Attitudes Toward Drinking

Many alcohol specialists believe that attitudes about alcohol and drinking are at the very core of our present alcohol problems. In effect, our "stupid thinking" about beverage alcohol contributes to our national "stupid drinking." Myths about alcohol still prevail -- that everyone drinks; that drinking is sophisticated, that drinking is an essential part of a happy and successful life; that alcohol improves thought, physical coordination, and social performance; and that "boozing" is a necessary ingredient of masculinity. Until such faulty perceptions are modified, efforts at promoting a more responsible approach to alcohol use are not likely to succeed.

While a majority of Americans drink (an estimated 56% to 63%), a significant minority abstains from alcohol. There is strong disagreement about the significance of alcohol in terms of use and non-use. Such conflict between the closely coexisting value structures of permissiveness and abstinence generates a considerable degree of confusion and mixed feelings regarding alcoholic beverages and their effects upon human behavior, health, and society.

There is no consensus of opinion on the goodness or badness of drinking. There is no standard of moderation or agreement as to what constitutes responsible drinking. There are no strict controls for social use of alcohol or against abuse of alcohol. We often laugh at drunks who overdose on alcohol, but we rarely think that the person who has overdosed on sleeping pills or who has had a psychotic reaction to LSD is funny.

Although heavy use of alcohol in combination with escape drinking--the use of alcohol to escape "reality" often sets the stage for problem drinking, many Americans tend to associate large consumption with manliness, admire the individual who can hold his or her liquor, and largely approve of escape drinking when confronted with personal problems. Out of one side of our mouths we warn our children not to drink, and we sip a cocktail out of the other side. And when junior gets "bombed" on booze, we thank God that he was not involved with dope or one of those hard drugs.

Although national prohibition ended a half century ago, the temperance movement, prohibition, and repeal may have been responsible for a number of emotional legacies that contribute to our present alcohol problem.

• Drinking is immoral. It is disapproved by many churches and often linked with gambling and illicit sex.
• Nice women do not drink. The alcoholic female, therefore, is to be commended more so than the alcoholic male
• At one time, the sale of alcoholic beverages was illegal, but many people broke the law. Perhaps this is a factor in the continuing disrespect for drinking laws today.
• The federal government once said that buying beverage alcohol was illegal. Now the government permits such purchases. Does the government really know what is best for its citizens?
• All drinking is the same. Therefore, little or no distinction is made between alcohol use and alcohol abuse. Many people do not recognize any differences among various drinking patterns, such as social drinking, occasional excessive drinking, progressive excessive drinking, and chronic alcoholic drinking.
• The alcoholic will eventually lose his or her job, his or her family, and self-respect, and will end up as a skid-row bum. The stereotype of the alcoholic as a "down-and-out" was born, and now we fail to detect the alcoholic in the early stages of problem drinking because the individual still has a job and family.

Such moralistic and contradictory overtones create a good deal of confusion about what is acceptable drinking behavior. Some experience uncomfortable feelings about drinking and not drinking

In a society marked with such mixed feelings and cultural ambivalence--the perception of both positive and negative aspects occurring in the same thing at the same time--many alcohol-related problems, including alcoholism, are likely to exist. The contrasting and often contradictory nature of our attitudes and practices regarding alcohol become apparent in several areas of concern.

• The different moralities of alcohol use as reflected in different religious denominations. "Drinking is evil." "Alcohol is a fit of God."
• the varying reactions of individuals to inebriation; These range from horror and contempt to admiration and hilarity.
• the conflict over the major focus in alcohol education; Shall it be abstinence, moderation, or alcoholism?
• the crazy-quilt pattern of government laws and college regulations--many of them unenforceable--regarding purchase and consumption of alcohol; After 20 states lowered the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 years during the 1970's, several reimposed higher legal drinking ages by 1983. Such action was taken in response to the sudden increase in the number of drunken teenagers and young adults involved in fatal auto accidents. Then, in 1984, the U.S. Congress, in effect, adopted a national drinking age of 21 by pressuring states to increase their minimum drinking ages or risk the loss of federal highway funds. Each state still determines the hours during which beverages can be sold, and sets standards for granting permits to distributors, sellers, and even bartenders. And most states, as well as the federal government increase the "vice tax" on booze when expenditures require additional revenues. Prohibition sentiment lives on in our age of affluence and permissiveness.
• the confusion as to the nature of alcoholism; It is variously described as a disease, a lack of willpower, a form of self-indulgence, a basic personality defect, a personal health problem, and a socio-legal problem.
• the difficulty in reducing public intoxication; The standard procedure of arrest, jailing, and release, followed soon by the re-arrest, jailing, and release of the same person (the so-called "revolving-door routine") does not appear to reduce the incidence of public intoxication or alcoholism. Such punitive measures will not give way to medical treatment and rehabilitation until society perceives chronic alcoholism as a health problem and as a drug problem and begins to treat it as such.

In this ambivalent, drinking society, with its mixed feelings about alcohol use and non-use and the many contradictions regarding drinking behavior, everyone appears to "do his or her own thing" with relation to beverage alcohol. Could such highly prized diversities in attitudes and practices actually promote the self-destructive and antisocial use of alcohol prevalent in America today?

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