Naval topic: When People Drink Themselves Silly, and Why

The studies found that people who thought they were drinking alcohol
behaved exactly as aggressively, or as affectionately, or as merrily
as they expected to when drunk. "No significant difference between
those who got alcohol and those who didn't," Alan Marlatt, the senior
author, said. "Their behavior was totally determined by their
expectations of how they would behave."




March 4, 2008
Mind
When People Drink Themselves Silly, and Why
By BENEDICT CAREY

The urge to binge mindlessly, though it can strike at any time, seems
to stir in the collective unconscious during the last weeks of winter.
Maybe it's the television images from places like Fort Lauderdale and
Cabo San Lucas, of communications majors' face planting outside bars
or on beaches.

Or perhaps it's a simple a case of seasonal affective disorder in
reverse. Not SAD at all, but anticipation of warmth and eagerness for
a little disorder.

Either way, researchers have had a hard time understanding binge
behavior. Until recently, their definition of binge drinking -- five
drinks or more in 24 hours -- was so loose that it invited debate and
ridicule from some scholars. And investigators who ventured into the
field, into the spray of warm backwash and press of wet T-shirts,
often returned with findings like this one from a 2006 study: "Spring
break trips are a risk factor for escalated alcohol use."

Or this, from a 1998 analysis: "The men's reported levels of alcohol
consumption, binge drinking and intoxication were significantly higher
than the women's."

In fact, the dynamics of bingeing may have more to do with personal
and cultural expectations than with the number of upside-down
margaritas consumed. In their classic 1969 book, "Drunken
Comportment," recently out in paperback, the social scientists Craig
MacAndrew and Robert B. Edgerton wrote that the disconnect between the
conventional wisdom on drunken behavior and the available evidence "is
even now so scandalous as to exceed the limits of reasonable
toleration."

They detailed the vast differences in the way people from diverse
cultures behave after excessive alcohol. In contrast to nearby tribes,
for example, the Yuruna Indians in the Xingu region of Brazil would
become exceptionally reserved when rendered sideways by large helpings
of moonshine. The Camba of eastern Bolivia would drink excessively
twice a month. Sitting in a circle, they would toast one another, more
lavishly with each pop.

In a Japanese island village, Takashima, people knew a drinking
occasion had gone completely off the dials if villagers began to sing
or, wilder still, to dance. Aggression, sexual or otherwise, was
unheard of during these sessions.

Western cultures are more likely to excuse binge drinking as a needed
mental vacation. "An awful lot of cultures have institutionalized
bingeing as a kind of time out like Mardi Gras or New Year's Eve, a
culturally recognized period where a certain amount of acting out is
acceptable," said Dwight Heath, emeritus professor of anthropology at
Brown.

Not to say that would-be bingers, when ordering that first tray of
Irish car bombs for the table, think about discharging a cultural
tradition. They have their own reasons. And those, too, shape
subsequent drunken behavior.

In a series of studies in the 1970s and '80s, psychologists at the
University of Washington put more than 300 students into a study room
outfitted like a bar with mirrors, music and a stretch of polished
pine. The researchers served alcoholic drinks, most often icy vodka
tonics, to some of the students and nonalcoholic ones, usually icy
tonic water, to others. The drinks looked and tasted the same, and the
students typically drank five in an hour or two.

The studies found that people who thought they were drinking alcohol
behaved exactly as aggressively, or as affectionately, or as merrily
as they expected to when drunk. "No significant difference between
those who got alcohol and those who didn't," Alan Marlatt, the senior
author, said. "Their behavior was totally determined by their
expectations of how they would behave."

In a repeat of the session performed for a coming documentary, one
participant insisted that she could not have been drinking because
alcohol always made her flush.

"We told her that, yes, in fact she was drinking it," Dr. Marlatt
said. "She immediately flushed."

Somewhere between personal preferences and social custom, moreover,
the peer group asserts itself. In a recent study, public health
researchers in New Zealand conducted extensive interviews with teenage
girls in one of two cliques at a high school. Both groups associated
drinking with uninhibited behavior -- and that is what they exhibited.
But one group considered being uninhibited to include making out, and
the other considered it to include far more.

In their discussion, Dr. MacAndrew and Dr. Edgerton acknowledged that
Western societies, and certainly the United States, send multiple
signals on bingeing. At times, the signals cross, as when movies show
spring-break binging as sunburned, sexy fun, while health
pronouncements make it look like an orgy of near-criminal behavior.

At other times, cultural expectations and personal preferences
reinforce each other. The hope that a wild session might "reveal new
things about myself" or "allow me to act completely out of character"
is widely echoed in literature, pop culture and drinking lore. If the
research is a guide, those hopes should be self-fulfilling at some
level.

Unless, that is, the binge goes beyond any reasonable definition of
excess. Then the amount of tequila consumed matters very much -- and
poison is poison in any culture.
.

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