Bottoms up, in the name of creativity!

Our taste for alcohol isn’t an evolutionary mistake—it’s an ancient tool.

Bottoms up, in the name of creativity!

This entire concept is from a podcast episode on the history of alcohol with Edward Slingerland, author of “Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, And Stumbled Our Way To Civilization”. I’ll be copying a lot of their conversation below:

Edward: If you bring people to about 0.08 blood alcohol content, they do better at creative tasks. Most of the benefits of alcohol come at the sweet spot of about 0.08 BAC. That’s where you’ve down-regulated your prefrontal cortex, you’re getting the endorphin and serotonin kick, and you’re feeling good. You’re disinhibited, but you’re still connected to reality. You’re not dangerously out of your senses. Supposedly, Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, discovered that his coding ability peaked at this really narrow blood alcohol content, and then fell off if he drank too much. So he would supposedly keep himself hooked up to an IV drip of vodka to keep himself right at this really narrow BAC where he was a supernaturally good coder. That was probably apocryphal, but it gets at this idea that there’s a sweet spot of inebriation where you regain the kind of cognitive flexibility that we have as children.

Rufus: For those who may be skeptical about this enhancement of creativity that alcohol facilitates, you cite the work of an economist named Michael Andrews who pulls data on wet and dry counties during prohibition. And I think he was able to show, pretty conclusively, that the number of new patents were reduced by 15% annually in counties that went from wet to dry in the early years of prohibition.

To reach the 0.08 blood alcohol content, for most people, this would mean having 2-3 drinks of lower ABV beverages, like beer or wine. Cheers!