Comment by dcolkitt
5 years ago
Much of the effects of any intoxicant are culturally constructed. Alcohol is widely known for causing aggression, but this effect doesn’t seem to exist in cultures without that association. Nor does it exist in double-blind studies, yet the placebo group becomes more aggressive.
You can start with two chemically identical intoxicants, and either by marketing or random path dependencies one gains a reputation in the subculture for making people go crazy. You can bet that large number of people are going to act wild on it.
This is no different than the reputation different types of alcohol have garnered. Gin makes people mean. Whisky makes people emotional. Tequila makes people party like crazy. It’s all ethanol, but those cultural preconceptions become self-fulfilling prophecies.
In many ways that makes these rumor filled, science light, unsubstantiated media stories about “this is the most dangerous drug ever” incredibly irresponsible. The stories themselves create the cultural preconditions around encouraging more self-destructive behavior among users. This isn’t even just drugs. Look at the moral panic over Four Loko. The same cocktail of ethanol and caffeine has been consumed as amaro and coffee by rich women since time immemorial. Yet it never caused moral panic until the “wrong type of people” started consuming it.
I agree that the gin->mean, whisky->emotional, etc, is all bunk. But I'm still convinced there's a link between alcohol and violence. If nothing else, the lowered cognitive function and reduced inhibition would mean more opportunity to be angry, and less self control.
Like, a drunk person might misinterpret someone accidentally bumping into them as aggression. And would be less likely to suppress the urge to respond in kind.
You're describing the stereotype of a mean drunk. In reality, there's also the happy or the sentimental drunk. They might just laugh it off or smile big and hug the person bumping into them.
For sure, alcohol reduces inhibitions. If you're a naturally chip-on-the-shoulder kind of person, alcohol will turn you into a certified jerk. Alcohol can turn other kinds of people into lovable fools as well though.
I didn't think the bar was to describe something that was true for everyone. I suspect what I described is true for many, across many cultures. I've also seen people I would have characterized as mild-mannered act much differently with alcohol in them. I don't think it's just strictly amplifying existing traits.
Reduced inhibition does not support the thesis of increased agression, unless you define aggression to refer to "aggression shown".
But I'd overall turn the 'cultural' aspect a little further even. I think I have observed a couple of times people to consume alcohol in order to be able to transgress cultural norms because the cultural norms themselves are 'parametrised' for the sober-drunk states.
I.e. get into a fight sober? Could be unacceptable even to someone who wants to get into a fight. After 4 beers? May be perfectly fine for your peer group. Same goes to other things, like dancing, approaching strangers, etc.
What I really found interesting for example is, in my abroad term in Canada. The sober Canadian society was overall friendly and polite, definitely friendlier than in my German home. People held up doors for me (a 20 something man, felt really weird and unexpected), you got compliments for what you wore (never happened to me in Germany), etc. pp. But this radically changed in the 'drunken space' where people were a lot more aggressive and fights were much more the norm.
> Reduced inhibition does not support the thesis of increased agression, unless you define aggression to refer to "aggression shown".
So... the normal definition that everyone already uses?
>Reduced inhibition does not support the thesis of increased agression, unless you define aggression to refer to "aggression shown".
I mean overall increased opportunity for violence. Less inhibition might mean I'm more likely to say "fuck off" to someone rather than just think it. Which could lead somewhere.
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Where in canada were you? I've lived here my whole life and never experienced anything like this. And I've been to Germany, out drinking with Germans, a handful of times and never felt any material difference in demeanor between partying with those folks and with canadians.
If you have to fake being sorry about everything, eventually that pent up frustration has to come out :P
I’m just a sample of one, but I’m way more likely to flip my shit when sober — all my fights or verbal altercations I have in fact been sober.
Granted, I’ve been diagnosed with various mental health disorders related to emotional regulation, so perhaps this is dependent on individual brain function.
Of course. Not everybody is going to get violent. And it won’t affect everybody the same. But it does feel like it really brings out the violence in people who maybe are already prone to that type of behavior. In your case it may do the opposite.
I think you're still describing a cultural cause here.
Responding to perceived aggression with your own aggression is not a given. It's a culturally decided response, not an instinctive one.
A good christian is supposed to respond to aggression by "turning the other cheek" and not responding at all. A strict, honor based society might say the only way to respond to aggression is by killing that person.
Western culture falls in between these two. Reduced inhibition simply makes your judgement of the consequences worse so people usually make the choice they want to make (shaped by their culture) and just don't think though what it could mean.
But we wouldn't say that Japan is more of a Christian culture than the U.S., or that the U.S. is more of an honor culture than Japan.
I understand the sociological theories you are referring to, but I'm not sure how useful they are.
You are probably right in your assertion regarding alcohol, however I suspect it may be possible that there are other compounds unique to various flavors of liquor which may influence the overall effects in various ways. These compounds may not be perceptably psychoactive on their own.
The same goes for strains of marijuana, beyond THC and CBD other psychoactive compounds are inconsistently present with uncertain psychoactive effects (if any). Further there may be complex nonlinear interactions (e.g. two compounds produce no effect but adding a third can change the experience, particularly if you consider reaction products from combustion).
In any case the uncertainty is good for marketing.
> One theory is that much of the meth contains residue of toxic chemicals used in its production, or other contaminants. Even traces of certain chemicals, in a relatively pure drug, might be devastating. The sheer number of users is up, too, and the abundance and low price of P2P meth may enable more continual use among them. That, combined with the drug’s potency today, might accelerate the mental deterioration that ephedrine-based meth can also produce, though usually over a period of months or years, not weeks.
These are the theories mentioned in the article referenced in the comment you replied to. It might be the meth itself. Gin, whiskey, and tequila are different colors, and it's not because they are compositionally identical.
> Look at the moral panic over Four Loko. The same cocktail of ethanol and caffeine has been consumed as amaro and coffee by rich women since time immemorial. Yet it never caused moral panic until the “wrong type of people” started consuming it.
You’re not entirely wrong, but a splash of liqueur into a small cup of coffee is pretty different from dissolving caffeine pills in tall boys of malt liquor.
Substitute "PBR hard coffee," then.
Malt liquor drink, 30mg caffeine. Tastes like Yoo-hoo.
PBR hard coffee (and similar products) are comically expensive for what they are which means the wrong people don't buy them which means the avoid the stigma.
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It’s also not sold in 32 oz cans at 8-12% ABV in addition to the 3-4 cups of coffee worth of caffeine.
> In many ways that makes these rumor filled, science light, unsubstantiated media stories about “this is the most dangerous drug ever” incredibly irresponsible. The stories themselves create the cultural preconditions around encouraging more self-destructive behavior among users. <
What about krokodile?
What about it?
Desomorphine is not any more inherently dangerous than other opioids (so, still quite dangerous of course).
The synthesis pathway that Krokodil producers used are quite bad and unrefined, but quite surprisingly do work and does appear to produce desomorphine.
The problem was the producers were usually addicts who then injected the reactions solvent mixture, rather than extracting their product.
Did they separate the culture link from a potential genetic link? Maybe the association exists in a culture because it is a real effect, it just differs between groups.
I've heard (purely anecdotal) rumors that North Korea basically runs on Meth. I'm not sure if that is true but I suppose it would explain a lot.
NK has a lot of meth because the government started producing it for export in the 90s, and in the 2000s it became a sort of cottage industry and culturally normalized.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58838834
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/world/asia/north-korea-cr...
Imperial Japan was heavily dependent on amphetamines for wartime production and military stamina, and even gave the drug a patriotic-sounding name. It is definitely a useful tool for a totalitarian regime.
Not sure how this is related to my comment...?
Alcohol effects some subgroups (like Asians) differently so why not have more complex behaviors as genetic as well?
> It’s all ethanol
I used to believe that. It seemed obvious to me and a phd chemist friend of mine that - as you say - the different reputations were a cultural/social creation. The drink itself was just different amounts of ethanol.
Then one day that chemist friend of mine decided to get a bottle of Hornitos Reposado. We usually preferred a good bourbon or weird herbal stuff[1]. We drank most of the bottle, but that wasn't unusual for us at the time[2]. We were intending on a normal evening of video games. MTG, and/or VtES. Instead... we ended up spending the evening having the stupidest, most aggressive, pointless, childish, "macho" argument of our lives. It was shockingly out of character for us. The amount of ethanol consumption wasn't large, and we drank it at a normal rate. Both of us had been a LOT drunker in the past. The only significant difference was our unusual choice of tequila.
While I agree that the cultural preconceptions are probably responsible for most of the effect, there is at least some truth behind the reputations of different types of alcoholic beverages, because the actual drink isn't just ethanol. The different brewing/distilling/aging processes produce different amounts congeners[3][4]; their psychological effects might be small, but small effects amplified through social mechanisms are how "culture" is created.
> In many ways that makes these rumor filled, science light, unsubstantiated media stories about “this is the most dangerous drug ever” incredibly irresponsible.
Hear, hear!
> moral panic over Four Loko ... amaro and coffee
Yah, people have probably started putting whisky (Irish or otherwise) in their coffee the morning after they invented the whisky. Also, you probably have to drink the entire giant can of Four Loko to get the same caffeine in a typical cup of coffee.
> Yet it never caused moral panic until the “wrong type of people” started consuming it.
It's disturbing how often this kind of bs ends up just being a fancy form of racism/sexism/${targeted_group}ism
[1] e.g. Pernod, Herbsaint, Chartreuse
[2] Yes, we were regularly drinking WAY too much. 375ml/day/person minimum. WAY WAY WAY too much...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congener_%28beverages%29 "These substances include small amounts of chemicals such as methanol and other alcohols (known as fusel alcohols), acetone, acetaldehyde, esters, tannins, and aldehydes (e.g. furfural)."
[4] Also, the different amounts of sugars means different effects on bloodsugar/insulin/etc. The resulting effects are probably complicated and difficult to explain, but their contribution to the different reputations might be larger than we expect.