[taurath]

Your theory is big booze and government corruption creates a problem of alcohol. Mine is that culturally many people really like to drink as an emotional salve. I didn’t ascribe the entire problem to it, just offering an additional or alternative cause, of which there can and must be more than one.

Throwing around accusations like intellectual dishonesty sorta doesn’t help conversation.

[eurasiantiger]

Let’s review this a bit more clearly.

I agree with you that many people like to drink to suppress or bring forth their emotions. This could be generalized: many people like to heavily alter their state of consciousness.

Now, mostly because of Big Booze and government corruption, we are stuck in a system where the only legal way to heavily alter one’s consciousness is alcohol.

Culture revolves around this. Counterculture then naturally involves illegal ways to alter one’s consciousness. Since counterculture exists defined through culture as an avantgarde-like necessity - a forefront of cultural innovation - it is again natural that the makers of mainstream culture are actually counterculturalists. It is also why mainstream art - music, books, movies, TV - contains so many examples of ”promoting” drug use.

It is thus obvious that the legality of alcohol and illegality of drugs are more significant drivers of behaviour than ”alcohol culture”.

We have hundreds of mainstream idols from Willie Nelson to Snoop Dogg openly promoting cannabis use, yet cannabis culture is literally cracked down on wherever it is illegal.

Ultimately, the law trumps culture.

[taurath]

Certainly “because it’s legal” is a decent argument, but culture does a lot more than decide which recreational drugs are in or out. Overuse of and dependence on drugs and alcohol vary widely among different cultures regardless of legality.

Were there cultures that didn’t produce as much demand for altered states of consciousness, those might be seen as better addressing the needs of its people (in theory, not making this argument as I’m not a Puritan but just for the sake of conversation).

[eurasiantiger]

Different cultures generally get exposed to foreign substances due to imperialism and capitalism, see the opium wars.

It’s obvious that original cultures have their own traditional substances, from fly agaric to psilocybe shrooms to cava to ayahuasca. They would be taken as a part of a prosocial setting, an initiation or a healing ceremony, and the inebriation would be seen as a transformative process: something that enables living fully. Alcohol, on the other hand, tends to only disable and provide a means to escape stress.

What happens to the aforementioned shaman culture once western values and substances are introduced?

I would assume the increase in ego-centric stress drives the population into escape mode, and the imperialist offers alcohol.