I was somewhat amused by the dueling stories at America’s two most prominent newspapers.
WaPo (“Here’s what happens to your brain when you stop drinking alcohol“):
Alcohol is one of the most popular drugs in the world, with millions enjoying the buzz produced by a cocktail of pharmacology and social ingredients.
The 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that almost 80 percent of Americans older than 12 years of age reported that they had had at least some alcohol at some point in their lives.
But there is “no free ride in the brain,” said George Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health.
Research shows that over time, alcohol can change the brain, leading to decreases in gray matter volume. And even relatively low levels of alcohol may worsen feelings of anxiety and depression, disrupt sleep, and, over time, increase dementia risk, in addition to upping other health problems, such as breast and colorectal cancer risk.
But there is now increasing evidence that the brain can recover to an extent when drinking is reduced or stopped.
“The remarkable thing about the brain is that it is an incredibly plastic organ, and that we see neuroplasticity in the development of addiction and neuroplasticity in the ability to achieve recovery,” said James MacKillop, a clinical psychologist and the Peter Boris chair in addiction research at McMaster University. “And that’s a really important and powerful story that I think isn’t always communicated as widely as it should be.”
There’s a whole lot more, but you get the idea.
NYT counters with a feature by Ginia Bellafante (“What Else Do We Lose When People Give Up Booze?“):
My dinner companion worked for the Louisville mayor’s office. She had given up drinking several years ago in the name of better sleep and general well-being, leaving her vulnerable to the joke that she was part of the problem in a city where the national retreat from alcohol was driving a list of anxieties.
I had come to Louisville to gauge the collateral effects of this growing aversion, a reality propelled by science, supported by surveys and punctuated by my own experience as a host who had noticed that a longstanding dictum of entertaining — the allotment of a half bottle of wine per guest — no longer applied. For all the benefits of cutting back, certain rituals were vanishing, and it was hard not to wonder what else the temperance revival had carried away with it.
In Kentucky, the answers can seem fairly straightforward. Last year, Brown-Forman, the maker of Jack Daniel’s, among other liquors and a vital benefactor of the city’s cultural life, announced it was laying off 12 percent of its work force. As part of its restructuring, the company closed its Louisville cooperage, where whiskey barrels were manufactured for 80 years; 210 jobs were cut. In nearby Clermont, Jim Beam halted bourbon production for the whole year. Trade disputes have brought continuing challenges.
So, there are certainly a lot of craftsmen who I would hate to see lose their jobs. Still, the overall numbers are pretty small. And, if we view alcohol as a carcinogen that’s ruining people’s lives, it’s not a steep price to pay. One seldom hears about all of the drug dealers who would be unemployed if we somehow eradicated the demand for cocaine and heroin.
Eventually, she goes where I expected her to when I read the headline:
Employment metrics are just part of a calculus that counts consequences to ecosystems that are dependent on the habits that have fueled human fellowship for most of recorded time. From the birth of the public house in the 16th century to the revolution for gay rights, which began at the Stonewall Inn, alcohol has shaped the social politics of urban life. In tandem with new restaurants over the past 15 to 20 years, taprooms have drawn people to once sparsely populated downtowns. This was true of Angel City Brewery in the Los Angeles Arts District, which closed in April. Regulars mourned the loss of community it signaled. On the Fourth of July, Trim Tab Brewery in a revitalized section of Birmingham, Ala., closed after 13 years, ending its tenure as an exhibition and performance space. Many cities have had similar closures.
There is doubtless a social cost to the shift away from alcohol consumption. Which, of course, carries economic consequences as well.
Restaurants have endured their own story. Alcohol traditionally brings in larger profits than food. “Restaurants can’t simply raise menu prices to offset declining alcohol sales, especially when many customers are already price sensitive,” Andrew Rigie, the director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, a lobbying group, said. The result has been “serious financial pressure” on small businesses.
In June, bars and restaurants in Cambridge, Mass., successfully fought a proposal from the city’s liquor licensing board that would have limited them to serving people no more than one drink every half-hour. On Instagram, one owner asked people to stand in opposition, unless they wanted “egg timers going off every 30 minutes in every bar and restaurant in Cambridge.”
Similar in spirit was a proposal floating around Louisville that would have forced bars in the Highlands, a neighborhood with an active nightlife culture, into making 70 percent of their earnings in food rather than alcohol. The idea, which arose after chaos and gunfire erupted in the neighborhood, was quickly scratched after many business said that they would be left to close in the event of a ruling like that.
And then there’s this:
For decades, the Brown-Forman company has sustained the city’s museums and performing arts through corporate giving and its affiliated foundation. As directors of local cultural organizations will tell you, there is virtually no institution or preservation effort in Louisville that does not bear its imprint. For example, Patrick Lewis, the president of the city’s Filson Historical Society, noted that when Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by a Louisville police officer six years ago, Brown-Forman provided the money for the society to hire a full-time specialist in Black history.
During the last fiscal year, according to the company and tax filings, Brown-Forman gave away more than $14 million, making it among the leaders in local philanthropy. For example, by contrast, Churchill Downs, the host of the Kentucky Derby, distributed less than a quarter of that.
But Brown-Forman is more than a company and a philanthropic wing; it is a web of extended family members, individual executives and friends of the company who hold stock that has lost more than half of its value in the past five years. What most worries the town’s fund-raising class is the fading away of annual donations in the four or five digit range. As one cultural leader explained, the success of bourbon tourism could not compensate for the pronounced downturn in alcohol consumption, which has affected a network critical to supporting the city’s cultural life.
Regardless, I expect the downturn in alcohol consumption to be short-lived. We’ve long recognized the negative consequences. We’ve even enacted nationwide prohibition—and it endures at the county level to this day. But we seem to return to it every time.
