Drunk!
A good book can take you to unexpected places. The whiskey room at a giant tech company — furnished with beanbags and foosball tables — is one of them. When coders at Google hit a creative wall, they can apparently pop into this room for a dose of liquid inspiration. It’s a sanctioned pause in the workday, but it is not a place to get drunk alone. In his fascinating new book Drunk, Edward Slingerland argues that such spaces, which combine face‑to‑face interaction with easy access to alcohol, can act as incubators for collective creativity.
The creativity boost alcohol provides to individuals, Slingerland writes, is amplified when people drink together. For millennia, across cultures, humans have used intoxicants to get high. Some archaeologists even suggest that the first farmers were motivated more by beer than by bread.
If intoxicants were merely hijacking pleasure centers in the brain, or if they gave humans an evolutionary edge once, but are purely vices now, then evolution would have put the kibosh on our taste for these chemicals, the author points out. So, why does Mother Nature turn a blind eye to our fondness for the tipple, given alcohol’s deleterious side-effects?
Slingerland, professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia, gives us this thought-provoking thesis: “by causing humans to become, at least temporarily, more creative, cultural, and communal – to live like social insects despite our ape nature – intoxicants provided the spark that allowed us to form truly large-scale groups.” In short, civilization might not have been possible without intoxication.
It’s an audacious claim, but Slingerland marshals evidence from history, anthropology, cognitive science, social psychology, genetics, and literature — including classical poetry composed under the influence — to make his case. He is an entertaining guide, deftly weaving disparate studies into a coherent argument.
Without a science-based understanding of intoxicants we cannot decide what role they can, and should, play in modern societies, Singer reasonably points out. In small doses, alcohol can make us happy and more sociable, he says. Still, consuming any amount of intoxicant does seem stupid, Slingerland concedes, because the chemical immediately targets the prefrontal cortex (PFC).
This late-maturing region of the brain is the seat of abstract reasoning, which also governs our behavior, and our ability to remain on task. All the data suggests that small children are more creative because their PFCs are barely developed, he writes. A childlike state of mind in an adult is the key to cultural innovation. And intoxicants, he says, allow us to access that state efficiently by temporarily taking the PFC offline.
OK, drinking once made humans thrive as a species, but is it still a good thing in the modern world ?
Slingerland cites research which uses a natural experiment to test the idea that the communal consumption of alcohol can be a driver of innovation. American Prohibition, which was imposed a hundred years ago in the U.S., saw a decline in the percentage of patents, in counties that were previously “wet,” as communal drinking centers closed.
The book also considers modern alternatives to alcohol without the hangovers, the danger of liver damage or addiction. In centers of innovation, microdosing, or taking tiny doses of purified psychedelics, is growing in popularity. It also discusses non-chemical ways of achieving the same end but concludes that alcohol is a very low-tech, efficient way of temporarily taking the PFC offline.
After exploring the stress busting, creativity-boosting, trust-building, pleasure-inducing aspects of alcohol, the final chapter of this book dwells on the dark side ranging from drunk-driving to alcohol-induced violence. The chapter includes practical takeaways to make non-drinkers feel included in professional settings where alcohol is already integrated.
The book is not prescriptive in telling you how, and when, to consume alcohol to enjoy only its benefits. It does, however, tell you not to drink too many distilled spirits (wine or beer is better), and if possible, never, to drink alone.
Ultimately, this heady book is an ode to Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. It does us all — drinkers and open-minded abstainers alike — a favor by taking a hard look at the merits of drinking without moral judgement.
A version of this review for New Scientist.
And feedback: From Bryn Glover, Kirkby Malzeard, North Yorkshire, UK
*Letters to the Editor in New Scientist*
Vijaysree Venkatraman’s review of Edward Slingerland’s book Drunk: How we sipped, danced, and stumbled our way to civilization got me wondering whether an analysis of recording devices placed in the bars of Magaluf in midsummer might prove useful for the future of humanity (5 June, p 30).
From Vijaysree Venkatraman, Cambridge, MA, USA
Bryn Glover’s wry suggestion (Letters, 5 July) to install recording devices in the bars of Magaluf as a means of understanding the future of humanity made me chuckle—and nod in agreement. As I noted in my review of Edward Slingerland’s Drunk, the idea that intoxication has played a catalytic role in human cooperation, creativity, and even civilization itself is both provocative and oddly persuasive.
But perhaps we don’t need covert surveillance in Spanish party towns. The data is already out there—in karaoke videos, WhatsApp voice notes, and the collective memory of bartenders. The real challenge isn’t gathering the evidence; it’s interpreting it. What does it mean when a group of strangers sings “Bohemian Rhapsody” in perfect unison at 2 a.m.? Is it Dionysian chaos or proto-democracy?
If nothing else, Slingerland’s thesis invites us to look again at our most unguarded moments—not as lapses in judgment, but as windows into the social technologies that have shaped us. So yes, let’s raise a glass to the anthropologists of the future.
Image: Hip, Hip, Hurrah! by Peder Severin Krøyer (1851–1909) was one of the leading figures of the Skagen Painters, the Scandinavian artists’ colony that gathered in the late 19th century at the northern tip of Denmark. This is a jubilant outdoor toast among the Skagen artists — sunlight filtering through leaves, glasses raised, laughter suspended in paint.