From Cyril Blount
I suspect Ben Haller’s suggestion that folk drink to excess for fun is too simplistic (11 September, p 24).
In the 1970s I studied cognitive psychology with the Open University. One of the papers I read concerned the effects of alcohol on decision making. Participants were given alcohol and had to decide if they could drive a car between two bales of straw some distance away. I did not keep the paper, but I remember that a single unit of alcohol altered their ability to judge whether they could do it, and that many who initially said the gap was too narrow changed their minds as they approached and attempted to get through.
It seems to me that the first unit of alcohol is the dangerous one. It alters the ability to decide whether you should drink more.
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK
