7. How negative socialization patterns have been imposed on Native Americans and others by conquest and cultural disruption:
   "Clearly, it is within the cultural context that genetics and familial considerations of Indian alcoholism become meaningful. Not only was distilled alcohol unknown to this group prior to white contact, severe controls administered by the federal government through the General Indian Intercourse Act (1832-1953) denied American Indians the opportunity to establish acceptable drinking norms. Given this situation, subcultural, deviant drinking norms emerged to fill the therapeutic void alcohol seems to offer. And since a de facto policy of enforced abstinence still prevails in Indian/white interaction these deviant drinking patterns continue to the present." French, L., "Substance Abuse Treatment Among American Indian Children," pp. 237-245 in Hornby, R., ed., Alcohol and Native Americans, Sinte Gleska University Press, Mission, SD, 1994, p. 241.
   "The major colonial powers exported to those areas of the globe that fell under their control not only models of drunken behavior but also a host of beliefs about the effects of alcohol on human beings. It may be that the widespread belief in alcohol as a disinhibitor is nothing but an ethnocentric European folk belief foisted on subject peoples around the world during the heyday of colonialism." Marshall, M., "`Four Hundred Rabbits': An Anthropological View of Ethanol as a Disinhibitor," pp. 186-204 in Room R., and Collins, G., eds., Alcohol and Disinhibition: Nature and Meaning of the Link (Research Monograph No. 12), U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Rockville, MD, 1983, p. 198.
8. How cultures known for positive drinking practices usually rely on wine as their main alcoholic beverage:
   "...the Italian samples, as expected, had wine most frequently for their first drink, more than twice as often as the Boston sample." Jessor, R., et al., "Perceived Opportunity, Alienation, and Drinking Behavior Among Italian and American Youth," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1970, Vol. 15, 215-222 (quote p. 217).
   "Most of the sample first tasted wine, and nearly the entire sample report that most drinking in their parents' homes involved wine....Our interviewees tend to drink only a glass or two of wine when they do drink, and they tend to view wine as quite apart from intoxicating alcohol, indeed as almost nonalcoholic." Glassner, B., and Berg, B., "How Jews Avoid Alcohol Problems," American Sociological Review, 1980, Vol. 45, 647-664 (quote p. 657).

VIII A recipe for moderate drinking can be constructed from such successful examples as the Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, Jewish, and Chinese cultures:

"There are five conditions that cross-cultural researchers have found to be correlated in most societies with nonabusive drinking practices and low rates of alcoholism...:

1. 1. Group drinking is clearly differentiated from drunkenness and associated with ritualistic or religious celebrations.
   2. Drinking is associated with eating, preferably ritualistic feasting.
   3. Both sexes and several generations are included in the drinking situation, whether all drink or not.
   4. Drinking is divorced from the individual's effort to escape personal anxiety or difficult (intolerable) social situations....
   5. Inappropriate behavior when drinking (aggression, violence, overt sexuality) is absolutely disapproved, and protection against such behavior is offered by the `sober' or the less intoxicated. This general acceptance of a concept of restraint usually indicates that drinking is only one of many activities, that it carries a relatively low level of emotionalism, and that it is not associated with a male or female `rite of passage' or sense of superiority."

Zinberg, N.E., "Alcohol Addiction: Toward a More Comprehensive Definition," pp. 97-127 in Bean, M.H., and Zinberg, N.E., eds., Dynamic Approaches to the Understanding and Treatment of Alcoholism, Free Press, New York, 1981, p. 110.

"A literature review provides evidence of five major informal controls -- cultural recipes that describe what substances should be used in what amounts to achieve what effects: learning to use through association with others who teach people what, when, why, how, where, and with whom to use; sumptuary rules specifying eligibility requirements for use; sanctions that reinforce the learning of substance use conventions and norms; and everyday social relations that make it expedient for people to use in some ways and inconvenient to use in others."

Maloff, D., et al., "Informal Social Controls and Their Influence on Substance Use," pp. 53-76 in Zinberg, N.E., and Harding, W.M., Control Over Intoxicant Use, Human Sciences Press, New York, 1982, p. 53.

Moderate-Drinking Cultures

1. Alcohol consumption is accepted and is governed by social custom, so that people learn constructive norms for drinking behavior.
2. The existence of good and bad styles of drinking, and the differences between them, are explicitly taught.
3. Alcohol is not seen as obviating personal control; skills for consuming alcohol responsibly are taught, and drunken misbehavior is disapproved and sanctioned.