Wine and Psychological Health

The New York Times seems to have discovered the value of community.

They have been in the forefront of the new prohibition, repeatedly reporting without pushback or context,  the misleading claims from public health institutions that any degree of wine consumption is a threat to health. But last week’s article by Genia Bellafante entitled “What Else Do We Lose When People Give Up Booze” pushes in a welcome new direction.

The article details the devastating effect of declining alcohol consumption on local bars and other venues where people gather:

Employment metrics are just part of a calculus that counts consequences to ecosystems that are dependent on the habits that have fueled human fellowship for most of recorded time. From the birth of the public house in the 16th century to the revolution for gay rights, which began at the Stonewall Inn, alcohol has shaped the social politics of urban life.

In 2000, sociologist Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community in which he argues that Americans have become increasingly disconnected from social, civic, and community life. That has led to a drastic decline in “social capital”—the trust, networks, and norms of reciprocity that strengthen democracy.  Although people still bowl, he argued, they no longer do so in leagues. Putnam took that to symbolize a general shift from collective engagement to isolation.

I don’t recall if he mentioned drinking together but surely sharing a bottle has social roots as deep and pervasive as sports leagues.

Since 2000, the situation has not improved. Several sociologists, including Putnam himself, have issued follow up reports showing that isolation has intensified. The American Time Use survey found that, between 2003 and 2020, time spent with friends, family, neighbors and other acquaintances continues to decline. And in 2023 the Surgeon General’s office declared loneliness and social disconnection to be a public health crisis.

Given the importance of social connection to public health, you would think health authorities might consider social drinking in moderation to be on the positive side of the ledger. But they have for the most part been silent on that issue..

Of course, people gather without alcohol. But a café that closes at four does not perform the same function as a bar open late into the evening. Restaurant meals are expensive and  private parties require labor. Fitness or yoga classes? They’re more about performance or self improvement rather than socializing. Bars, pubs, and wine taverns ask less of us. You can stay for one drink or three hours. You can arrive alone and speak to someone you did not plan to meet. These venues support what sociologists call weak ties: the bartenders who know your name or the stranger who joins a conversation about a ball game. Weak ties are not intimate like friendships but they make us available to people outside our household and professional circle.

Wine enables conversation because it is a common object of attention.  You can comment on what a wine tastes or smells like or how well it goes with food. You don’t need technical knowledge to enjoy it or talk about it, although some experience helps.One person loves it and another finds it too sour. Disagreements give the conversation something to work with even among relative strangers, without requiring ideological agreement or a formal agenda.

No doubt excessive drinking is destructive. And for public health officials it’s easier to count those harms rather than describing the social goods encouraged by drinking. A cancer case can be entered into a dataset. The value of a neighborhood bar or a weekly gathering over wine disperses across hundreds of interactions. No single glass creates the friendship or generates social capital. There is nothing to be counted. The benefit is repetition, custom, and the gradual accumulation of trust all of which is hard to measure. But it is those hard-to-measure activities that make life meaningful.

The value of companionship is immeasurable. It is not only the alcohol but the companionship fostered by social drinking that helps us cope with the rigors of life. And so it has been for thousands of years.

We have spent decades making ordinary life more private and more efficiently mediated through screens. The results are all around us. Instead of celebrating the disappearance of another communal ritual, health authorities  should ask what will replace it.

And what happens if nothing does?