ABSTRACT
The chapter demonstrates that there are limits to a social constructionist perspective on alcohol and drinking culture, enshrined in the concept ‘drunken comportment’, whereby the culturally defined expectancy effect dictates the outcome. While the manner in which alcohol is consumed, is partly socially and historically contingent, there is also a crucial biological-emotional level of behaviour, related to the physiological state of ‘alcohol myopia’, and the capacity for self and social control that regulates alcohol consumption. The ‘symbol emancipation’ of humans, described by Norbert Elias, is relevant to understanding this, as it describes how the evolved capacity for self-control is socially activated in the civilising process. Self-control, as discussed by Roy Baumeister, is at the root of positive outcomes for people in relation to alcohol. Alcohol, like other psychoactive substances acts on the central nervous system, impacting on emotional responses, perception, and bodily control. They are pervasive in nature, and so animals have evolved a range of capacities to identify, process and manage their consumption of these. Like humans, their attraction to these are as foods, and in aversive situations, as means to deal with anxiety.
