- So now it's my pleasure

to introduce to you
Dr. Kevin Strang.

Dr. Strang has
been at UW-Madison

for quite a bit of time.

He and I have
collaborated several times

in having conversations

with members of the community

and with students in my
class and other classes

on the topic of the world's
second most popular drug.

So, Kevin, if you're
ready, it's all yours.

(audience applauds)

- Thank you, Dr. Shakhashiri.

So caffeine is number one,
and when I speak to those
audiences, they often,

when I say, "What's
the most popular?"

They say, "Cocaine, marijuana,"

you know, illegal drug
after illegal drug.

They don't stop and think
about a perfectly ordinary

everyday substance
like caffeine,

which people take for a reason.

It alters their body function.

It has side effects.
That's what a drug is.

Anything we take with the intent
of altering body function

but that also has side effects
because of the redundant plan

that the human body's built on.

It's a drug,

and so I unapologetically
tell college students,

"Yes, you are ingesting a drug
when you're drinking alcohol."

So this is my general
scheme for the evening.

I've got three sort of
overall things I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna talk
about why we drink.

How does it work at a
chemical, physiological level?

I'm gonna then talk about some
of the neurological effects

that people are after.

Why do people medicate
themselves with alcohol?

What are they looking for?

We'll talk about that
for a while, for the
main body of the talk.

And then at the
very end, I'm gonna

maybe be slightly controversial,
maybe intrigue you and suggest

some really great
reading having to do

with a particular
reason we drink

and that has to do with
the cultural, historical,

the history of alcohol
in human civilization.

So that'll be at the very end.

So that's my general plan.

So why do people drink?

And I've polled many
college audiences and I ask,
"Why do you reach?"

And I make 'em really think,
"Why do you reach for a drink?"

And it comes down to the
first five on this list,

basically are reasons people
self-medicate with alcohol.

To get a mood boost,
it is a euphorigen.

We'll talk about that.
It increases social confidence.

People have this misconception

that is is an anxiolytic
drug, it is a relaxant.

It is not, and I'll show you
a study that proves it is not.

Many people you've heard
of taking a nightcap

to help you sleep, a very
common thing in our culture.

It turns out it's a
terrible sleep aid,

and I'll tell you why.

And then escape from problems.

So people drink to forget
things that they want to forget,

and that may work to an extent,

but very often, as
I'll talk about,

they forget things that they're
not intending to forget.

And then the last
thing, it's not really,

people aren't self-medicating

because of their culture
or history maybe,

unless they've got
one of those families,

I have one of those families,

but I think it is an
underlying reason why.

I mean, here we are in the
great state of Wisconsin.

Alcohol is a very
important topic,

one of the most important
public health topics

on a college campus in a
state that I think there is,

which is why I'm so
passionate about talking

about this topic to all the
audiences that I talk to.

Okay, so at fundamental level,

I bet most people who drink

don't really know exactly
how this drug works.

It's unique in the drug world.

When a pharmacologist
designs a drug

aimed at a brain protein

or aimed at your
kidney or your liver,

they're often massive molecules

that are shaped
very specficially

to attach to certain
targets chemically.

As we'll see, alcohol,
it's a skeleton key.

It's a universal key.

So quickly, all about you,

you're made of about
75 trillion cells

and those cells make up

the different organ
systems of your body,

and each one of those cells

has some features in
common and some different

from cells that are
in other organs.

So you've got cells
in your eyeball

that when a photon
of light strikes it,

a neural signal
goes to your brain

and tells you you're
seeing something.

You've got cells that are in
your muscles, for example,

that can, much like ethanol
in a combustion engine,

they can turn chemical
energy in the food you eat

into physical force,
into movement.

These are all the things that
cells are specialized to do,

but there is a similarity
among all those cells.

It comes down to
they are basically

a bag of lipid, a lipid
that has a consistency

very similar to chris-kal
oil, but at a molecular scale,

that's a fairly stiff cell
membrane or cell wall,

and so you see the
double blue band,

that's a phospholipid
bilayer membrane,

and then you've got proteins.

Proteins are the machines

that distinguish one body cell's
ability to do one function

from another body cell's
ability to do another function.

So those photons of
light are striking

specific proteins in your eyes

and you don't have those
proteins in your muscles,

which is why you can't
see with your muscles.

So those protein machines
take on all kinds of form.

They're ion channels,
they're enzymes,

they're receptors,
they're signals.

Anything your body
can do, it does

because of this generic
membrane hosting the cell

and then proteins that
are in the membrane,

proteins that are inside and out

that act throughout your body.

Well, it turns out the
chemistry of ethanol

interacts very
nicely with proteins.

So the cartoon at the
upper right there.

If you don't know,

a protein is a long
string of amino acids,

and, by the way, this fabulous,
elegant molecule here, DNA,

that's where your
genetic heritage lies,

and what it really
does is when you go

to make a muscle cell or a
brain cell or liver cell,

the DNA that's in all of your
cells is exactly the same,

but what happens is different
parts of it get expressed,

get translated into a protein

that gets put into that
cell for its function.

So remember that, all
proteins are made from DNA,

all the same DNA is
in all of your cells,

but only certain
ones are expressed.

So that cartoon of a protein,

the green blob sticking
out to the side,

amino acids have side chains,

side chains with
chemical natures,

and you heard a little bit about
polar and non-polar bonds here.

So the blue ones are to identify

polar side groups that are
very friendly with water.

They dissolve well in water.

They have electrical
charges, some of them.

And the green blobs represent
animo acids that have

something like a
hydrocarbon side chain,

something like
these carbon-carbon

with hydrogen chains
with no oxygens involved.

So that's a very oily type
of molecular structure.

The blue ones
represent hydrophilic,

a water-loving
chemical structure,

and depending on the
sequence of amino acids,

if you take that long string,
if I dunk it into water,

what's gonna happen to
it, it's gonna fold.

It's gonna fold into a shape.

You know if you put
oil and water in a jar

and you shake it,
they separate, right?

That fundamental force
is one of the huge forces

that drives the design
of the human body,

hydrophobic
interactions or the fear

of non-polar
substances for water.

So in a watery climate, that's
what that protein would do.

It would fold so that
all those blue blobs,

the amino acid side chains

are facing the
watery bloodstream,

if that's where we are,
and the hydrophobic ones,

the polar side chains
are gonna be like the oil

gathering itself
together inside of a jar,

and it turns out ethanol, so
you've seen the structure,

there's a simple
representation of ethanol.

It's an amphipathic molecule.

It has both the non-polar

and the carbon chains
with the hydrogens,

so that's a very lipid friendly,

fatty friendly substance,

and then it's got the O-H
group at the other end,

and I'm glad we also
got the introduction.

When I say alcohol, I'm
always talking about ethanol.

There are many
alcohols obviously.

But if you take that little
tiny generic molecule

and introduce it
to a big protein

that is folded in a certain way

because of non-polar
and pole side chains

interacting with each other,
it'll wedge into a crack

and it might twist it open and
make it function less well.

It might twist it in another
way and increase its function.

It's highly random.

It's like a skeleton key
that can open any door,

and you have proteins in
every cell of your body,

and so ethanol is
this universal key

that can affect proteins
throughout your body,

and so we're gonna talk
about the brain today,

but I think, if you're well
aware in the popular culture,

someone who drinks too much, the
cardiovascular system suffers.

High blood pressure happens.

Heart failure happens.

Any emergency room
doctor will tell you

that in December every year
there's a rash of people my age

and slightly older coming
into emergency rooms

with heart arrhythmias,
with even heart attacks

because they overindulge in
alcohol that time of year

and then one of the side
effects of doses of alcohol

are the arrhythmias
of the heart.

Gastrointestinal system,
I'm sure you know

that long, heavy use
of alcohol will cause

cirrhosis of the liver,
it'll destroy the liver.

Alcohol in high doses
contributes to gastric ulcers.

And urinary system, you
might or might not be aware

that if you drink 12 ounces
of an alcoholic beverage

because you're thirsty,
which means your body

is crying for more
liquid volume,

what will happen
is that 12 ounces

will come out in your urine
as well as about four ounces

of your own body fluid.

So that's why people
wake up in the morning

after a night of
drinking very dehydrated.

Even though they've
taken in all that liquid

the night before,
they're very dehydrated

because alcohol blocks
the kidney's ability

to concentrate your urine.

Reproductive and
endocrine disorders,

so very often women
who are of an age

where they're trying to conceive

might have difficulty if
they're regular alcohol users

because alcohol will alter
the shape of proteins

that are hormones that cause
the female menstrual cycle

to regulate normally,
and so you can have

menstrual cycle irregularities
that prevent fertility.

I try not to say that
to my college age crowd

because I don't what
them using alochol

as a form of birth control.

Not suggested.

The reason people
self-medicate though,

at the lower right,
is the nervous system,

and so I'm gonna
talk in more depth

at a cellular molecular level.

How does alcohol affect
the nervous system?

So on the left, you see a
pink neuron, a nerve cell,

and they're actually much
longer, more dramatic than that,

that's a cartoon, but
the key feature here

is that that pink neuron,
you see a few dozen neurons

coming to it and
making contacts with it

and then it's
branching four times

and it's contacting
four other neurons.

Well, in your brain
and spinal cord,

a neuron might branch thousands

to tens of thousands of
times, and so in your brain,

you have maybe a
hundred billion neurons

but that isn't what makes
you talented or intelligent

or that's not why you have

all the wonderful
memories that you have.

Your brain really
functions on the synapses.

Where those neurons touch each
other there's a small gap,

at the right, you see a
bigger cartoon of the gap,

called a synapse,
and that synapse

is a place where a
chemical signal is sent

from one nerve cell to the next

either telling it, "Hey,
you should fire a signal,"

or telling it, "Don't
fire a signal,"

and when you branch a
hundred billion neurons

and interconnect them and
any neuron in that set,

in that network, every second
of every day of your life,

there are thousands of
neurons telling that neuron,

"You should fire,
you shouldn't fire,"

and it has to make a decision.

It's basically a
processor that based on

the total number of inputs,
if more say, "Fire," it fires,

and then its message gets
passed along the chain.

In those connections,
in those chains

is where all your memories are.

If you learn something new
about chemistry tonight,

the reason you will
remember it tomorrow

is that your brain is
physically different.

The synapses between
neurons are stronger,

there are more of them,
they're different.

So very profound, the
interconnection between neurons,

that everything you
learn, everything you are,

everything you can do,
is in those synapses.

Well, if you look at
the synapse close,

you see a bunch of
little oval circles.

That's cartoons of proteins,
proteins that are ion channels,

proteins involved in
releasing that chemical

called the neurotransmitter
when a signal comes down.

So those proteins are abundant,

and it turns out
they're very sensitive

to alcohol's effects
to alter their shape.

In some people,
they're up regulated.

Sometimes they're
down regulated.

Within a person and between
people, it varies a little bit.

I should've mentioned when
we talked about proteins,

me and just about
anyone in the room,

if you compared a protein
in the same cell type

in the same part of our body
that does the same thing,

we don't have exactly the
same protein sequence.

In fact, if you have
an identical twin

and if you looked at
all your proteins,

they're not exactly the same.

Life experience changes the
sequence of our proteins.

It changes the
expression of our DNA,

and that's important because
we're gonna talk about

the wildly variable ways
that alcohol affects people

and that's part of the basis

because this generic
skeleton key of alcohol

doesn't affect all
proteins exactly the same.

So this is a short list
of neurotransmitters,

the chemical signal
between neurons

that have been shown to be
profoundly affected by alcohol,

and at different doses,

they have differential
sensitivities,

in different people with
slightly different sequences

of proteins, they're gonna
have different effects,

and so alcohol is a
terrible medication

because, I mean, what
makes a good medication

is when you take it.

When anyone on Earth takes it,

you want it to have
a consistent effect.

One like that is Valium.

So Valium is a drug that
you give to anyone on Earth,

everyone has the same reaction.

It's a very specific,
it's an anxiolytic,

it calms people down.

It slows your brain down.

Alcohol can do that

but it can also do a
lot of other things

and it has to do with it affects
so many different things,

it's sometimes been called a
pharmacological hand grenade.

Cocaine is a
pharmacological scalpel.

It really affects one thing.

Alcohol affects a lot of things,

and so the outcome can
be very unpredictable.

So, one outcome.

Why do people medicate
themselves with alcohol?

Well, very often, I mean,
various words are used,

to get a buzz, to get high.

The word I'll use is euphoria.

You know, you poll
a college audience

and you'll hear probably
50 different word.

This is real.

This happens to most
people who drink alcohol.

So you have these pleasure
centers in your brain

that are there
for a good reason.

When you do something
that increases

the likelihood of your survival

or your species' survival,
there's a pleasure center

in your brain that lights up.

You get this great feeling
that reinforces it.

It says, "Do that again."

So if you get a big
bowl of fatty ice cream,
this center lights up.

Do that again.
You know, you'll survive
the next famine.

Someone tells you they love
you and they really mean it

and you know they mean it,
this pleasure center lights up.

Interactions between people
are really reinforced

by this pleasure center
and specifically dopamine.

The neurotransmitter
chemical dopamine

is a very important one.

It turns out the way
alcohol influences

the dopamine pathway explains
why binge drinking happens

and it also can
explain why some people

become dependent on
alcohol for enjoyment,

and so I'm gonna explain
this with a graph

that I've kind of invented,
a very simple graph,

but follow my
logic, if you will.

So what we've got here

is time flowing along
the bottom axis.

Your blood alcohol is
on the vertical axis.

And so if you have one drink,
this is what it would look like.

Your blood alcohol would rise
while you were drinking it.

When you stop drinking,
your liver and stomach

have enzymes we'll
talk about later

that can remove alcohol.

About one drink an hour in an
average person gets removed.

So as soon as you stop drinking,
the blood alcohol declines.

Well, if you just felt okay

and you didn't have that drink
for any particular reason,

most people on Earth
will experience

a rush, a euphoria,
a sudden mood

that is better
than their mood was

before they started drinking.

Dopamine, it turns out,
is a double-edged sword.

Dopamine is a great thing.

It lights up your pleasure
center, it makes you feel good,

but there are many disease
conditions like schizophrenia,

excess of dopamine is one
of the underlying factors

in people who have the mental
disorder of schizophrenia.

So anything in the
body in excess,

that body has a, what I
call, what physiologists call

a negative feedback response.

They say, "Hey, that's
too much of that,"

and so there are mechanisms
that will compensate,

that will counter it.

Turns out dopamine,
this happens very fast.

So you might think, you
slide from a happy place

back down to your okay
place, but what happens is,

as soon as your blood
alcohol starts down,

the dopamine receptors
have been desensitized.

They've been hidden.

What happens is your mood
dips to below baseline level.

People whose blood
alcohol has fallen,

even while it's still elevated,

they're not happy anymore.

I call this the
rising phase effect

'cause in the rising
phase, we feel good,

and then when we're
in the falling phase,

blood alcohol is still elevated,

but we aren't as
sensitive to it,

and this, if you've
ever observed

the student body at
a UW football game

and, you know, thinking
that they're like camels

that can drink a bunch of water
before they cross the desert,

many of them will drink a lot of
beer before going into the game,

so it will last the
whole game long.

Those who have overindulged,
what you'll see,

is they're going crazy in
the first half of the game,

that's the rising phase,
and then 3rd and 4th quarter

regardless of what's
happening in the game

you start to see
them sinking lower

and you start to
see the body posture

of someone who's not
having fun anymore,

and if you've ever
been in a setting

where you've drank and
then stopped drinking

and stayed awake, you
might've experienced that.

This is why binge
drinking is gonna happen.

It's inevitable,
especially in young people.

So binge drinking
looks like this.

You go to a situation,
social situation

where there's alcohol

and your blood alcohol
rises after your first drink

and you say, "That's it, I'm
done, I just wanted one."

Well, as soon as it starts down,

if you've got several
hours of social yet to go

and your blood alcohol
is on the way down,

the social situation isn't fun.

Your pleasure center
is turned down,

and so people will
reach for another one.

As long as the rising
phrase is maintained,

the euphoria, the mood
boost is maintained,

and so in our
culture, people tend

to start drinking in the evening

and they drink as many as it
takes to get them to the end,

and I say people, I'm talking
about the young people

that I normally speak to.

Apologies to those of you who

don't necessarily fit the
profile of my typical talk,

but binge drinking does occur
and that's why it occurs,

and they do it in the evening

and then they stop
drinking and go home,
and what do they do?

They lie in bed for eight hours
or 10 hours or 12 hours,

and they are not aware
but they're feeling horrible.

Their mood is terrible,
but they're unconscious,
and so they're not aware of it.

People don't drink
from eight to noon

and then go about their day

because you would have the
worst day of your life.

Pharmacologically, if that's
when we drank, in the morning,

you could not feel
good all day long

and I think it would be
a negative reinforcement

of drinking.

So we drink in the evening
so that we're unconscious.

I'm not an
anti-alcohol crusader.

My version of what
responsible drinking is

is the following.

It's be aware that high doses
of alcohol has side effects,

negative side effects
you don't want.

So aim for a number of
drinks that's okay to have,

and find a way to slow the
rate of the rising phase

so that you get that
buzz, that euphoria

without ever reaching the
range where vomiting occurs

and crashing of cars occurs
and that kind of thing.

And then there's
a short time frame where
you don't feel well.

The rate of removal is the same.

In my book, that's
responsible drinking

and having food in your stomach

slows the rate of
rise by three fold

versus drinking on
an empty stomach.

Also, the type of liquor
makes a big difference.

So somebody who does a shot,

a one and a half
ounce shot of whiskey,

it starts up just like
the red pattern there

and it starts going
down very quickly

to people who drink low alcohol,

beer, wine, that kind of thing.

You know, alcoholism
as we know it

didn't exist until the 1600s

when distillation
was discovered.

So basically the ability
to make the percent alcohol

in the beverage go up into
the 40 and 50 and 60% range,

that's when alcoholism
really became a problem.

Did I see a question back there?

- [Audience Member] Particularly
at this point dopamine,

then are you prepared
at all to tell us about

binge drinking's effects
on somebody's judgement?

- [Kevin] Oh, absolutely.

- [Bassam] Can you repeat
the question slightly?

- Yeah, so the question was,

am I going to talk about the
effects of binge drinking,

especially on judgement?

And that's exactly the
point I'm about to make.

You lead me to the point

that I really need to make
with my young audiences

when I talk about
this, so thank you.

Yes, that's where we're going.

So dopamine tolerance, think of
it in two different time frames.

In one bout of drinking,
you desensitize

and so you want more.

It explains why people
drink too much in a bout.

Over time, the dopamine
system can become

desensitized to the point
where someone chronically,

to feel normal, to feel happy,
and this is the definition

of an alcoholic or an
alcohol dependent person,

they need something boosting
their dopamine to feel normal,

to feel happy, and it has to do

with the dopamine system
and related systems.

So young people are
going to binge drink

if you give them
access to alcohol.

It's not their fault.

It will happen because the
left frontal lobe of the brain,

which is where our
impulse control center is,

it doesn't mature until
someone's in their 20s.

If you put a M&M in
front of a three year old

and you say, "All right,
I'm gonna leave the room,

"and if you leave that there,

"when I come back, I'll
give you three M&Ms."

They'll eat it anyway the
minute you're outta the room.

As we get older,

we can delay gratification
better and better

and in our 20s is really when

that left frontal
lobe is developed,

and so younger
drinkers are gonna be

more susceptible to
the inability to say no

to a second drink than
someone who's in their 20s.

We can control those
impulses better,

and of the people who
binge drink early,

by age 14 that data suggests,

they have a 50-50
shot at some point

being identified as someone
who's alcohol dependent.

People who don't
drink until their 20s,

until early 20s,
only an 8% chance,

still a chance, but the
odds go way, way down.

So early exposure to
alcohol desensitizes

the dopamine system in
some people permanently

and it makes them
susceptible to alcoholism.

CDC statistic, 17% of
US adults binge drink,

and if you take it
to the college age,

the group that I
talk to most often,

50% binge drink regularly,

and it's nine
drinks at a sitting.

I mean, I can't walk
after three drinks,

not that I've ever tried that.

Well, I mean, I've tried that.

Nine drinks, it's
amazing the tolerance,

the tolerance of youth,

and there is a
physiological difference

between young and old people.

I don't know if you've noticed,
if you're scanning the newspaper

and you see drunk
driving arrest reports,

very frequently you'll see
people in their 40s and 50s

being arrested
fro drunk driving,

and if it's a first offense,
very often that person

has been drunk driving
for years and years,

but our motor tolerance
goes down as we get older.

An 18 year old who is drunk

is a better drink than a
50 year old who is drunk.

Neither are good drivers,
but if I had to compare them,

the 18 year old is
the better driver.
Question?

- [Audience] As you know,

the Lewis and Clark
expedition was,

as you know, the Lewis
and Clark expedition

was fueled by copious
amounts of alcohol.

It was the most important thing
they had on their journey.

- [Kevin] Yeah, yeah.

- [Audience Member]
Why has it become,

why did we adopt a more
Calvanistic attitude

towards alcohol in
our society now?

- That's an excellent question,

and if you can just
hold off gratification,

your left frontal lobe,
if you can just dampen it,

that's exactly what the finish
line of this talk is about.

There is a great book
I'm gonna refer you to.

I mean, every military
campaign in history

has been fueled by alcohol.

It is such a part
of our culture,

the politics, war, religion.

You can't extricate
alcohol from our culture,

and you're not wrong
about Lewis and Clark,

and there's a trade off that
I'll talk about at the end

having to do with,
do you wanna die

in your 20s of cholera
or do you wanna die

of your 40s of
cirrhosis of the liver?

And that's often been the
choice that's had to been made
throughout history, so.

- [Audience]
Think of the achievements.

- Oh, but lots of
great achievements.

I agree with that completely.

Some of the greatest artists
and writers of our time,

alcohol fueled, and this
book I'm gonna refer you to

tells the story eloquently
and beautifully.

So great question.

People drink,
especially young people,

to overcome inhibitions, and
this same left frontal lobe

of your brain that
I talked about being

your impulse control center,
it also makes you shy.

It keeps you from, say, some
of you in an audience like this

might have a very
insightful question,

but you're just a
little bit too inhibited

to raise your hand and ask it.

That's normal, acceptable,
important social behavior.

It stops us from doing
inappropriate things socially.

Alcohol, that's one of
the first centers it hits,

and it increases our
social confidence.

To think normally, you
need a normal balance

of two neurotransmitters
in particular.

90% of the neurotransmitters
in your brain

are either glutamate or GABA.

Glutamate is the main gas pedal.

It's the main excitatory
neurotransmitter system

and GABA is the
main inhibitory one.

Valium, by the way,
stimluates the GABA system.

The GABA system slows
your brain down.

It calms your brain.

The glutamate system
excites your brain,

and for you to be normal and
make normal good decisions,

you need to have a good balance.

So things happen to you
and you have thoughts

and you do something.

You have some behavior,
some external behavior

in response to thoughts and
to experiences that you have,

and a lot goes in, this amazing
100 billion neuron processor

you have is capable of
accessing a lot of things

in milliseconds before
it makes a decision.

I mean, you have a
basic personality.

Is the glass half full
to you or half empty?

You have an empathy compassion.

They found neutrons in
the brain now, by the way,

that are the empathy neurons,

that stimulating that
neuron makes you understand

how another person feels,

but we all have an
empathy and compassion

with the exception of a
few sociopaths probably.

We have a sense of
what's just, what's fair.

We all have an understanding
of cause and effect.

If I touch an electrode to
a bottle full of ethanol,

what's gonna happen?

And then much more
complicated situations

in the real world.

If I use this racial slur

to this person standing
in front of me,

what's likely to happen?

Biological drives, we
have parts of our brains

that are programmed
in sexual ways,

in appetitive ways.

We had this hedonistic
appetite for salt

that's a biological drive,

and that goes into the
decisions that we make.

Situational memories,

you've not only
experienced life,

but you've seen other
people exerience lives

and cause and effect, and
you can access memories

like that before
you make a decision

about what to say,
what to do, how to act,

and then cultural learning,

things that are
acceptable in one culture

are not in another, and it
takes a lifetime sometimes

to learn exactly what's
appropriate in a context,

in the cultural context.

So somebody says
something to me,

all of these different
centers of my brain,

I can access them, I can
come up with a net judgment,

and this is all synapses
talking to each other,

and then a behavior,
an outcome results.

Question?

- [Audience Member]
So glut GABA circuits

are feedback loops then?

- So glutamate and GABA
circuits are related

in a negative feedback.

So if you get too much
glutamate activity,

and someone who's like
that might have anxiety

and shaky hands, might
not be able to sleep,

and so there are negative
feedback built in

on both of those, so
too much glutamate

will tell the glutamate neurons
to stop releasing so much,

and also when the glutamate
neurons release too much,

GABA neurons will ramp up

and they'll tell the glutamate
neurons, "Calm down."

That's how you stay balanced

and feel normal.

So it's well known
pharmacologically

that alcohol is bad
for glutamate synapses,

it inhibits them, and it's
good for GABA synapses

like Valium is.

And so someone who has
alcohol in their system,

as the dose goes up effectively,

if their brain was a computer,

the processing speed gets slower

and slower and slower
as the dose rises,

and so think of a computer
with a slow processor.

You can only have one
window open at a time

or a few windows open at a time,

and effectively the human
brain becomes like that.

There's a very eloquent model by
a scientist named Claude Bernard

who used this really
simple basic thing

that alcohol does, slow
the processor, to explain

a lot of the unpredictability

in the behavioral
effects of alcohol,

and the model's called myopia,

and if you don't know,
myopia means near sighted,

and so alcohol myopia
means basically

on high doses of
alcohol, a person becomes

cognitively near sighted.

All they can think about
is what's right in fron
of them at that moment.

They can't, you know, a myopia
person can see right here

but they can't see
in the distance

and so as your brain
becomes simplified

by high doses of alcohol,

something may happen to you

and you may only
access one or another

but not all of the complex
decision making circuits

you have in your brain.

So it's been shown
very convincingly

that people can be more
empathetic and compassionate

when they're drunk.

If you've ever been
to a fundraiser,

one of the first things they
do is they hand you a glass
of champagne.

People tip more,
people donate more

when there's alcohol
in their system.

It's also very clear
that sexual assault,

alcohol is a major factor
on college campuses

and elsewhere in sexual
assault, basic human drives.

Any kind of domestic violence,

very often alcohol and
basic biological drives

override thoughts
of cause and effect,

consequences,
situational memories,

and so very simple
model to explain,

why does alcohol have
such dispart effects?

So here's a study
that I'm gonna use

to demonstrate that and
also to debunk a myth.

Alcohol is not an
anti-anxiety drug.

This study proves it.

So this is how the study goes.

Volunteers invited to a party

and they're told,
"Free alcohol,"

and this is college aged crowd,

so it's very easy to
get volunteers for
a study like this.

Half are given drinks.

The other half have drinks

and they smell like
there's alcohol

but there's not really alcohol.

Everybody has to
think they're drinking

to have a perfect control,
scientific control.

So they all drink
for half an hour

and then the researchers say,
"Oh, we forget to tell you.

"In about 15 minutes,
you have to go on stage

"and give an impromptu speech,

"what I most dislike about my
body and physical appearance."

So snakes, spiders,
and public speaking

are the things
people fear the most,

and so this was a
stimulus designed

to make these people anxious

and so then they're gonna
have to sit for 15 minutes

and their speech
is gonna happen.

They're gonna have
a crowd of strangers

looking at their body as
they discuss their body.

I mean, what could be more
anxiety-inducing than that?

But then to make this experiment
a little more complicated,

so they got these two groups,

the drinkers and the
think they're drinkers,

they divide them
into four groups

and one group just
sits and does nothing,

they're just waiting
for their speech,

and then there's three
groups that are kept

busier and busier
sorting slides,

an intellectual task that takes
more and more mental effort,

and then they measure anxiety,

and they use physiological
and psychotropic measures

to see how anxious they got
over the next 15 minutes.

The data are very simple.
This is what they look like.

On the left, you see
the people who thought

they were drinking but were
not, the placebo group.

Any bar that goes
up from the midline,

they got more stressed,

and any bar that goes down,
they got less stressed,

and you'll see they didn't
experience a lot of stress,

increase in stress
during the 15 minutes.

I mean, the ones
in the black bar

that were really kept
busy sorting slides,

they actually
become less nervous

because they didn't have
time to think or worry

about this speech,
this impending speech.

Look at the group on the right.

The only group that
became more anxious

are the ones that had
alcohol in their system

and had nothing to do.

Alcohol doesn't
make you relaxed.

Alcohol exaggerates
whatever mood you're in.

Whatever's happening to you,

you're myopically responding
to whatever is in your world.

If there's a death in your
family and you get drunk,

that will become the only
thing you can think about.

If you're out at a
party with your friends

and somebody says
something funny,

you'll laugh uproariously

because that's the only
thing you think about.

You become myopic.

And in this case,
anxiety was the situation

and anxiety is enhanced,

is intensified by alcohol.

It doesn't relax you unless
you're in a relaxing situation,

then it does.

And it boosts self-confidence,

so I told you young people
drink for self-esteem reasons.

So here's where I'm a
little bit irreverent,

I apologize, but
The Onion is funny

because it's so often true,

and alcohol beverage consumer
confidence does skyrocket

as the evening goes on very
often because of myopia.

When someone who's drinking
can only think about

what a great dancer they are
or how good looking they are

and they don't stop and
think about all the times

that there's been
someone much good looking

or better dancer next to them,
their confidence skyrockets,

and often they have
brilliant epiphanies

like this young man coming
up with this brilliant tactic

for being attractive to women,

and not to sort of bias things
from a gender standpoint,

I mean, ladies, they
have their own version

of bad things arising from
excess of social confidence.

Here's to the question
that I was asked earlier.

Not only does confidence go up

but because of the
simplification of the processor

and all of the things that
you're not able to access

at high doses of alcohol,

bad ideas galore begin to spawn.

So let me just flash
a few bad ideas

that you might spawn at
high doses of alcohol.

That's a bad idea,
if you know anything

about electricity at all.

This is a bad idea

if you're a doctor who works
in the burn unit, for example.

Halloween parties should
never end this way.

(audience laughs)

According to the CDC, 38%
of emergency room visits,

alcohol's involved.

Now stop and think how
much emergency room visits

there must be
across this country.

38%, bad judgment and
also motor coordination.

Car accidents are a large
part of that number,

but bad ideas often
leading to injury

are because of
the poor judgment,

because of people whose
normally brilliant minds

are not functioning

with all of their RAM intact.

So another important
thing is that in adults

those proteins fold
and then they unfold

and you don't have necessarily
irreversible cognitive effects

until you get really,
really high doses.

So binge drinkers by the age
of 14 have smaller brains

and they're not
as smart as people

who didn't binge drink
when they were young.

So one interpretation
of those data might be,

oh, then maybe it's just
the kids with small brains

who are dumb to being with

are the ones that are
binge drinking so early.

Animal studies have
very convincingly shown

that if you take identical
groups of animals

and one group drinks
as adolescents

and the other group
doesn't drink until later,

you see exactly the same thing.

A big part of this
is cause and effect.

It shrinks.

So I like to use this
analogy to explain that.

Think of your body's proteins
as construction workers.

So if a construction
worker basically

drinks in the evening,
drinks on the weekend

when they're not
actually building,

the building they're
working on is gonna be fine.

They're building
when they're sober.

But if they're drunk
while they are building,

a young person's nervous
system is being built,

those proteins are
part of the building,

the synapses are
part of the building,

twisting those proteins
during the construction

is gonna make for
poor construction

of the nervous system,

and in the extreme, you
get fetal alcohol syndrome,

but you get more subtle
measurable effects

even in kids who just
start binge drinking

when they're 14.

Okay. another
self-medication mode,

to forget, to escape
from problems,

and sleep and forgetting

is gonna be part of the
theme that runs here.

So when people drink,

if they're in a
boring situation,

dark quiet room, a nightcap
will make you sleepy.

It changes the brain
chemistry in the direction

that sleep becomes more likely,

but alcohol induced
sleep is not true sleep.

It looks very relaxing.

Somebody might seem
difficult to rouse

like they're in a
deep, deep sleep.

What it is is it's
surgical anesthesia.

Natural sleep, in natural
neurological sleep,

people's brains have time frames

when they are much more active
than even the waking brain.

There are very important
functions that happen,

especially in a mode of sleep
called rapid eye movement sleep.

It's when you're dreaming.

The brain has very
important job to do

and it has to do
with going through

the whole day's worth of
data you've just lived,

all the thoughts you had,
everything you saw and heard,

and it decides which
of these things

need to be encoded in a synapse
that I want with me tomorrow

and which was just
superfluous detail

that I might go crazy
if I remembered.

So that's happening
when a person sleeps.

When someone is in an
alcohol induced slumber,

or any level of
alcohol, is gonna reduce

the ability of the
brain to do that.

So very simplistically,
short term memory,

what's you're thinking about now

becomes a memory through
a process called LTP,

long term potentiation,

and that happens in REM sleep.

Alcohol doesn't let
you do REM sleep.

You may be unconscious
for eight or nine hours

but you're not refreshed.

REM sleep is what you
need to feel refreshed,

and people often feel
very tired after a night

in bed after a night of drinking

because they didn't
actually get REM sleep.

The next night, you'll
have to get catch up sleep.

So this memory formation process

does not happen as
well or normally

when someone lays down with
alcohol in their system,

so you can't drink to
forget past memories.

You can drink to forget
what you did last night

and people who
drink to the point

where they have
blackouts, walk around,

young people especially
often walk around

and function and do things
and have conversations

and pictures of them
show up on Facebook
and they have no memory.

There was no recording.

While alcohol is in your
system, you can't form memory,

but escaping past
problems doesn't work,

and people often
become depressed

because that alcohol
myopia might focus

their mind only on the
depressing thing in their life.

They can't escape from it.

It consumes them.

It becomes the only
thing in their world.

So relevant to my
college student crowd,

drinking goes on at colleges
in great quantities.

50% of college
students binge drink.

Many college students fail
out their freshman year.

This is a big reason.

They don't understand
the relationship

between learning,
sleep, and alcohol.

So they'll study for six
hours on a Thursday night,

they have a test on Friday,

and they'll say,
"Yeah, that's it.

"I've studied it all,
I'm done, I'm ready,"

and then rather
than go to sleep,

they go out with their friends.

So they drink for three hours,

they lay in bed for
eight hours or 10 hours.

They take the test and
they find they have

very little memory
of what they studied

during that six hour time frame.

They don't understand
that you need the sleep

to concretize the memory.

I tell my students, "If
you study for six hours,

"sleep that night."

If you drink the next night,

memories of the past are secure.

You're not gonna ruin
your college career

if you can separate learning
and sleeping from drinking.

You can live the college
experience to some extent.

I urge moderation,
don't get me wrong,

but I'm not unrealistic
enough to believe

that I could ever
get a college crowd

to stop drinking because
of anything I say

no matter how scary,

but if they can learn
about the physiology

of memory and alcohol and sleep,

maybe I can save
some college careers

by spreading this message.

Okay, and now to the question
that we wanna get to,

so sort of the little final
phase I'm wanna talk about.

So people drink because
they're self-medicating

for the reasons that
we just talked about

and with the mechanisms
that we just talked about.

Here we are in Wisconsin.
We have a rich cultural history.

We have an history of
alcohol, drinking and alcohol,

I mean, drinking in our
culture in Wisconsin.

I'm gonna quickly go
through some animal studies

that prove alcohol preference

and alcohol behavior effects
are, they're highly generic.

They're highly producible.

So for example,
fruit fly studies.

Many years ago, 40 years ago,

fruit flies, you give 'em
a little alcohol vapor

and they do what humans do
after they've been drinking,

they tend to fall down,

and it turns out if you
take a bunch of flies

and you expose them to a vapor

and the first few who
fall, you sweep 'em aside,

and then later on,
you introduce those

and you introduce those
and they have offspring,

their offspring will
be even more likely

to fall down quickly.

The fly line is called cheap
date sort of humorously

by the scientist
who developed it

because a low, low
dose of alcohol,

these flies become
effectively inebriated

or whatever passes for
inebriated in a fly.

So you can breed into
them lightweightness,

if that is a characteristic.

There is a lab, it
started in Stanford,

now it's in Boulder, Colorado.

1960s, they took a
bunch of mice and they,

animals don't like to drink, so
often they vaporize the alcohol,

sometimes they inject it, but
they get a bunch of mice drunk

and they see how they behave,

and then they'll say,
"Well, these two both,

"when they get drunk,
they sleep a long time.

"Let's breed them."

And then breed their kids
and then breed their kids,

and you can
selectively breed mice

to have the entire
range of behaviors

that you might see in
yourself or in your friends

or in your families
or in your culture.

So some mice fall asleep
after a little bit of drinking

and they sleep for hours.

Some mice fall immediately
to sleep and they wake up

with their heart
pounding and sweaty,

if you can interpret
the mice behavior,

and many people do this
after heavy drinking.

They'll only sleep a few hours.
They have this rebound effect.

They're wide awake.

Some of these mice act like
they're at a party, at a rave.

They go crazy.

They run around the
cage when they're drunk.

They don't fall asleep at all.

Some them, the body
temperature falls.

Some of them, the body
temperature skyrockets.

Some are very
degenerative tremor prone.

When they sober up,
they shake violently,

which happens to
many human alcoholics

after a long binge when you
deprive them of alcohol,

and then there's also a super
strain of college-aged mice

that no matter how much
alcohol you give them,

they pass all the
coordination tests.

They'll have these
rotating wooden bars

and they'll have
the mice walk across

and how far they get says
how coordinated they are,

and so a sober mouse will
make it all the way across.

One that's a little drunker
will fall off earlier

and one that's drunker
will fall off earlier.

Well, this resistant
strain of mice,

they bred into their DNA,
into their protein structure

the ability to handle
enormous amounts of alcohol,

and they walk right
across that bar

and they don't fall down,

and you see that maybe
in people you know.

There are some people you
know who drink a little bit

and they're silly
and they're tipsy

and they fall down and
they slur their words,

and others you might know
who, after their ninth drink,

might be hard to tell that
they've been drinking,

and I'm about to go into
the cultural history

why that might be.

But more crossbreeding
experiments have been done

and these last two are
kind of interesting.

Animals don't like to
drink alcohol usually,

but if you can find a couple
of animals that don't mind it

and crossbreed them and
then take their offspring

and find ones that don't
mind it or even like it

and crossbreed them,
you can breed in

a love for drinking
alcohol over water

or fruit juice or anything else.

So the love of the feeling
of drinking alcohol

is also genetic and can be bred

into a population of monkeys.

Another thing that can
create alcohol preference,

and this one is a
little bit sad to me,

it's an important
experiment that was done

and it's one you
can't do in humans,

but it is the natural
experiment sadly is done.

This group at NIH took
a bunch of baby monkeys

and they took 'em away
from their mothers

and they gave 'em all
to foster mothers,

half of which were known
to be very good mothers.

They cuddled the babies.
They groomed them.

They feed them well.

And then half were known to
be not very good mothers.

They abused the children.
They neglected them.

They didn't feed them.
They never groomed them.

The equivalent of giving
a monkey a bad childhood.

And then later on, these big
community cages they put 'em in

and they had a choice,
water, fruit juice, alcohol.

Inevitably, the
monkeys who were raised

in stressful,
abusive environments

willingly, happily
went after the alcohol

and the ones that had
good childhoods did not.

So the DNA in your body,

the proteins it expresses
aren't automatic.

What you're exposed
to in your life

has a lot to do with which
proteins get expressed

and in the alcohol
abuse preference system,

it turns out you can
breed in effectively

someone who's got
a predisposition
to be an alcoholic

or to abuse alcohol.

So this book is fantastic.

If you like history,
if you like culture,

sociology, science,
this book starts

at the beginning of civilization

and it studies the cultural,
sociological effects

of alcohol throughout history.

It talks about
alcohol and warfare.

The Romans, how the Romans
would invade territories.

So the territory were drinking
weak beer at the time.

The Romans were sipping
their high-alcohol wine
for about a month

and they turned them
all into drunken sots,

and then they had no problem
overwhelming the populace

because they were all
a bunch of alcoholics

had just been created and they
weren't capable of fighting.

But that being said,
the Roman soldiers,

they got regular
doses of alcohol.

When they went into battle,
it made them courageous,

it made them brave, and
there's fabulous quotes

from Ancient Greece
and Roman and China,

every civilization that
has developed alcohol.

So just quick
snapshots of this book.

The first evidence of humans
producing intentionally alcohol,

10,000 years ago.

8,000 BC, they find
residue of alcohol in pots,

and it happens
after humans start,

they take up argiculture
and they start living in cities,
in groups.

That's when alcohol
production begins.

By 1,000 BC, all over the world

where people were
living in cities,

alcohol was being produced.

It was an important commodity.

It was being drank
in large quantities.

Now early on, it wasn't like
the alchol we have today.

I mean, it wasn't distilled
spirits of high concentration.

It was relatively
weak beer and wine

that doesn't even approach
what today's wines are.

So Iain Gately
attests in this book

most modern humans,
people alive today

are descendants of people
who lived in cities

who were exposed to alcohol

as part of their
religious systems,

as part of their
political systems.

He goes into Prohibition.

I mean, this book is a tour
de force if you find alcohol

and its effects or its use
in our culture interesting.

So he sets the stage.

Then a beautiful book,

one of the best
books I've ever read

and I highly recommend
is The Ghost Map,

and in this book, Steven Johnson

really puts together
the bottleneck

that makes alcohol use an
evolutionary selection pressure.

So this is the story, and so
just read the little subtitle,

the story of London's
most terrifying epidemic

and how it changed science,
cities, and the modern world.

This is a profound book.

It really tells us about how
the modern world was shaped,

everything from public
healthy, sewer systems

to what we understand about the
germ theory, and science.

This is a tour de force
in science as well.

This is a detective novel.

It's the story of
an anesthesiologist,

brilliant man named John Snow

and a clergyman
named Henry Whitehead

who independently are
trying to figure out

why is cholera killing
people in London.

Periodically, these
outbreaks happen

and hundreds of people die,

and then the outbreak goes
away and it comes back,

and at the time, people
thought it was bad humors,

it was bad air.

The germ theory, people
didn't have any idea

that there would be
something in water

that could make people sick.

So this book is great.

Read this book please.

Well, here's the
ghost map itself

or one version of the ghost map,
and so what you see on this map,

so what Henry Whitehead
and John Snow did

is they basically, one of
the pieces of evidence is

they drew a map of the city.

The orange circles are pumps

and there's one called
the Broad Street pump

you'll see right in the middle.

All the black dots are records
of somebody died in that house,

somebody died in that location.

700 people died in two weeks

and if you drew this map,
you'd see that it radiates.

It's very dense around
the Broad Street pump

and around the other pumps,
it's less and less,

and some of the outlying cases,

there were cases that
people died in houses

very never other pumps, but
Henry Whitehead interviewed

the family and they said,
"Oh, he hated the taste

"of the water from our pump.

"He used to walk
over to Broad Street

"and drink from that pump,"

and so they traced,
they figured out

it was the well,
it was the water

where cholera lives and it
was causing this outbreak.

But there's a cool fact

that is kind of a little
subscript in the book

but I jumped on
because it's so cool.

Literally feet from that pump,

there's a brewery where
there are 70 workers.

Not a single one of them
died, not a single one,

and on interviewing,
well, why is that?

None of them walked to the pump
because they get free beer
with their lunch hour

and they get free
beer all day long,

and so people who drink alcohol,

alcohol was a safe
thing to drink

in the Middle Ages
in these cities.

In any city, alcohol was
a safe thing to drink

because the process of
producing it was sterile.

You didn't have cholera,
you didn't have dysentery.

So just really, really
cool fact in there.

So this is how Steven
Johnson's scenario goes

as far as human history,
culture, and alcohol.

Water in cities is
inevitably gonna get tainted.

Where large numbers of
people come together

in the era prior to us
understanding sewage

and public health and bacteria,

epidemics of cholera,
dysentery and other things

are gonna break out.

Those who preferred
alchol to water

and could handle its toxicity

are gonna survive more often
and have more children.

Their genes are gonna
be passed along.

So you can imagine there
are three groups of people,

if there were an experiment,
three groups of people.

There's one group
that likes alcohol

but they get really
drunk and unruly

and they fall down and
they can't function.

There's another group
that drinks alcohol

and they're high functioning.

They can drink it, tolerate it,
detoxify it, and move on,

and then there's a group
that just don't like

the taste of alcohol,
they're gonna drink water.

one of those groups is
gonna be selected for,

the one that can drink alcohol

and can handle their alcohol.

There are a couple of
cultures on this Earth

so I don't know if you're aware,

in the scientific
reports, it's very clear,

sociological reports, there
are a couple of populations

of people on the planet
who don't do well

in the modern world with the
alcohol we have access to,

Native Americans and
Australian Aborigines.

Those are
hunter-gatherer cultures

that never gathered into cities.

They never came up with a
regular fermentation product

that they got alcohol from,

and so now in the modern world
with the alcohol so present,

the rates of alcoholism,

the rates of all sorts
of alcohol related issues

in those groups are sky high,
not because of,

many racist theories
have come out,

you know, weak constitution

and you just can't believe
that there's the history

where things like that,
theories like that

were actually given
scientific credence.

I think this is a
very good explanation.

They have been through a culture

where they were not selected

for their ability
to handle alcohol.

Not only do brain proteins
and behavior get selected

but very interesting phenomenon,

not I won't go too much
into alcohol detoxification

but there is an enzyme
we have in our body

called alcohol dehydrogenase.

Ethanol is turned into harmless
acetic acid in two steps

and that first enzyme,
this is all it seems to do

in the body.

It starts the process
of detoxifying alcohol.

It's in your stomach.
It's in your liver.

There is no reason for
that molecule to be there

if it hadn't been
bred into there

by many, many generations
of exposure to alcohol.

It's the reason why
people on average

can get rid of one
drink in an hour,

and people who have lots
of it can get rid of

faster than that,
getting rid of alcohol,

so someone of Irish ancestry

or northern European
ancestry might be able

to get rid of alcohol
faster, much faster

than someone who's,
let's say, from Korea.

In Japan, turns out 50%
of the population or so

has mutations in the
enzyme, the second enzyme,

the aldehyde dehydrogenase,
so that it doesn't work,

and when they drink, their
skin turns bright red

because the chemical
acetaldehyde skyrockets.

It's very toxic, and they vomit.

A very low dose of alcohol,
they become violently ill.

So that's an example
of a human population

where those proteins are
expressed differentially.

Now let's come back
to the state we love.

When you say Wisconsin,

you've said a lot about
the alcohol culture.

This ia compile
from Google Maps.

Everywhere you
see an orange dot,

that pixel has more
grocery stores than bars

and everywhere
there's a red dot,

there are more bars than
there are grocery stores,

and you don't have to be
very good at geography

to be able to pick
out Wisconsin.

The upper Midwest is a highly
red place to be.

And if you stop and think
about what I just told you,

these profound books
about the cultural history

of alcohol use, who
settled the upper Midwest?

It was settlers from
large cities in Europe

where if you didn't
drink alcohol

and if you weren't good
at drinking alcohol,

you would've died of
cholera or dysentery,

and so our culture is
one that's been selected

and now there's different,
it's not just genetic.

There are different
kinds of culture.

There's sociological cultures.

There are ideas,
the Wisconsin Idea, we hope

to pass down good
ideas to people.

So there's also
cultural learning

that doesn't have
to do with genetics,

and that's part of this too.

But Wisconsin has
a drinking problem.

I don't know if
you're aware of that.

We have clean water here.

I mean, history has
completely turned things.

We understand the germ theory.
We understand public sanitation.

Not everyone has access
to good drinking water,

but for the most part
in America, we do.

But we also have
access to alcohol

and have bred into us I think
this love of drinking it,

and the public health
problems are enormous.

Six billion dollars
a year in Wisconsin

is what it costs to deal
with alcohol issues.

Alcoholism is a leading
cause of domestic violence

and other types of violence.

One in 10 deaths are attributed
to alcohol use in Wisconsin

and an alcohol related car
crash every two minutes

and in every 30 minutes,
somebody dies in the crash,

and I think you it's frequently
not the drunk driver.

Frequently, it's the sober
driver that they hit head on

and I don't know if
you know why that is,

but a drunk driver,
their reflexes are slow.

They go into the other lane

and they're so slow
they're basically rubbery

when they hit the steering
wheel and dashboard,

and any of you who knows
about martial arts,

if you relax into a fall,
you don't break bones.

A sober person will quick
reflexes sees the crash,

they stiffen their arms,
they stiffen their legs,

they stiffen their
torso, and bones break

and they penetrate organs,

and it's just horrifically
worse for somebody

who reacts and
braces for a crash

than somebody who
relaxes into a crash.

So that's another sad fact
about drunk driving accidents.

Yes?

(audience member
speaking off microphone)

Ah, no, thank you
for point that out.

No, the third statistic
is a national statistic.

First one is Wisconsin specific.

The last two are
national statistics.

Thank you.

So I have a habit when I
talk to my young audiences,

I mean, I'm sure if you've
ever heard someone speak

about public health and alcohol

and Wisconsin and
the deplorable record

we have for how we drink,

you'll hear something
like, "We are number one.

"Wisconsin is number one when
it comes to binge drinking,

"number one when it comes to

"alcohol use per person."

When I say that to a group
of Wisconsin students,

when I say, "We are number one,"
they didn't let me finish.

They're like, "Yeah! Wisconsin
is number one!"

So I don't say that
in my talks anymore.

I say we are number 50.

Wisconsin is the least
responsible state

when it comes to
drinking and driving,

when it comes to binge drinking,

when it comes to the
responsible use of alcohol.

It's a sad fact,

but I think there might
be some explanations

in the literature,

in the evidence
we have out there.

Not that this makes it
okay, understanding it.

I think we are,

I think it's really a goal

to overcome our biology.

It might be our biology,
but I think society I think,

the Wisconsin idea is about
overcoming our biology

with learning, and I'm hoping
that we can learn better.

- [Bassam] Please join
me in thanking Dr. Strang

for this presentation,
thanks so much.

Thank you very much.

(audience applauds)