I recently started thinking of things that plague modern society and wondering about why their evolutionary disadvantage hasn’t eliminated them. Specifically, I’m curious about alcoholism. Is it too recent a trend to have an evolutionary effect? Am I wrongly interpreting it as a negative when it may not have such a terrible impact on reproduction? Help me out.
There are plenty of reasons…
For starters plenty of alcoholics I know have had no problem passing on their genes. Additionally evolutionarily speaking alcohol is a pretty recent development (around 10000BC) compared to the evolution of the human race thats not long.
Alcoholism is a progressive dysfunction that usually takes years to manifest itself. I don’t recall too many 19 year olds being treated for it. It becomes more apparent in middle-age after the reproductive years, and there certainly appears to be a genetic predisposition.
I don’t have cites. I’m, speaking through my ass, but I’m certain that I’m on the right track here.
And the time when it was cheap and widely available enough to be abused by any significant number of humans is more recent still.
Considering the effect of alcohol on sexual inhibition, it’s possible that alcoholism could have an evolutionary advantage.
It could still affect the reproductive chances of the alcoholic’s offspring, though. However, I’d guess that it wouldn’t, generally. Historically speaking, the kinds of people who can afford to be real alcoholics - that is, those with whatever genetic predisposition and moolah for booze - are also gonna have enough moolah to reproduce regardless, while for those with just the predisposition, it’s not gonna be an issue. I’d guess until the rise of the middle class, there weren’t many people for whom it would be an issue. And that’s not long enough ago for evolution to do much. Furthermore, it doesn’t seem to stop too many of it’s bearers from reproducing, so I’m not sure it would select out anyways.
Further, in Europe, until recently, everyone drank. It wasn’t safe to drink water. Fermentation was used to make water safe to drink. The drinks weren’t particularly alcoholic either, so it took a long time to get drunk.
The simple answer is because alcoholism is not an “evolutionary disadvantage”. Nor are many of the other social ills that “plague modern society”.
Similar questions are proposed a lot. Why hasn’t evolution cured baldness? Why hasn’t evolution cured arthritis, etc.
The short answer is that if (fill in the blank) allows you to live long enough to pass on your genes with the same frequency as people that don’t have (fill in the blank), then evolution has lost control.
How many people do you know that were killed by alcoholism, baldness, or arthritis before they reached the age that they could bear/father children?
A good point. Naturally fermented drinks have a built-in limitation on how high a percentage of alcohol they can contain. Distillation, which allowed alcohol to be concentrated in much higher amounts, is a relatively recent technology.
And alcohol is a sterilizing agent. So a person with a genetic propensity to like drinking alcohol with his water might have had an evolutionary advantage over somebody who liked his water straight. The low levels of alcohol available diminished the effects of alcohol poisoning.
Low, possibly nonexistent selective pressure combined with an insufficient time frame.
Evolution, why do you let bad things happen to good people?
The snarky answer is that alcohol isn’t the great scourge that the pussy PC police like to make it out to be.
I find it very peculiar that you’d signal this out as a question. Alcoholism is drastically less destructive than many, many things that trouble the human race. Most forms of cancer would present a much stronger case in your rationale, as would obesity, arthritis, diabetes and hundreds other progressive illnesses.
Evolution doesn’t work that way, and what our society thinks of as a “health crisis” simply isn’t anything close to it.
Alcohol = horny
Horny = Children (Especially if both parties are drunk and horny.)
Wine/Mead was actually beneficial over regular water from about 2000 BC til Water Treatment/Sterilization rolled around.
Alcoholism normally doesn’t truly wreck someone until 35+, after peak fertility years have passed.
Given recent warnings by medical professionals about a rising tide of mid-twenties with alcoholic liver disease (particularly women) and an increasing tendency to later child-bearing, maybe evolution will get it’s chance to weed out the heavy drinking genes.
Si