink when alone and feeling desnondent and depressed. “6. ‘Alcohol makes men beasts.’

“It doesn't. It may bring out the beastliness which lurks in any of us. but alcohol does not put anything into the individual personality which was not already there: it only unmasks us. “Probablv the best way to enjoy alcoholic drinks is to serve them with meals. Alcoholic drinks, if enjoved. aid digestion and add to the pleasure of a meal.

“Not everybody enjoys alcohol, however; the alcoholic may actively dislike the taste of alcohol. But sometimes people who do not really enjoy alcohol feel a necessity to pretend to enjoy it or to cultivate a taste for it. “The reason is that we have surrounded the drinking of alcohol with a whole lot of myths and customs, some absurd. Many people, for instance, regard the offering of alcoholic drinks as the greatest hospitality they can show. If somebody refuses the offer of a drink, they interpret this as a refusal of their hospitality and often become offended.

“People who feel this way are. as a rule, kindly and hospitable by nature. It would not occur to them to attempt to persuade others to eat food they disliked or which might harm them.

“Those who have no problem with alcohol themselves do not always understand that it can be very far from kind to persuade someone else to take a drink. The alcoholic knows he must not take that first fatal drink, but he may be fighting an intense cravihg to take it. “It does not require any

particular wit or cleverness to get drunk oneself, but there are some who think it funny to trap another person into getting drunk: to lace drinks at a party or put much less ‘water with it’ than their guest wishes. It’s not really funny to trap people into losing control of themselves.”