Just to Be Sociable

Why do people drink? Pollsters from the National Opinion Research Center, who went around asking, got a variety of answers. Said a Pennsylvania housewife: "People think you are dead if you don't." Said a schoolteacher from rural Wisconsin: "I guess just to be sociable. I don't care for it at all; I just choke it down." As a North Carolina building contractor expressed it: "When I drink I feel important." A Georgia farmer: "Drinking takes me right on up . . ."

Most frequent reason for drinking is "sociability" (38%), reported three Rutgers University sociologists in the current Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol. Women, the researchers found, are much more likely than men to drink merely to be sociable. Pointing out that science does not yet know how to tell the difference between a potential alcoholic and a drinker who can take it or let it alone, the Rutgers sociologists offer a tip to hosts: never insist on anyone's taking a drink; serve soft drinks along with the hard.

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