No Stupid Questions - 154. Why Is There So Much Social Pressure Around Alcohol?

Episode Date: July 16, 2023

Why do people drink? Why do people not drink? And why specifically do Angela and Mike not drink?

she is just screaming uncontrollably i'm angela duckworth i'm mike mon and you're listening to no stupid questions today on the show what's with the pressure to drink alcohol hey why do you care let him not drink So, Mike, I've got a question for you, but not from me, from Patty Cooper Leverence. Are you ready? I have always wanted Patty Cooper Leverence to ask me a question. That's a great name, by the way. Patty Cooper Leverence. It really is.

So Patty writes, alcohol has never been part of the fabric of my family, not as a moral issue, just personal lifestyle preference. My grandparents and parents had boisterous and happy families, successful careers, and full social lives, as have I. Just like you would think somebody named Patti Cooper-Liverance would have, yes? Yeah, absolutely. Here's the crux of the question. Through the years, we've tried to understand why people are so uncomfortable with non-drinkers. My adult children are finding it a frequent conversation among their friends. How could attractive, successful, normal young people not drink alcohol is the constant refrain. It seems the only time it is socially acceptable

not to drink is if you are recovering from addiction to it. Such an interesting question for Mike Maughan and Angela Duckworth because we are kind of like Patty Cooper deliverance, maybe not in the happy family, successful career, social life. Well, maybe there too. But anyway, we don't drink a lot. Do you drink at all?

I don't think I finished a full serving of alcohol since I was 18. But I do drink very small amounts of alcohol very occasionally. You don't drink at all, right? Because it's not part of your religious tradition. Right. I don't drink at all, right? Because it's not part of your religious tradition. Right. I don't drink due to religion. What's your reasoning? So I just have to go all the way back to my high school years where I would have these like raging keg parties every time my parents went away and I did all the things that you would imagine. Like you hosted them? Oh yeah, like in our house. Like 16 Candles, the movie. Did you see that? When there's like this raging party and

there's like toilet paper strewn from the trees and all that. I just didn't see you as the host. I saw you going. I know. Amazing. Okay. I was a cheerleader. I was insecure. I wanted to be popular. I had these parties, like the kind of parties where like everyone's invited. And this is all out in the open. But at the time, my parents didn't know about them. Sometimes these would be joint productions with my older sister. And I would get drunk at them, you know, like fall down drunk. This one occasion, I just passed out on the backseat of my dad's Cadillac. I remember waking up the

next day and thinking like, what the hell? This was not at all a fun or like any positive kind of experience. And I pretty much stopped drinking to get drunk then. But that's the beginning of my story. I was a normal American teenager growing up in the 80s, having ill-advised parties at her parents' home. But then what happened is I went to college. And as part of my, I guess, intake physical, I had to get all these blood tests that I never got before. And one of the tests that you get is a liver function test. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like your LFT count?

Do you know that? Why do you know that? Because I'm getting old and I go to doctors. And how are your LFTs? How is your liver functioning? Mine's pretty good. Zero alcohol. Oh, yes. Maybe that's where not drinking at all can help you.

So I get this test and I'm 18 years old and I'm a freshman and it has like a little asterisk next to it. And the doctor's like, oh, you have elevated LFTs. You have elevated liver function tests. So each week I come back to student health services and I get another test. And towards the end of my freshman year, they're now talking about biopsies. And I finally tell my parents because I didn't want to like alarm my parents by revealing that I was going to the doctor every week to figure out what was wrong with my liver functioning. But towards the end of the year, on the eve of surgery, I'm like,

mom, dad, just want to tell you and don't be alarmed. I have these elevated liver function tests and now I have to get a liver biopsy because I guess maybe I have cancer. And my dad says, we have familial elevated LFTs. Like it's just a thing in the Lee family. And I was like, what? I think my dad explained that they're just chronically elevated above what other people have, but they're not bad. But you were afraid to tell them because you thought you had damaged it from all this drinking in high school. No, I just, I didn't want to worry them. That's honestly why I didn't tell them.

So the doctors at student health services were like, oh, don't drink anything between now and the next visit. They would say this, and then finally they were just like, don't drink anything until told otherwise, because they're trying to figure out what was wrong with my liver. So it was basically going cold turkey from my previous high school drinking days on a dime. And during that year, I think I lost any appetite I had for drinking. I don't think it's that deep.

I just was like, yeah, I don't really like it. I think it's interesting. Everybody has these different things. I think what shocked me most about this is finding out how many people are non-drinkers in the U.S. 36% of people say that they are total abstainers from alcohol of U.S. adults. One in three adults in the United States is completely abstinent. One in three adults in the United States is completely abstinent? Yes, which I thought was shocking because I have often felt a little bit like Patty, where I'm like, oh, maybe I'm the only one at this.

In fact, I have often been the only one at this table or the only one at this event. I hope this isn't too personal. This is something I've been curious about, like the Church of Latter-day Saints being Mormon. That's a pretty big rule not to break, right? Not drinking alcohol. I mean, before we get back to the statistics, can I just ask, why are you not supposed to drink alcohol if you're Mormon? So I think there are a lot of religions, right? Buddhism, Islam, a bunch of Christian denominations. Oh, wait, I do think I knew that. Yeah, there are a lot of different religious organizations. I think Christian scientists,

do think I knew that. Yeah, there are a lot of different religious organizations. I think Christian scientists, Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. also don't drink alcohol as a tenet of their faith. A lot of religions have a law of health. Judaism has kosher. Wait, what is a law of health? I don't know what you mean by that. I just mean a religious law, meaning instruction as to how to govern your health. So part of it is that you don't drink, we don't drink alcohol, coffee, tea, like harmful drugs. You're supposed to eat meat sparingly. I think people disobey that one a lot. Wait, that's part of the Mormon tradition is to eat meat sparingly? Yeah, but again, I think that one's less watched over, if you will.

That's such a good one though. No, I agree. Anyway, so there's this code of health, basically. Wait, wait, wait. So just so I understand. So the law of health isn't to help other people. It's like a law of health for your own good, right? Like, I'm going to give you this rule to follow so that you can lead personally a healthier life.

But it's not like honesty where, like, if you don't do it, then somebody else is harmed. Is that right? Is that what this law of health idea is? If you don't do it, then somebody else is harmed. Is that right? Is that what this law of health idea is? I mean, I think a lot of it is this sense that, again, many religious groups or affiliations have that the body is a temple, that you treat the body well. It is to take care of oneself. But there are obvious positive externalities as well.

If you never drink, you never drive drunk. If you never drink, you never make uninhibited decisions that happen when one is drunk, right? You probably won't get cirrhosis of the liver. You never personally get cirrhosis of the liver, right? So I think it's both the personal and the positive externalities. Okay. It is good for you physically to abstain from this, abstain from that. That's maybe what a lot of people who actually are not devout would say. I think they're like, oh, those rules, they're just shorthand for common sense.

And look, to be very clear, I am completely fine with whoever chooses to drink alcohol. That has no bearing on me whatsoever. I mean, I spent every, probably extreme to say every night, but I spent several nights a week, my entire business school experience at bars. I never drank, but I was there. Oh, I, as a professor at a business school, would 100% believe that there are many students who spend every night actually at a bar,

not my students necessarily. But as a non-drinker, I also did, just because that's where the social scene was. There was a dear friend of mine in school, and he would host a scotch night like every other week. And people would go and taste these different kinds of really nice scotch. And I went to hang out with my friends and never had a drop of scotch. So like, you do you, right? That's not a problem for me. But I do think that I've been grateful in many circumstances to have people just be very chill about it.

And I think what Patty's asking is she says like a lot of times it's really uncomfortable for people to be around non-drinkers. And she's saying, why do people care so much that I don't drink? I don't care that you do. Right. I will say earlier in my life when I was younger, I think people viewed me as a non-drinker. And I don't know why, but as a threat. Maybe they thought I was judging them or I thought I was better than them because I wasn't drinking. As I've gotten older, I don't think it comes up as much. But I'll never forget my very first job out of school. I'm living in Phoenix. I'm working in

this real estate development company. And we're sitting down for dinner and this one individual, in a somewhat hostile way, when they're coming around giving everyone wine, I say, no, thanks. And that was it. He sort of leans across the table. He's like, why? I don't get it. Jesus drank wine. And thankfully the CEO's wife was also there and without skipping a beat said he also drank water. Leave him alone. Oh, that is so good. That is so good. And I, as this 20-something year old, was so grateful that she was just like, hey, why do you care? Like, let him not drink. He's not threatening you. Right. Lay off. But I think people usually are really chill and cool about it. I am no expert on the psychology of drinking, but I do know there is a professor of sociology who's

famous for his work on this. His name is Robin Room. And what the research that Robin Room and, of course, others suggest is that drinking is a social activity. Actually, research shows that by far people are more likely to drink in the company of other people than to drink alone, which is good because drinking alone can be problematic. But just saying, when people are drinking, they're very often and most often in the company of other people. And I think like other social activities, we often feel things, think things, and do things that strengthen social connection, right? things and do things that strengthen social connection, right? The idea of social belonging, I think, is one of the most popularized but also like deeply true findings in modern psychology. There's this recognition now that the need to fit in, the need to belong, it's so profound. And the opposite of that, feeling marginalized or excluded is like viscerally disturbing. Well, if that's true and drinking is a social activity, I'm not defending it, but maybe one of the reasons why there is this like, hey, why are you not drinking? That makes me feel bad.

be explained by this kind of instinct we have for everybody to be doing the same thing, like to feel connected and that the norms of the group are homogenous, that we're all doing or not doing the same thing. What do you think about that perspective? I think it makes perfect sense, especially if you really love something and you want to share it, right? So when I would go to these scotch nights, if you think about it, the construct you just said is that we were getting together in a social environment. And really the scotch was the mechanism for the gathering.

And yeah, everyone's talking about the scotch and how did that taste? And did you like that one? But we also just hang out for several hours in their apartment talking about life and school and how things are going and whatever. I was very grateful that with this group of friends, I just belonged. Okay, but I do think that for many people who drink, and there is some data on this, it's like a social WD-40. It's just a way that kind of takes all the rough edges off of having a conversation with a bunch of people in your class or the neighbor you sometimes go out to eat with, but not every week. And I'm thinking about this experience sampling study by a few folks at George Mason University, social anxiety and the quality of everyday social interactions, the moderating influence of alcohol consumption.

And this came out in the journal Behavior Therapy. And the three authors, Fallon Goodman, Melissa Stixma, and Todd Cashton, they did what we do in these studies, which is you basically beep people randomly throughout their day, typically for a week or more. Did you say beep? Beep. It's such an old-fashioned term. I thought you said you beat the people randomly. Oh, no.

I was like, that is awful. Ping? Should we say ping the people? Ping? Yes, thank you. So you ping someone in this study randomly, so you don't know when you're going to get pinged if you're in the study. And then when you get this notification, you answer a set of questions. And in this study, they were looking at what kind of social context you were in, how you're feeling about it. And also they're looking at alcohol consumption. And the summary of their research

study from pinging, not beating, these 160 adults who were followed is that when you're in a socially anxiety-provoking interaction, like something just like a little bit awkward, there is this feeling that alcohol does take the edge off, that it lubricates them, that it kind of maybe can help you get through what would otherwise be an uncomfortable conversation or dinner or what have you. I've never felt that, but I can read this research and say, oh yeah, that makes sense for other people. I 100% agree. I was reading an article from the National Institute of Health

and they, same thing, they boiled down drinking to primarily just two reasons. One is coping with stress and the other are social influences. And under that, they've got social activity, a way to gather together, peer pressure, I feel like I have to to fit in. And the third is this idea of a social lubricant, or I lose my inhibitions and it makes it easier to connect. And all of those seem completely understandable. I will say, 10 years ago, I'm early in my post-business school career, and I have been asked to interview Nate Silver. And Nate Silver is the statistician. Right.

He was kind of at the peak of his fame at this point. What's his blog? FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight. Yeah. And so he's super well-known at the time. Excel, who's one of the top tech venture capital firms in the world, they are bringing their top 50 CEOs to this event. We're bringing our top 50 customers, and they've asked me to go interview Nate Silver. This is like for Qualtrics, right?

For Qualtrics. Your home company. And I'm so nervous. I don't know how to do this. I find out how much we're paying him, which I now understand how much people get paid to come give a speech. I did not have a concept of that. At the time you were gobsmacked. You were like, what? Right. I am freaking out though. And for the first time in my life, I really, really understood why people would come home from work and crack open a beer. Did you have like a, I don't want to say craving, because that has a very particular meaning in the addiction literature, which has to do with things that I think are not this,

but you had a sort of like, yeah, I can see having a drink. Like, what did it feel like? I don't know that I had a craving, but absolutely, I thought to myself, if I drank, this would be the time for sure. And I think for me, I like you don't have much or any social anxiety, but I can completely understand that if that's something you feel, then of course alcohol provides a social lubricant. And to be clear, coming home after a long day and having a drink to unwind is a reduction in anxiety or stress, but it's not the social lubricant. Because the social lubricant one is like, I'm in a social situation and this is just going to make everything easier. Right. So they're different, but they're both about managing an emotion, I guess, that can be uncomfortable.

Well, and that's where I understand completely why people do it, the purpose that it serves. And I get people's experience in wanting to have that. And we'd love to hear from our listeners, are you a non-drinker? And we'd love to hear your experience in different social situations and how that's gone for you. Tell us your name, where you're from, and record a voice memo in a quiet place

and email it to us at nsq at freeconomics.com and maybe we'll play it in a future episode of the show. Still to come on No Stupid Questions, Angela explains how she became more confident in her decision not to drink. Gosh, you know, some people like skydiving too. Like, I don't have to do that. Now, back to Angela and Mike's conversation about the pressure to drink. Mike, I do have an epilogue to my alcohol story.

Your high school alcohol story? Well, you know, chapter one, keg parties in high school, stupid, stupid, stupid adolescent stuff. Chapter two, first year of college, complete abstinence because of this thought that I might have a problem with my liver. Chapter three was the rest of my life where I was like, okay, well, now I'm going to try to maybe drink a little bit. But I had lost my taste for it and certainly wasn't in the habit of it. But there is a chapter four. In chapter four, you're drinking a beer right now. No, no.

Oh, okay. This is actually a true story. I'm in a restaurant in Palo Alto and I'm with Carol Dweck, my hero. Like, Carol Dweck, the goddess. I don't think I can name a better psychologist and a more dignified human being. So we're at dinner and most people at the table order a drink. And I say, as I'm looking over the menu of wines by the glass, I'm like, I hate to drink, but I'm really trying to figure out how. And that catches her attention. And Carol says to me in her like regal tone, something along the lines of,

Angela, why drink if you don't want to? And I just was dumbstruck. I was like, I don't know. Everybody else seems to enjoy it or most other people. And she was like, that's not a very good reason. And I remember going home that night and thinking, yeah, this is kind of dumb. So since that dinner with Carol Dweck and Palo Alto, I have really let myself off the hook. I was like, I ought to experience this element of human pleasure that I haven't figured out yet. But gosh, you know, some people like skydiving too. Like I don't have to do that. On that note, have you ever gone skydiving, by the way?

I will never go skydiving. I'm so afraid of heights. Wait, have you gone skydiving? Yes. This is a complete non-sequitur. Doesn't matter. Go. I'm deathly afraid of heights.

Okay. But I felt like I wanted to just go skydiving once in my life. And so I did. Why? I don't know. Wait, wait, why? It was something I wanted to experience. I didn't feel any peer pressure.

I just wanted to see what it was like. Okay. So my friend Rachel and I, we bought Groupons. And she said to me, listen, I want to warn you. I may just bow out at the last second. And I said, Rach, the one thing I promise not to do is have any influence on your decision whether to do this or not.

Yeah. You do this if you feel comfortable, don't if you don't. So we have our friends in the back of the car, Jeff and Becky, who are driving with us. Are Jeff and Becky going skydiving with you? No, they just came to support because they had not bought Groupons. Oh, okay, yeah. And the whole time they're talking a big game like,

oh, we wish we bought them too. And they're like, we would totally do it. That would have been awesome. We get there and Rachel looks at me and says, I'm not doing it. And I said, okay, totally respect that. Then our skydiving instructors are like, oh, well, she already paid. Either of you can go, Jeff and Becky. And they were like, no, never mind. Never mind. Never mind. And I was like, this people just talking a big game. So now I have to go up by myself. Nobody went with you. Well, none of my friends.

The plane was full of other people. There are some people in front of me in your tandem. So you've got a person on your back. This woman, two people in front of me is screaming like you have rarely, if ever, heard screaming in your life. Oh, while you're on the plane. Yes. Terrifying. I mean, I'm not even going to model it here because your eardrums might be blown off,

but she is just screaming uncontrollably. But anyway, they hop out of the plane and there she goes. I hop out of the plane, two people later, and we're free falling. What they don't tell you is to close your mouth. I wish someone had told me that. Air is coming at you so fast that you're just swallowing loads of air. And so you feel bloated for like a week. Oh, that's so fascinating.

I thought you were gonna say you swallowed a bug. No, just so much air. Just air, okay. And I was kind of in this detached state mentally. I just had to detach myself. And anyway, this is a long story to say that it was fun, but I didn't think it was that fun. But I was really, really glad I did it. And I guess the way to tie this back to Patty's question is I did it sober.

Okay, let's go back to Patty's question very briefly. And I want to hit on a couple of quick statistics that I think are helpful and interesting to just note the trend in general. So binge drinking. In the early 2000s, roughly 50% of men between 18 and 25 and 30% of women said that they engaged in binge drinking. Wow, that's a lot. But by 2021, the trend for men has been steadily down. Women shot up, weirdly, in 2015 to 37% of women and 41% of men said they were engaging in binge drinking. Wait, that can't be. How are they defining binge drinking in this research?

It can't be that, what, 37% of women are binge drinking? Binge alcohol use in the past month. I don't know how they define it. Either way, men and women are answering the same questions. Okay, that's true. But here's the deal. So this is just among 18 to 25 year olds. And I think that's probably who binge drinks the most.

In 2020, men and women are basically binge drinking at the same level. And by 2021, women are actually reporting that they binge drink more than men. Okay. So you're saying that men and women are flipping. Well, it barely flipped. I think the bigger point here is that binge drinking is going down and it's posited that young people now understand more of the risks associated with it. And there is, as you know, across the U.S., a wellness trend. So there's the sense of, I want to be healthy, I want to be healthy younger. Others posit that it's also because cannabis is now more readily accessible. So those who are drinking for the purpose of stress relief now have access to marijuana, and that can serve a

similar purpose without necessarily the same negative repercussions as alcohol. We can get into a different debate on that. I don't think it's good. For the record, Angela Duckworth is not a big fan of the widespread use and the massively larger doses of cannabis, especially teenagers. You should not be smoking cannabis, in my humble opinion. And look, I think that the practice of alcohol consumption, which is ancient, I mean, all this tells me is that it's also cultural. Like the fact that it goes up, goes down, this religious tradition, that one, you know, we're so shaped really by the cultures we're in and people can have different opinions about whether these cultural trends are good or bad, but wow, culture is a thing. I just think that people be nice to each other

and you choose your thing, I'll choose my thing. And it's okay to show up as a non-drinker at a drinking party. It's okay to show up in different atmospheres as long as we're all just respectful. The last thing people are positing about why drinking may be going down is that we have a much more culturally aware generation. And they're culturally aware of all the diverse groups of people, religions, customs, practices. And they're just more willing to say, it's okay, come as you are, and let's enjoy one another's company together. I'll toast to that. With a non-alcoholic drink.

Exactly. This episode of No Stupid Questions was produced by me, Katherine Moncure, with help from our production associate, Lyric Bowditch. And now, here's a fact check of today's conversation. In the first half of the episode, Mike says that Jehovah's Witnesses do not drink alcohol as a tenet of their faith. In fact, drinking alcohol in moderation is allowed for Jehovah's Witnesses. Then, Mike says that if you abstain from alcohol, you never get liver cirrhosis. Alcohol increases the risk of cirrhosis, but non-drinkers can get cirrhosis too. Later, Angela describes the methods in the study titled

Socially Anxiety and the Quality of Everyday Social Interactions, the Moderating Influence of Alcohol Consumption. She said that participants were randomly pinged throughout the day and asked questions about what kind of social context they were in, how they felt about it, and their alcohol consumption. In fact, the participants were not randomly pinged. They were instructed to respond to a set of questions every time they had a face-to-face social interaction that lasted longer than 10 minutes. Then, Mike refers to an article from, quote, the National Institute of Health. The name of the agency is the National Institutes of Health. Finally, Mike refers to a 2021 survey from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, but he doesn't know how the researchers defined binge drinking in the questionnaire.

Binge drinking was defined as drinking four or more drinks in one occasion for women and five or more drinks in one occasion for men. That's it for the fact check. Before we wrap today's show, let's hear some of your thoughts about last week's episode on beauty and nature. Hi, Mike and Angela. My name is Elliot. I live in Boulder, Colorado. My two biggest hobbies are hiking or cycling in nature, also making furniture. And when I make furniture, what I'm attracted to are simple, clean lines, uniform colors, things that are very symmetrical and ordered. But when I'm in nature, what I find aesthetically pleasing is the variation in colors and shapes and the chaos of it all. I guess I couldn't tell you what qualifies beauty, but I know it when I see it.

Roloff from San Diego here. I think I have the same affliction as Angela when it comes to being unimpressed by nature, but for architectural works instead. On a family trip to Barcelona, we were all looking up at Gaudi's Sagrada Familia. And while my sisters and parents were full of awe, I defiantly said that it was an unfinished eyesore to the laughter and consternation of my entire family. All that to say, I get it, Angela. There's nothing wrong with being unimpressed

by something others find beautiful. That was, respectively, Elliot Freeman and Roloff Grutenhus. Thanks so much to them and to everyone who sent us their thoughts. And remember, we'd still love to hear about your experiences with pressure to drink. Send a voice memo to NSQ at Freakonomics.com. Let us know your name and whether you'd like to remain anonymous. You might hear your voice on the show.

Coming up next week on No Stupid Questions, Angela and Mike discuss how to deal with big life changes. What? I thought you loved me. That's next week on No Stupid Questions. No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I Mostly Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Redbed Radio. This episode was mixed by Jasmine Klinger with help from Jeremy Johnston and Eleanor Osborne. We had research help from Daniel Moritz-Rabson and our senior producer

is Rebecca Lee Douglas. Our theme song was composed by Luis Guerra. You can follow us on Twitter at NSQ underscore show and on Facebook at NSQ show. If you have a question for a future episode,

please email it to NSQ at Freakonomics.com. To learn more or to read episode transcripts, visit Freakonomics.com slash NSQ. Thanks for listening. What's his blog? It's, um... 438, maybe?

I was going to say 574. The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything. Stitcher.