Alcohol Use, from the Essay Drugs and Work

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Alcohol Use
by Andrew D. Carson, Ph.D.

Alcohol is also widely used by workers and work teams, often as a means of celebration and socialization, but also as a way to anaesthetize one's guilt after distasteful work.

Alcohol is one of the most popular forms of moral anaesthesia, and when one's work compels one to do things for which one feels guilty, alcohol may provide a balm to sooth, temporarily and at a cost, such regret. In writing about the medical staff at Auschwitz and Birkenau, Wilkinson (2008) cites a conversation with psychiatrist Jay Lifton in which he said that "alcohol...is what made it possible for many of the doctors to persevere when killing was substituted for the imperative to heal, or at least to do no harm" (p. 54).

Moreso than with caffeine, alcohol poses a risk of damaging addiction. Some religions forbid use of alcohol, e.g., Islam, some Protestant Christian churches. Also, problems associated with alcohol addiction have generated temperance movements to restrict or eliminate the sale and use of alcohol. Excessive alcohol and addiction is reportedly very common in some nations, e.g., Russia, just as it was in England and other Western industrial nations at least until recently (and where it is still all too widespread). Alcohol is especially a problem when used in the job, and it is apparently involved in many work-related accidents.

As with smoking and tobacco use, consumption of alcohol during work hours has been on the wane for some time in the United States. Drinking during lunch hours, for example, has apparently declined, even in those occupations that in earlier decades might have countenanced (or encouraged) it. However, at some work-related events consumption of alcohol continues to receive sanction, e.g., business-related dinners, office parties, off-site events.

Again as is the case with nicotine and smoking, other nations continue to support substantially greater alcohol consumption during work hours. For example, in Japan, where after work dinners represent (for practical purposes) an extension of the work day for many employees, drinking alcohol is reportedly extensive. Similarly, in the USA and other countries, workers often stop at bars or pubs on their way home from work for a drink, to "unwind" from a hard day of work. Because in many such situations coworkers might stop together to drink, one might also classify such behavior as at least an informal extension of the workday.

Links:
Tranquilizers (Australian Drug Foundation).
Alcohol (from Encyclopedia.com)
Temperance movements (from Encyclopedia.com)
Annheuser-Busch, makers of beer, amusement parks, and other products and services.
Master Bourbon Taster, an interesting job in Kentucky.
Master Club DJ recommends not drining on the job (Nightclub.com)
Occupational differences in heavy alcohol use. Lowest rates of heavy alcohol use reported by data clerks, personnel specialists, and secretaries (from 1996 report from the Department of Health and Human Services, United States. (Terri Gates, SAMHSA)

References to citations in the text.

Credits:
1 Alcohol containers. Believed to be in the public domain, from http://www.drugs.indiana.edu/prevention/govphoto.html