OPINION (AN COLÚN): The pleasure and the ugliness of drinking

On Friday evening Rosalind and myself attended the opening night of a new cocktail bar in the region. Cocktails are expensive but very nice. I had a Pornstar Martini and Rosalind ordered an Espresso Martini. They were both delicious.
An Espresso Martini consists of espresso, coffee liqueur and vodka. The ingredients of a Pornstar Martini include vanilla-flavoured vodka, passoa (a passionfruit flavoured liqueur), passionfruit juice and lime juice.
The tradition of cocktails can be traced back to British Punch, which was very popular in the 1700s, and was served in Punch Houses. Punches were big bowls of spirits mixed with fruit juice, spices and other flavours (we regularly serve them in our house when we have gatherings of people, always serving them hot, which is an ideal offering on cold winter evenings). Punch Houses and the consumption of punch was looked upon by many during the 18th Century as being a very positive thing. It was considered a highly sociable act that strengthened social ties. A letter writer in 1736 stated, “We hope that nothing will ever hinder a man drinking a bowl of Punch with his friend, that's one of the greatest pleasures that we enjoy in the country, after our labour.”
Others, in contrast, frowned upon the pastime and were blind to its positives. During the first half of the eighteenth century in Britain, a lot of people were deeply concerned about the dangers of alcoholism. The ugly side of drinking was encouraged by the widespread availability of cheap, home-distilled gin. This cheap gin could be part of this hot or cold concoction contained in large bowls. Concerned citizens pointed out that excessive punch drinking was often associated with bad behaviour.
Some stern and po-faced moralists grumbled and thundered that excessive drinking in general was often linked with moral decline.
Punch parties were sometimes satirised by contemporary artists as being raucous and uncivilised. William Hogarth’s A Midnight Modern Conversation, drawn in 1732, is perhaps the best known illustration of a punch party. The illustration was immensely popular and was soon reproduced on punch bowls and other vessels for consuming and serving alcohol. It depicts a group of men at different stages of inebriation during an evening of debate and drinking.
Punch drinking was at its most popular during the mid-eighteenth century, but it continued to be enjoyed into the nineteenth century. While it's not as fashionable nowadays as it was in previous centuries, the drink is still enjoyed by many.
This aromatic, mixed, usually hot, beverage was brought back to England from India by English sailors in the 1600s. In India it was known as Paanch (which is the Hindustani for “five”). The famous German poet Friedrich Schiller wrote a poem called “The Punch Song.” “Four elements,” said the first stanza, “joined in Harmonious strife, Shadow the world forth, And typify life.” One of these elements was lemon, Schiller continued, and lemon is a sour fruit. This, he wrote, symbolised the sourness that can be in life and in the minds and intentions of people.
However, another ingredient, sugar, provides sweetness to the drink, a softening experience upon the palate; a symbol of the pleasurable things in life standing in contrast to the more difficult and abrasive experiences.
Schiller's description of punch as being “harmonious strife” could be used to describe alcohol as a whole, in the sense that it's a marvellous drug which wraps us in a comforting emotional blanket but it's also something which brings out people's demonic side. But the violence, the horror, the nastiness which happens when under the influence is not alcohol's fault. The fault lies in the minds of people. Over the years I've met many people who've had demons gnawing away at their peace of mind, who've had a lot of machismo, aggression and stupidity simmering away inside them. When they're sober you can feel the tension, which sometimes bubbles to the surface, but its worst aspects are kept under a lid. When the consumption of alcohol happens the lid is eroded and the badness emerges from its hiding place. As a result, I've known men in respectable positions in society gain a reputation for being wifebeaters, or being generally violent. Emotional, volatile and angry, they lash out verbally and sometimes physically.
But, as I say, it's not alcohol's fault. Approached in a decent and sane way, alcohol can be a very beneficial drug, reuniting us with our subconscious which has been ignored and overlooked in the contemporary workplace, in the contemporary capitalist world. We are more than deadlines, achievement and competition. We are also wistfulness and gentleness, reverie and transcendent thinking. Gentleness and reverie are frequently mocked but contained within them is the key to happiness. As William James wonderfully wrote about 120 years ago: “The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites and says yes.”