WHY WE DRINK TOO MUCH

Thinking about drinking.

Problem drinkers who seek to get sober are told they will always remember their first drink and how it felt. The mind-altering experience is indelible and life-changing. For Knowles, a British surgeon and professor, that moment came on a school trip in Germany at age 13 with a liter of lager. Nearly 30 years later, his love affair with our favorite drug ended with a half-empty bottle of Bacardi, a gun, and thoughts of suicide. In seeking to understand his own troubled relationship with alcohol, Knowles has produced a work that turns the magnifying glass on human society and history and how we developed a global relationship with a drug that has caused us great harm to our health and our relationships. These are questions many are asking in this moment, after alcohol consumption rates, which soared during the Covid-19 pandemic, are crashing. The number of Americans who drink has fallen to a 90-year low, according to a 2025 Gallup survey. Though not every person who drinks is addicted to alcohol or exhibits problematic behavior, many of us are reexamining our relationship with a drug that is legal, socially condoned, and often more dangerous than we like to acknowledge. The paradox, of course, is that drinking feels good to so many. We speak less openly of its wreckage. This investigation, the author is careful to note, is not a lecture: “I have no wish to ban alcohol or stop anyone who enjoys it from continuing to do so.” Nor is it a manual on how to get sober in 30 days. Rather, the book digs deep into the relationship with our favorite mind-altering chemical and offers a robust, thorough examination of how alcohol seeped into our lives and the many ways it endangers them.

A comprehensive look at the human relationship with alcohol, at a time when many are beginning to question it.