Gladwell on Alcohol
Recently, I was waiting in our dental school reception area to meet with Patient Financing and I opened up the February New Yorker. In it was a brilliant essay about the intersection of society and alcohol by Malcolm Gladwell, entitled Drinking Games. Gladwell’s anecdotal and anthropological evidence reveals that the effects of alcohol are not uniform — our reaction to being drunk is heavily influenced by… what we are expected to do when drunk. Here’s an awesome quote:
“Drunkenness is not disinhibition. Drunkenness is myopia.”
You really should read the article: Gladwell is a brilliant story-teller. Incidentally, the topic ties into a conversation with Mykala a few days ago. It began when I was biking home from the rec and school, and I considered what Past Alex would’ve done with such a cloudy yet not rainy day. It was in the upper 60s and the sky was quite gray. The answer to my question caused me to almost be overcome by a sense of loss: I would’ve played basketball with my friends. It’s not that I can’t physically play basketball (though I would imagine I’d be quite rusty), it’s more: I’m “homesick for a place that no longer exists”. Those carefree days are fading fast from memory; sometimes you feel those sands of time in that hourglass running through your fingers. Anyhow, that homesick phrase is from the movie “Garden State” and it has sometimes been called by the German word “weltschmerz”, though that word actually has a more philosophical and less navel-gazing-y meaning. Anyhow…
Growing up means more responsibility — you take responsibility for your actions, right the wrongs you do unto others, help others, honor commitments, show up to places on time. And with that responsibility… you lose the carefree feelings of youth. You still have fun, but within a structure, before your bedtime, within the limitations adults must place on themselves. And so sometimes you’re sad that those times of youth are gone.
This all relates to the alcohol because of a comment Mykala made: “Maybe people drink so they don’t have to think about tomorrow, so they can forget about adulthood for a little while.” I thought this was quite perceptive when I heard it, and Gladwell’s comment about the “myopia” of drunkenness fits in with it perfectly.
Ultimately, I think I know how to deal with the melancholy that accompanies nostalgia for youth: cultivate an environment for my own children where they can experience such wonderful, carefree, days.
Comments
Mykala
Those Germans must be both more philosophical and sentimental than I thought: when you started describing the meaning of the word “weltschmerz” I immediately thought you were going to say “sehnsucht”, which is another German word that relates to an intense longing or nostalgia. Weird that they would have two words with such similar meanings that don’t seem to have exact equivalents in the English language.
Dan McKeown
Hey Alex, that link is broken. It looks like one too many ‘h’s in the web address.