In a preceding post (‘So Much Pleasure, So Much Joy’ – Jan 18, 2013) I pointed to recent ‘scientific’ brain studies explaining the mechanisms of pleasure in alcohol. Even without these sophisticated studies, our shared beliefs and rituals have already taught us that alcohol intoxication provides fantastically pleasant feelings. But we now have impressive science to confirm this is not a ‘myth’ but real pleasure – a biological, biochemical, basic brain buzz.
I suggested we may do well to conduct our own studies. I have done so for years now. The original stimulus for these was reading stuff written by a Norwegian psychiatrist, Hans Olav Fekjaer, in the last millennium. His review of the science about brain pleasure suggested that I should question my assumptions and faith in wonderful alcohol effects. My experience until then was nearly 100% in favour of the idea that alcohol provided that beautiful biochemical buzz. And every drinking occasion seemed to confirm the fact. Even after reading Fekjaer’s critical reviews of evidence, my subjective perception or experience did not change. Or rather, it did not change for quite some time. The series of incremental discoveries, after the initial lull, was stimulating indeed.
I was hoping I’d manage, through that previous post, to induce at least one or two people to embark on the voyage of personal scientific enquiry. So far, I have no indication that I succeeded. I shall therefore set out some of the findings of my own enquiries, begun in the previous century. The main question was whether I was enjoying alcohol as a kind of ‘placebo’. (By placebo I mean the ability of even ‘sugar pills’ – when suitably dressed up – to have impressive effects on patients who think they are taking ‘real’ medicine.) The factors underlying fun and pleasure in alcohol are far more complex than the placebo pill effect.
One result of my own experiments so far: alcohol in small or moderate amounts is, at best, boring. But company of people consuming small or moderate amounts is pretty good fun. Alcohol in larger amounts is decidedly unpleasant. And company of people consuming large amounts is, at best, utterly boring – and most of the time too unpleasant to endure.
My individual discovery may be at variance with the experience of most of the alcohol consuming population. And it clearly clashes with recent, technically advanced experiments that show brains lighting up with pleasure when exposed to alcohol in the right concentrations. Should I conclude that my experimental methods were flawed and have led me to wrong conclusions?
I have been very inspired by your work and also by those blog posts you mention. Before I started questioning the alcohol norm and the Western alcohol culture, and along with it – thanks to largely your work and the work of the think tank FAKE FREE – my own way of talking about a lifestyle free from alcohol, I actually went through a “self-experiment” in terms of setting out a life free from animal products.
As I started studying in the university I also decided to live more ascetic and so I chose to quit consuming animal products. As a matter of fact I managed the transition pretty well. The hardest moments were those when I would pass the street vendors of Kebab (or what is called “Döner” in German). They smelled so delicious and the smell reminded of the wonderful times during high school when we would go and eat Döner a couple of times per week. So, my mind produced those positive memories when I smelled Döner in the first half a year or so of being a vegan.
However, I never looked back and never stopped to buy a Döner.
And today the same smell makes me feel nauseous. No temptation anymore. No wonderful memories. Only pictures suffering animals in my mind; pictures of disgusting meat production processes; images of nature and climate destruction because of the meat industry… My mind got trained to associate different things to the same smell, and the same image.
And I think the alcohol norm and the extremely present alcohol culture in the Western world do the same: they manage to condition children and young people to associate positive thoughts and feelings with alcohol – keeping us locked in this harmful, intoxicating culture because it is so diffict to “break out” and start questioning it.
Thank you so much for this post, Maik.
There certainly are similarities with animal products and alcohol – mostly in terms of being, overall, harmful to humanity and all beings. There is also the effect on the mindset of the consumer. Abstinence form these is also a kind of higher spiritual plane.
My (thoroughly enjoyable) effort is also with exposing the roots of alcohol harm and alleged pleasure on the more material plane. Especially that of duping gullible consumers into pretending that they enjoy something that they do not – until training, habit, conditioning and the like take over. Consuming animal products, on the other hand, may be physically pleasant even with no previous social training. Must check out more carefully!
Most grateful for your comment.
Diyanath
I am very thankful for this discussion here, and for a discussion of this issue overall that you have started and that organisations like ADIC and FAKE FREE are taking to the broader society. In the course of working to understand and embrace the different lessons about placebo effect, about the real effects of alcohol and those more connected to expectations and societal training, I have started to examine my mind more closely also when it comes to other habits – not eating animal products being one of them; but also many other every day activities and behaviours that we in general rarely reflect on and even more scarcely question: the use of social media, the type of articles I read in newspapers, what I do first when coming home.
I am thankful because this way I am attaining freedom from habits that are detrimental or confining. I get a choice to live in a more profound way, I think. Therefore it’s so powerful to look behind the – as you call it Diyanath – “training, habit, conditioning” by society.