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The Morality of Alcohol

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One cannot have a small amount of cocaine.

Even when I interpret your statement in the most charitable way possible, it is simply not true. Suppose I took a tiny amount of cocaine, and repeatedly diluted it, as though I was trying to make some kind of homeopathic sleeping pill. At some point, the mixture would no longer produce any high at all. Now suppose we backtrack: are you suggesting that at one increment, it has practically no effect at all, and at the next you become a homicidal coke fiend? Of course not. Cocaine can be used in very small amounts just like alcohol to produce a very modest effect. I am extremely confident that you have never used cocaine or known well anybody who did.

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Cocaine can be used in very small amounts just like alcohol to produce a very modest effect. I am extremely confident that you have never used cocaine or known well anybody who did.
Whereas it may be true that the most minuscule amount of cocaine may be virtually harmless when consumed, your notion that cocaine is a successful recreational drug is wrong. Cocaine is not "just like alcohol." There is no such thing as a casual user of cocaine.

I have not used cocaine myself, but I have known enough users personally to conclude that the drug is a destroyer of a person's livelihood. No value is gained from cocaine besides the desire to consume it again, period. And enough use will permanently turn the user into a whole, unique subdivision of humans that anyone who has been around them can easily recognize as addicts, ie. just a little crazy (or sometimes a lot).

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There is no such thing as a casual user of cocaine.

I've known some. Why would you believe that there could be no casual users of cocaine? Because it is addictive? Addiction is primarily a behavior, and the physical components of addiction do not arise until well after the behavior has been established as part of the individual's lifestyle. Also, keep in mind that since alcohol is legal and more socially acceptable than cocaine, those wishing to alter their consciousness are more likely to gravitate towards alcohol than cocaine because it appears less troublesome.

No value is gained from cocaine besides the desire to consume it again, period.

That's ridiculous. People take cocaine to get high, just as with alcohol. Unless you are willing to assume that the enjoyable effects of drugs are necessarily not values (and would you extend this to alcohol?), then you must revise your position.

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People take cocaine to get high, just as with alcohol. Unless you are willing to assume that the enjoyable effects of drugs are necessarily not values (and would you extend this to alcohol?), then you must revise your position.
It does extend. One difference (not evidenct on many college campuses) is that some people drink alcoholic beverages despite the ethanol, but nobody snorts coke despite the alkaloid. People who get blitzed because they think they're deriving pleasure from the experience have a warped and irrational understanding of pleasure, where pleasure is a primary, not relatable to anything else. A rational view of pleasure and happiness relates the feeling of happiness to one's ultimate goal. But intoxicants do not fill that bill. While people drink to get drunk and steal to avoid working, that doesn't make it okay to do so.
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some people drink alcoholic beverages despite the ethanol, but nobody snorts coke despite the alkaloid.

I have never met anybody who drinks despite the ethanol. I do grant that they exist, but they are a minority. I think most drink for a variety of reasons including getting high.

People who get blitzed because they think they're deriving pleasure from the experience have a warped and irrational understanding of pleasure

I agree with you, but I also think that people who have a few beers and get mildly buzzed are definitely not wrong to think that they are deriving pleasure from the experience. If this is so, then people who do small amounts of coke are not clearly different.

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I have never met anybody who drinks despite the ethanol.
Probably we hang out in different crowds. In the 18-25 crowd, I don't doubt that.

Of course, to get back to the question of value, and recalling Rand's definition of value as that which one acts to gain and/or keep, self-destructive ends can be a value, but not a rational value, given the choice to exist.

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self-destructive ends can be a value, but not a rational value, given the choice to exist.

This is true, of course, but our point of disagreement is whether there is a context under which getting mildly buzzed is not self-destructive. If so, then cocaine is not off the table, it's just a question of how much is too much.

Note also that even if you only drink fine scotch whiskey for the flavor, if you drink enough to get buzzed it doesn't matter to the question of whether or not your behavior was self-destructive whether your intention was to get buzzed. If to get buzzed is self-destructive, then the scotch fancier is simply evading the consequences of his actions. And frankly, if the scotch fancier stoicly suffers through the buzz to enjoy the taste of a fine scotch, he seems to me to be missing something.

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If so, then cocaine is not off the table, it's just a question of how much is too much.
My conclusion about cocaine is purely anecdotal. From what I have observed, there is something different about hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin which remove it from the realm of drugs like alcohol or marijuana. Whether it is moral to get mildly buzzed or not is another question, but in reality, cocaine users don't use the drug mildly, ever, anyway.

And I also know people who drink alcohol for the flavors, and not for its effect as a drug.

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This is true, of course, but our point of disagreement is whether there is a context under which getting mildly buzzed is not self-destructive.
I'm not sure whether that is the point of disagreement. Let me state that I don't consider erroneously getting mildly buzzed to be self-destructive and an absolute moral sin. I would say that deliberately getting wasted is, with a reservation allowed for the righteous viceral reaction of a professional soldier learning that his commander-in-chief has just decided to flush 45,000 American lives down the drain for absolutely nothing. The point is that the ethics of getting buzzed unintentionally in the course of a rational celebration of life is distinct from the ethics of setting out to get buzzed for the sake of getting buzzed. That is the fundamental difference between coke and rum-and-coke.
Note also that even if you only drink fine scotch whiskey for the flavor, if you drink enough to get buzzed it doesn't matter to the question of whether or not your behavior was self-destructive whether your intention was to get buzzed. If to get buzzed is self-destructive, then the scotch fancier is simply evading the consequences of his actions.
But I would not say that being buzzed is per se self-destructive: rather, it is paving the purpose of getting buzzed that is self-destructive. I know that there is a popular and IMOO mistaken belief that the state of being drunk is a physically self-destructive act, but I reject that claim as mistaken on physical and psychological grounds (unless, of course, you do get so drunk that you actually break your liver or brain). The destruction is psychological, and it stems from the choice to deny your nature as a man.
And frankly, if the scotch fancier stoicly suffers through the buzz to enjoy the taste of a fine scotch, he seems to me to be missing something.
Okay, assuming you mean "chronically, typically". I agree, you should know when to stop. You may make a mistake and miscount fingers, in which case you have to pay the price; I don't see that errors are a problem. What would be a problem would be habitual errors, like always drinking yourself into a stupor, always or even frequently having 5 beers when 3 is your limit.
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The point is that the ethics of getting buzzed unintentionally in the course of a rational celebration of life is distinct from the ethics of setting out to get buzzed for the sake of getting buzzed. That is the fundamental difference between coke and rum-and-coke.

But I don't think that a person who has a rum and coke as part of a celebration is unintentionally getting buzzed, or if he is there is something wrong with him. After all, why is he having a rum and coke as part of his celebration rather than a plain coke? Or to put it another way, if non-alcoholic taste-identical substitutes existed for every alcoholic beverage, would I necessarily be irrational to have the alcoholic version as part of my celebration? If not, then we conclude that getting buzzed is not immoral, so long as it is done in the proper situation. If so, then there is no reason that I should get buzzed with beer rather than wine, or liquor rather than cocaine. The point is that I should be trying to supplement my celebration rather than to escape it.

My hidden premise here is that there is nothing inherent in cocaine that makes it a drug to use to escape reality. Instead, it is merely an artifact of our culture that people tend to use it more for escaping reality as a percentage of total use as compared with alcohol.

But I would not say that being buzzed is per se self-destructive: rather, it is paving the purpose of getting buzzed that is self-destructive.
I assume "paving the purpose" means "taking actions directed towards the goal." If so, I disagree. This notion of drinking alcohol without at least an eye towards the effect it will have on you physically is bizarre to me. Either a state of buzz is acceptable or it isn't, and the acceptability of trying to achieve that state exactly covaries with the acceptability of that state. I consider this principle applicable to all purpose-state relationships.

The destruction is psychological, and it stems from the choice to deny your nature as a man.

Which raises the questions of whether getting buzzed as opposed to wasted amounts to denying your humanity. I don't think it does. Insofar as you can still think quite well with a light buzz, and you are doing it in a situation where you do not need to be superhumanly rational anyway, you are being perfectly human.

Okay, assuming you mean "chronically, typically". I agree, you should know when to stop.

That wasn't quite my point. I was saying that if a person does not enjoy the effects of drunkenness, he should not have a hobby that consists of drinking alcohol.

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I was saying that if a person does not enjoy the effects of drunkenness, he should not have a hobby that consists of drinking alcohol.

So you think drinking an alcoholic drink for it's unique taste is somehow messed up, but drinking it for the buzz is okay?

Aside from that, let's apply this logic to cocaine; if a person doesn't enjoy the effect of getting high, why would they want to do cocaine (even in miniscule amounts that you allege would have no effect)?

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So you think drinking an alcoholic drink for it's unique taste is somehow messed up, but drinking it for the buzz is okay?

No. I think that if you drink scotch for the taste, and are indifferent to the buzz, then there is nothing wrong. If you explicitly dislike the buzz, but nonetheless continue to drink scotch for the taste, then you are messed up.

Aside from that, let's apply this logic to cocaine; if a person doesn't enjoy the effect of getting high, why would they want to do cocaine (even in miniscule amounts that you allege would have no effect)?

I thought I made it clear that using cocaine only makes sense if you are want to get high (and that is not wrong universally). The whole point of my argument is that there is no reason to say that alcohol is good and cocaine is bad if getting high is not bad.

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If you explicitly dislike the buzz, but nonetheless continue to drink scotch for the taste, then you are messed up.

Why? The lack of clarity here involves what you mean by "continue".

Edited by RationalBiker
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That wasn't quite my point. I was saying that if a person does not enjoy the effects of drunkenness, he should not have a hobby that consists of drinking alcohol.
If that's all you're saying, I might agree. I have a hobby that consists of producing fine beverages which contain some alcohol, and I do drink my own brew. So I don't have a hobby of drinking alcohol, although I do drink beverages that contain alcohol. I also know how to drink these drinks in moderation, without getting drunk (I will confess that I have been drunk a few times in my life, but that was decades ago before I learned how to identify the signs). If a person can't drink a dram of West Islay's finest without getting drunk, then I agree that he should abstain. There may be such people, and for them there is no distinction between drinking and taking narcotics: if that's your experience, I'm not trying to dissuade you from abstinence. For other people, I suspect most people, there is a difference, in that coke has only one result, namely intoxication.

Equally, I would say that vodka and coke is an ethanolic equivalent of a small dose of cocaine. Straight good-quality vodka is different.

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  • 5 weeks later...
I thought it would be immoral to get drunk because living in and interpreting reality is a man's primary obligation and I don't think you can do that drunk. So how is it not immoral?

Consider what Dr. Peikoff has to say about this issue. He discusses drinking alcohol in a Nov. 1 Q&A transcription on his website.

I suggest checking your premise. For, a man does not have a "primary obligation" to "live in and interpret reality." There are cases where death is a better alternative than living in hopeless misery and pain. And there are cases where it is not necessary to interpret reality. Do I really need to interpret the facts of the TV show House, M.D. and figure out whether the show really is about a reason-emotion split? No. I don't care. Am I immoral for not caring? No. Such knowledge is not a value to me. It may be a value to someone else who watches the show, but not to me.

A couple specific questions you might ask yourself about your situation with your girlfriend are:

1. What about reality is she not interpreting when she drinks? Is she actually immoral for not caring about these things when she's at the party? What exactly do you mean by immoral?

2. How is she not living in reality when she drinks? Where is she living? What do you mean by that phrase?

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  • 1 month later...

It's silly moralizing consumption of alcohol, especially specifying "moral" and "immoral" amounts of alcohol... "Hey Frank, want another beer?" "Nah, I'll pass my moral threshold."

Even worse is suggesting alternatives like "breathing exercises" that just do different things like deprive your brain of oxygen and cause euphoria that you wouldn't otherwise experience under normal conditions. Indeed, it's a sad state when somebody drinks to escape all their problems in life, and their enjoyment in a given situation is contingent on consuming alcohol (characteristic of alcoholics, other addicts). But this is true of everything and anything... people who play chess all day to forget about overdue bills, people who work all day to forget about their children they're neglecting, etc. The immorality people discuss isn't in the consumption of alcohol but the denial of reality where alcohol is their vehicle of escape.

Risk is implicit in everything we do (driving 60mph), drinking is no different. As mentioned before, drinking can have value in altering your consideration of a certain concept / object [not distorting reality] and make you jolly while you spend time with friends. It may also taste good. These are personal preferences. I don't personally drink, but I hardly condemn anyone who does to supplement an enjoyable life.

I'm drinking coffee right now... won't apologize for that.

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Ayn Rand in a Playboy interview (on drinking):

PLAYBOY: What about discriminate and selective indulgence in other activities—drinking, for example, or gambling? Are these immoral?

RAND: To begin with, those are not in the same category as sex. Drinking, as such, is not immoral, unless a person is a drunkard. Merely taking a drink is hardly a moral question. It becomes an immorality only when a man drinks to the point where it stifles and stunts his mind. When a man drinks in order to escape the responsibility of being conscious, only then is drinking immoral. As to gambling, I wouldn't say that a person who gambles occasionally is immoral. That's more a game than a serious concern. But when gambling becomes more than a casual game, it is immoral because of the premise that motivates it. The passion for gambling comes from a man's belief that he has no control over his life, that he is controlled by fate, and, therefore, he wants to reassure himself that fate or luck is on his side.

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I just finished reading most of the last 11 pages and I think the last 3 posts were the best yet. Applying a moral judgement in a strictly literal way is an error. As some people have said, the context of a situation is vitally important to understanding its moral significance. It is not a question of, do you drink? Instead it is a question of, why do you drink? Drinking has many qualities that are pleasurable (please don't mistake the use of the word pleasurable for moral) such as its taste, use as a muscle relaxant and sedative qualities. If a person drinks fully understanding the risks with drinking to excess and acts accordingly have they been immoral? For example, by taking care of their daily responsibilities, putting themselves in a position to avoid driving and understanding that important decisions should be left until they are fully sober, has a person tried to evade reality. I argue that they have not and it is this desire to evade reality that is immoral, not the act of drinking.

If a person drinks to excess frequently then they are evading reality and this will begin to show in the actions they take with the rest of their lives. The drinking has become a symptom of an immoral motive within their mind. As for harder drugs, the negative consequences of using them vastly increases. A person who chooses to use them is much more likely to be evading reality because the consequences of severe addiction, destroying your family life and a significantly shorter lifespan are so grave that very few should want to do them. However, if you are terminally ill and in pain, using a hard drug like morphine would seem very rational. Again the critically important part of the argument is context and applying morality to the motives behind an action.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 9 months later...

*** Mod's note: Merged with an earlier thread. sN **

Given the advent of new scientific evidence promulgating the ill effects of alcohol on human physiology and mind, I find myself being repulsed more and more by the concept of alcohol consumption. As far as I can tell, its primary use is that of evasion and synthetic enjoyment. I can't even see it being used positively in moderation as a relaxant. How could I possibly relax consuming a substance which stifles my cognitive faculty, not just in the short run, but in the long run as well. It seems to be some sort of myopic hedonism.

As a young city dweller, I'm surrounded by this constantly. This vice seems to be lauded; people seem to take solace in their decay.

Do you consume alcohol? If so, with what reason? If you don't, how do you feel about others doing so? Do you have any close contacts who do consume alcohol regularly?

Edited by softwareNerd
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Given the advent of new scientific evidence promulgating the ill effects of alcohol on human physiology and mind,

I haven't heard anything about this. Would you care to elaborate or cite some cources?

Long-standing research points to many benefits for the body as a result of moderate intake of alcohol.

As far as I can tell, its primary use is that of evasion and synthetic enjoyment.

Aside from teenagers, college kids and alcoholics, most people are quite rational in their consumption of alcohol. There's nothing "synthetic," as in artificial, in the appreciation of a good liquor by itself or with a mixer. In the case of wine, mostly, connoisseurs take time to learn the subtleties of flavor and aroma and how to perceive them. That's no more immoral or artificial than what purist coffee drinkers do.

I can't even see it being used positively in moderation as a relaxant. How could I possibly relax consuming a substance which stifles my cognitive faculty, not just in the short run, but in the long run as well. It seems to be some sort of myopic hedonism.

What long term harm? I repeat I've heard of none.

Do you consume alcohol? If so, with what reason?

I do, on occasion. I think I've had five drinks in the last two years. Some years ago I used to meet friends for drinks and dinner on Saturdays. Why? Because I like it.

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Do you consume alcohol? If so, with what reason?
Sure. There is no scientific evidence that ethanol is an "absolute poison", either psychologically or physiologically, and certain beverages that contain ethanol are objectively pleasant (they taste good). There is also medical evidence (which I'm not professionally competent to evaluate) that red wine in particular has positive physiological benefits.

Presumably your objection really is to people drinking excessively. Although, there are also extreme diet puritans who insist that one should only eat organic vegan low-fat, low-calorie salt-free sugar-free food because everything else is "bad for you", but that's not a rational position. Salt in excess is bad, salt in moderation is good. Mushrooms are evil if you are allergic to them or if you find them repulsive, so you can't follow the generic puritan rules, without determining if they have any actual applicability to your own life

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Do you consume alcohol? If so, with what reason? If you don't, how do you feel about others doing so? Do you have any close contacts who do consume alcohol regularly?

Yes, I do drink socially, because it helps me relax and have fun. Real fun, through I guess "artificial" means, to a small extent. (if you wish to call that synthetic, go ahead, the word has no negative connotations to me) I guess part of the reason is that my friends tend to drink in social settings, which would make it even less fun if I didn't drink than hanging out with people who never drink.

I have a good friend who drinks a lot more often than I do, it's safe to say regularly, we joke that he's a functional alcoholic, but I don't think he is. He only drinks when he isn't working, and he works hard, and just got married. (runs his own quite profitable business) I guess he enjoys it even more than I do, and I feel perfectly comfortable with that.

I'm sorry, but you did not make the case against drinking. I've seen plenty of evidence that alcoholism (constant, heavy drinking), has serious effects on the body and mind, but there's nothing I've seen that proves drinking beer on weekends and on holidays does that. As for Hedonism, that's a school of philosophy that holds pleasure to be the only value for a person. Pursuing pleasure and comfort does not make one a hedonist, pursuing it exclusively and without regard to one's proper hierarchy of values does. No one act is hedonism, only an entire life spent chasing instant pleasure.

Edited by Jake_Ellison
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