Antanas Sileika reviews a book with a heady take on societal views on alcohol and intoxication
This interview originally aired on Nov. 6, 2021.
The Next Chapter columnist Antanas Sileika is the former director of the Humber School for Writers and a novelist and critic whose work has nominated for literary awards, including the Leacock Medal for Humour and the City of Toronto Book Award.
His second book, the short story collection Buying On Time, was longlisted for Canada Reads in 2016 — nearly 20 years after its initial publication.
Sileika spoke with Shelagh Rogers about reading Drunk, a book by University of British Columbia professor Edward Slingerland that attempts to offer a scientifically grounded explanation for society's use of alcohol and chemical intoxicants.
The times we live in
"In Drunk, Slingerland is saying we live in an abstemious time. Indeed, we're kind of puritanical — we refuse to acknowledge pleasure. Part of his argument looks at how alcohol isn't really permitted in society anymore. But the other side of his argument, more importantly, is historical. Slingerland says that alcohol, in effect, is the glue that made civilization, which sounds counterintuitive to me. But he goes on to explain that it turns out that we were drinking before there was farming. In other words, beer came before bread.
Slingerland says that alcohol, in effect, is the glue that made civilization.
"He says that in the hunter-gatherer societies, people would get together every so often. In Turkey, for example, 13,000 years ago, people were getting together to get drunk together. This brought people in close proximity. It disinhibited them, and they began to trust one another.
A provocative title
"We've grown progressively more abstemious. When my family used to get together, the first question was, 'What are you drinking? Can I get you a drink?' That was common in the social circles that I hung out with. That has changed so much. The days of the two-martini lunches, the Mad Men sort of thing, seems to have disappeared. Public drinking is, in a way, going the way of smoking.
"One of the important things about alcohol is that it takes away the mask that we wear. It permits you to see the other person more clearly, and this helps to build society because we begin to trust one another.
One of the important things about alcohol is that it takes away the mask that we wear.
"When I saw the book title, I thought, 'Are you crazy? What's wrong with you?' On the one hand, alcohol is being pressed down. But on the other hand, different types of intoxicants seem to be of interest to us and we're finding a use for them. It's all happening at the same time."
Antanas Sileika's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
