HLTHAGE 2F03, Winter 2021, Instructor: Dr.

Savelli SAS Notes

February 1st, 2021: Lecture 4

Topics: Alcoholism; Cultural perceptions; Dry versus wet cultures; Concept of alcohol as
performative; Morality; Emergence of the disease model
 
w/Alana and Dr. Savelli

A bit about Alana… she’s working on her masters @ Mac; works in downtown Hamilton with women
who are experiencing homelessness, addiction, and mental illness

ALCOHOLISM
Some people have called alcohol a 'non-drug' drug because of its unique status in our culture...
 Alcohol can be dangerous, however, it is still widely accepted in our society
o Ex. Hangovers can be excused by people, whereas other forms of drug use,
like crack-cocaine, would shock people if you said you were using
 We can consume alcohol in places that using other drugs would be deemed socially
inappropriate
 In a lot of ways, it can be physically harmful, but in terms of social risks it has more than a
lot of other drugs
 
It retains different status in other countries...
 In some countries drinking during the day is not questioned; you can walk in the streets
with alcohol and not receive a reaction
 In some countries it's more private and you don't see women drinking; that's frowned
upon
 Legality is situational (depends on culture)
 
The way alcohol differs across cultures...
 Drunken comportment - how someone behaves when they are drunk is in part a
reflection of their culture
 'Dry cultures' - it serves as a timeout from normal rules and legality; people get violent
and wild (Ex. In the UK)
 'Wet cultures' - it's understood more like food; everyday occurrence; might have wine
served with meals
o Still see the same physiological components, but it becomes less of a 'break
from reality' (consumers might not be as wild and/or violent compared to
those in dry cultures)
 
Alcohol can be performative...
 Example of its ties to identity: if you were a man at a bar with a woman and you ordered a
beer and a cocktail, it would be expected that the beer is for you (the man)

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HLTHAGE 2F03, Winter 2021, Instructor: Dr. Savelli SAS Notes

o Beer has this association of being a masculine drink

o Gender norms have been incorporated; what we choose to drink, where
and when, might be used to portray/perform perceptions of our own
identity (reflexive as well)
 Ex. Drinking out of a paper bag on a street corner - what does
that say to society in Ontario?
 Ex. Drinking in a cocktail bar - what does that say about the
person's status or characteristics?
 What we drink, when, where, and how, all contribute to how we want to portray our
identity and how others read us; drug use can in part communicate gender, class,
sexuality, etc.,
 Another example: When people go to church and drink wine (that portrays the blood of
Christ), they are portraying something much different than when drinking wine at a night
club
 
It can be consumed in such a wide variety of contexts, which says a lot about its role in society
 Old texts from the ancient period shows that it was celebrated
 The Industrial Revolution can be pegged as the beginning of modern consumption
 The division between work life and home life became widened...
o The division between recreation and work became set and defined, as
opposed to the blurred line when people worked from home (like on farms)
 Drinking on the job was deemed dangerous and that it would slow down progress, so it
was banned
 The consequence was that people would cram their drinking into a small window, instead
of slowly over the day
o Changed the face of drunkenness
 The Industrial Revolution also introduced ways to produce more potent alcohol
o For instance, distillation techniques helped produce more concentrated and
potent alcohol that could be served in mass quantities and more cheaply
 More urbanization, largely men, moved from their ancestral villages in the countryside to
the cities for the first time
o Significant because...
1. They were being paid wages instead of bartering systems;
they began to purchase alcohol
2. Adaptation - all these people felt disconnected from their
family and friends in their new urban environments; the pub
served to facilitate belongingness ("the local pub"); if that's
where you hang out then people naturally begin to drink
more than before
 
Effects caused by increased drinking

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HLTHAGE 2F03, Winter 2021, Instructor: Dr. Savelli SAS Notes

 A moral panic occurred; more generally connected to a wider panic about poverty and
working-class people
 The Gin Craze - all these people in the cities drinking more potent alcohol, in seemingly
more extreme ways; created the moral panic
 Suddenly it was deemed as dangerous to society and the government
 The Temperance Movement - upper-middle class Christian movement - was generated to
constrain alcohol consumption and the way people drank
 Morphed into the prohibition, where for a short amount of time it was banned, but it
didn't work
o There were underground bars
o People had alcohol prescribed by their doctors
 Prohibition didn't last because most of the population didn't agree, so they found
alternative ways to access it (like cannabis being legalized here)
 Demonstrates that sometimes there are harmful impacts in making something illegal
when there's no popular will to make it off limits
 
How does the concept of alcoholism as a disease emerge?
 Tied to AA...
 It wasn't just a vice; it became something that people suffered from BUT it didn't lose that
moral component...
o In theory it should be treated like any other chronic illness...
 One the steps in AA is making amends - apologizing to people that you have hurt or
wronged, which shows how much morality is tied into it
o Ex. If someone had diabetes, they wouldn't have to do this; in AA you must
admit you did something wrong even though it's considered by AA to be a
disease
 They way we approach it can apply to wide drug use as well
 The DSM criteria for substance use disorder are saturated in morality
o Ex. Lying is a criterion; we see lying as immoral in the context of alcoholism