Is This the Secret of Happiness, Health, and a Long Life?

Why do humans drink?

To the person waiting at the bar on a hot summer evening, the answer seems simple: drinking is a pleasure and a relief.

To the public health official reading the latest reports of alcohol’s societal ruin, the answer might seem frustrating. Why would anyone drink, if it’s so bad for you?

To me and to my fellow evolutionary psychologists, the answer has emerged in a different and fascinating light, thanks to some intriguing new research.

It is both simple and complex at the same time. Here’s why.

Like all monkeys and apes, humans are social. We have an urgent desire to schmooze and an awareness that alcohol helps our cause.

Friendships protect us against outside threats and internal stresses, and this has been key to our evolutionary success.

Primate social groups, unlike most other animals, rely on bondedness to maintain social coherence.

And for humans, this is where a shared bottle of red wine plays a powerful role.

It isn’t just because alcohol causes us to lose our social inhibitions and become over-friendly with our drinking chums.

Rather, the alcohol itself triggers the brain mechanism that is intimately involved in building and maintaining friendships in monkeys, apes and humans. This mechanism is the endorphin system.

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