Tempting as it is to write an
ode to
alcohol, one must exercise caution when addressing a public that is all too ready to jump at the mention of this age-old
spirit. It is the most widely abused-of
psychoactive drug in the world today, while simultaneously enjoying its role as the ultimate social
lubricant. A few doses and it smoothes out the
jagged edges that our
stilted social skills seem to be
chronically suffering from.
Alcohol has also been associated with
hedonistic pleasures, landing me fairly and squarely on the
plush,
velvet cushions of
Bacchus' palace, where I assume the round figure and the red, jovial face of my favourite
deity.
Champagne and
oysters,
whisky and
cigars,
wine and
cheese, all
marriages made in the most pleasurable of
heavens, all featuring alcohol as the wedding
ring,
vows and
consummation.
Yet there is a very good reason for thanking alcohol for our presence here today, and it is this more serious note that I shall delve into in a bit more detail. We shall take a
voyage in time together and try to be as
scientific as possible without getting the barbed hooks of
jargon entangled in the fishing line of
uncertainty.
Imagine a time when man’s knowledge of disease was sketchy at best. Very little was known about
bacteria, or the ideal conditions for
bacterial replication. Today we know that a jar of water left in the hot
humidity of, say, a
Jordanian summer would be
lethal within a few days. So it is no surprise that
Jesus left us bread and wine in remembrance of
Him since they had realised that wine can be stored safely while water couldn’t be.
Consider
cereals, today associated with
bread,
dough,
pasta and
rice. Long before the use of cereals for the baking of
bread, an estimated 12,000 years ago, they were used to make
beer. This was a very weak beer, as weak as
economically feasible to maintain a low
bacterial count in stored water, yet known to permit survival of the human species. Across the
Western world, different
alcoholic drinks, mostly
grape- or
grain-derived, kept the population healthy and flourishing. The richer one was, the higher the content of alcohol that was afforded so
Lords and Ladies drank more potent stuff than
the great unwashed. This leads one to presume that the alcohol consumed at every meal might have been partly responsible for the
tortuous history that tore this side of the earth asunder during centuries of bitter wars.
So how about the
East, where alcohol wasn’t such a strong
social factor (although its discovery has been attributed to
China)? The notion that
tea and other
infusions lengthen life is far from an
unfounded belief. It is the boiling process that
precedes every
cuppa that effectively kills most
bacteria, preserving the healthy state of the
drinker and preventing life-threatening
disease. This played a vital role in maintaining a healthy supply of water across the
Orient. Could the absence of
alcohol also be partly responsible for
China being politically
unified since 221
BC? If contrasted by the
bitter bickering that riddled this side of the planet, this becomes a rather convincing
postulate.
So
alcohol in the
West and
boiling in the
East have played a vital role in the
survival of the species, permitting
water to be stored during
drought,
freezing and all other conditions that
conspire to dry up the supply of
potable water. Then let’s pour ourselves a drink tonight, just a single
unit will do (and is legal), and raise our glasses to
alcohol, giving credit to the spirit that held our hands during millennia of
warfare against unseen
pathogens. At the same time we should spill a little,
punishing the same spirit for clouding the minds of rulers throughout history,
coaxing them into
throwing caution to the wind and declaring war on an unsuspecting, and quite possibly
sober,
neighbour.
Caveat:
Alcohol is a depressant of the Central Nervous System. It also helps to reduce the effect of our inhibitory systems, which is responsible for the social effects I mentioned earlier. In large doses it seriously affects our ability to judge and discriminate and this almost inevitably leads to consequences that are hilarious at best but quite possibly tragic. Alcohol-induced errors of judgement have landed me girls who I definitely don’t deserve, which is not such a bad thing. The same errors of judgement applied to one’s driving skills lead to a much more tragic end to an evening.