Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization

While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol & other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place. 

Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends & anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically-grounded explanation for our love of alcohol. 

Drawing on evidence from archaeology, history, cognitive neuroscience, psychopharmacology, social psychology, literature, & genetics, Slingerland shows that our taste for chemical intoxicants is not an evolutionary mistake, as we are so often told.

In fact, intoxication helps solve a number of distinctively human challenges: enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, & pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers. Our desire to get drunk, along with the individual & social benefits provided by drunkenness, played a crucial role in sparking the rise of the first large-scale societies. We would not have civilization without intoxication. 

From marauding Vikings & bacchanalian orgies to sex-starved fruit flies, blind cave fish, & problem-solving crows, Drunk is packed with fascinating case studies & engaging science, as well as practical takeaways for individuals & communities. The result is a captivating & long overdue investigation into humanity's oldest indulgence—one that explains not only why we want to get drunk, but also how it might actually be good for us to tie one on now & then.