In a recent interview with Toronto Life, Catherine Paradis, interim associate director of research at the Canadian Centre for Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA), pushed back at critics who claim her organization’s recent recommendation that Canadians limit themselves to no more than two drinks per week for health reasons is “stingy.”

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Peter Shawn Taylor: The many benefits of booze that the scolds ignore Back to video

“People see our recommendations as reducing the fun in their lives. That is not what we are saying — and you shouldn’t need alcohol to have a good time” Paradis said. It seems the perfect encapsulation of public health’s dreary and blinkered world view. In one breath, she denies trying to ruin anyone’s fun and in the next wags a finger at folks whose conception of a good time differs from hers

Whatever medical dangers may arise from moderate drinking (and they are vanishingly small despite the CCSA’s best efforts at hyping the risks), any effort at trying to eliminating social drinking will do far more harm than good for Canadians. In the absence of alcohol, we’ll be sadder, lonelier, less creative and less connected to our community. Sound like fun?

Booze has long played a crucial and highly beneficial role in the human experience. In his wonderful 2021 book Drunk, University of British Columbia philosopher Edward Slingerland charts the role and significance of alcohol from the dawn of civilization — pointing in particular to the 10,000-year-old ruins at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, where archeological evidence suggests early residents discovered how to make beer before they discovered how to bake bread. “There are real functional benefits to alcohol,” he says in an interview. “Cultures that figured out how to use alcohol effectively were able to outcompete cultures that didn’t.”

Alcohol’s functional advantages fit into three main categories, what Slingerland calls the “Three Cs”: creativity, culture and community. By relaxing the brain’s pre-frontal cortex and releasing endorphins, consuming alcohol makes you happier, more creative and more trusting. This can inspire imaginative or unorthodox thinking, a fact long appreciated by poets and vital to any civilization facing obstacles to overcome.

Drinking also facilitates people coming together in co-operative ways. For evidence, Slingerland cites examples ranging from Viking treaty-making to elaborate Pacific Island kava rituals. “Intoxicants allowed humans to overcome the challenges of moving from small to large-scale societies,” he says. “As soon as you see people organizing in any coherent way, there is always alcohol there.”

Booze also plays a significant role in forming culture and identity. The Japanese have their saké, Germans their foamy lagers and Christians their communion rituals. For Canadians, the cultural aspects of alcohol are so ingrained we may overlook them entirely. Yet we instinctively offer wine as a hostess gift, raise our glasses on significant occasions and buy a beer for our competitors at the curling rink.

Alcohol’s pivotal role may go back even farther. Slingerland cites the “Drunken Monkey” theory of evolutionary physiologist Robert Dudley, who claims early primates learned to prefer ripened fruit that had fallen on the ground because it was higher in calories than fruit still hanging on trees. That ground fruit also tended to be fermented added an element of pleasure to this competitive logic.

All these ancient benefits of alcohol remain entirely relevant today, particularly given the toll that loneliness and social isolation exact on modern society. “Alcohol plays a really outsized role in facilitating social bonding among humans,” observes Simon Fraser University epidemiologist Kiffer Card in an interview. If the CCSA’s two-drink weekly limit causes lonely Canadians to stay home more often because they have fewer opportunities to socialize, that “might be causing even greater harms,” he warns.

There’s plenty of academic evidence to back up Card’s claims about the significance of moderate drinking to a healthy social lifestyle. The four best personal habits for avoiding chronic disease in adults, according to a 2020 study in JAMA Internal Medicine, are: avoiding obesity, not smoking, staying active and drinking moderately (up to two drinks per day for women and three for men.) Similarly, last year Danish researchers found “higher psychological well-being in individuals with moderate alcohol consumption.” None of these important findings are reported in the CCSA’s work.

Both Slingerland and Card acknowledge the many obvious disadvantages arising from alcohol abuse, including chronic disease and drunk driving. Of greater significance, however, is the fact its use has persisted for so long despite these well-known risks because the benefits are so very large. Efforts by public health authorities to promote alternative recreational drugs, such as LSD or cannabis, falter in comparison. Alcohol says Slingerland, “is the perfect drug.” It is easy to dose, predictable, fast-acting, short-lived and consistent across users. It also tastes great.

“Nothing else can fill the role played by alcohol,” says Slingerland. “We have had 20,000 years of experience with alcohol. If something else was going to take its place, it would have happened by now.”

Peter Shawn Taylor is senior features editor at C2CJournal.ca, where a longer version of this story first appeared.