The Booze Gene
A friend just sent me this link to an interesting post on the subject of ‘The British Disease’, binge drinking. Booze, Brits and Binge Drinking. The fact is that this particular ailment is not exclusive to the British, many nations have the same illness, including North America. So why do people want to drink so much?
What is it that makes many people look forward to Friday or Saturday night when they will go out and drink so much that they can no longer stand properly or talk or even think clearly? Is it a desire to escape from whatever daily toil they are involved in, or escape from unhappy relationships? Not every stumbling, slurring drunk has a crap relationship and stress at work. Reasons of this type are manifold but are they the real drivers behind peoples desire to get ‘out of it’. I don’t think so.
Ethanol occurs naturally in ripe and over ripe fruit. The pulp of ripe palm fruits contains ethanol at concentrations of around 0.6 to 0.9% and this rises to around 4.5% as the fruit becomes over ripe. Many mammals, including early humans, will have experienced the mild effects of ethanol ingestion through consuming such fruit. Is the drive towards alcohol consumption that many people experience (myself included) part of our genetic programming rooted in our ancient ancestors having gotten tipsy on rotting fruit? Where’s the corkscrew?
