The Rules of Drunkenness

First drink, man drinks wine; second drink, wine drinks wine; third drink, wine drinks man.

--Japanese proverb

In one form or another, much the same formulation of besotted behavior has been cast up by all of the world's elbow-bending cultures--which is to say the overwhelming majority of the world's cultures. Man in his cups is presumed to be irresponsible, out of control; by anaesthetizing the higher centers of the brain, alcohol unshackles the primordial beast. In Drunken Comportment, published by Aldine Press, two U.C.L.A. social scientists challenge this venerable theory. Intoxication, say Craig MacAndrew and Robert B. Edgerton, has rules equally as strict as sobriety. Once they are mastered, the drunk strives conscientiously, and usually successfully, to obey them.

Firewater Legend. The authors decant jeroboams of evidence to support their contention that what society expects of the drinker efficiently polices the uninhibiting effect of the drink. The Lepchas, a Mongolian tribe found in the Sikkim Himalayas, enforce incest taboos of astonishing complexity: a man may not couple with his wife's mother or elder sisters, the wife of his wife's older brother, the wives of his sons and younger brothers, and so on. On the annual rice-festival night, when everyone gets bleary on the native brew chi, sexual abandon is not only permitted but practiced. Nevertheless the incest taboos are still scrupulously observed.

On the other side of the scale, Authors MacAndrew and Edgerton cite the Urubu Indians of Brazil. When sober, the Urubus are ferocious headhunters; when drunk, they dance and sing with their enemies. The myth of alcoholic "disinhibition," as the book awkwardly describes it, can no more account for this reversal than for the inebriated conduct of the Aritama of northern Colombia. A morose and self-conscious tribe, the Aritama only grow more so on rum, their favorite potable. "All conversation stops," report the authors, "and gloominess sets in."

Drunken Comportment rejects the legend that the North American Indian could not hold his firewater. More typically, he had to be coaxed at first even to sample it. A tribe would cautiously nominate its oldest--and therefore most expendable--member to take the first sip. Daniel Harmon, a 19th century fur trader whose journal is extensively quoted, reported that as often as not, alcohol had a tranquilizing effect on the Indian initiates. "I had rather have 50 drunken Indians in the fort," he wrote, "than five drunken [French] Canadians." Indeed, the wild and murderous debauches attributed to Indians can be readily explained in terms other than a low tolerance for alcohol. The redskins, say the authors, were only obediently following the example of drunken comportment set by their white tutors.

Edgerton and MacAndrew do not deny the physical effects of drink on, say, a man's ability to walk and talk straight. They do argue that these effects are offset by behavior that is "essentially a learned affair." Their moral: "Since societies, like individuals, get the sorts of drunken comportment that they allow, they deserve what they get."

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