At the Belhaven pub, Dundee, near the fireplace
I am nine days into a dry January. We all seem to be rethinking alcohol these days, and that can only be a good thing. But, speaking only for myself, I don’t think the time has come for me to give up alcohol.
A lot of ink has been spilled of late after the Powers That Be reversed course and told us that even light drinking has no health benefits. Most of what has been written, though, has a one-size-fits-all tone and seems to forget three important things.
The first thing is that, genetically, one size does not fit all. There are genetic differences in how people metabolize alcohol. This is a little complicated, but it’s worth understanding. The differences have to do with how quickly a certain enzyme cracks apart the alcohol molecule, and how quickly a different enzyme detoxifies the cracked-apart byproduct.
The second thing is that, genetics aside, we are all very different. How old are we? How healthy are we? How stressed are we? Do we tend more toward bad habits, or more toward good habits? When we drink, what do we drink, and how much?
These are all factors that change throughout our lives. The day probably will come when, at a certain age, I will stop drinking because of my age, just as I have realized that, because of my age, I should drink less. Consider Queen Elizabeth II. Her doctors advised her, at the age of 95, to stop having her evening cocktail. She was 96 when she died. I seriously doubt that alcohol shortened her life or impaired her health, even though, on average, Britain, like most countries, has a big drinking problem.
The third thing is that alcohol is an institution. Institutions provide social glue. Alcohol as an institution has many forms — a glass of champagne at a celebration, a pint at a pub with a friend, wine with dinner, cocktails at a reception. The growing of grapes and the making of wine are an art as well as an economic institution, as is the making of fine whiskey and the brewing of beautiful ales. Pubs are a social institution of which I highly approve. These institutions are ancient. People have been making alcohol for at least 10,000 years. Even the most important of Christian sacraments requires wine.
The genetic mutation that allows humans (and some other primates) to efficiently metabolize alcohol was definitely a good thing. That mutation occurred about 10 million years ago, and it allowed our ancestors to eat fallen fruit that had started to ferment. Other fruit-eating animals can metabolize alcohol — birds, for example. Dogs are not fruit-eating animals, and they don’t have the mutation. Bees, because they consume nectar, can metabolize alcohol, and to do it they use the same enzymes as humans.
In short, for humans and some other animals, it would be perfectly correct to think of alcohol as a kind of food, even though it’s an optional food and clearly not something that we can make a diet of.
As for my dry January, my goal is January 25, not January 31. That’s because January 25 is Burns Night, an annual Scottish institution (with toasts!) that I’ve been happy to adopt. Burns Night marks the death of Robert Burns, January 25, 1759. Burns was only 37 when he died. But I don’t think it was alcohol that did him in.