The chapter about alcohol  within the book had some very interesting research, opinions, and information. You should buy the book and read Chapter 8, A case study of a fraternity party for yourself as it is very informational and provided a few new perspectives.

Many who study alcohol no longer consider it an agent of disinhibition. They think of it as an agent of myopia in that alcohol’s principal effect is to narrow our emotional and mental fields of vision. Alcohol makes our immediate needs more important than our long-term needs. Drinking puts you at the mercy of your environment.

Alcohol affects the frontal lobe that governs attention, motivation, planning and learning. That first drink dampens activity in our frontal lobes. Alcohol then hits the amygdala which tells us how to react and it turns our ability to know how to react down a notch. Alcohol causes us to have less brainpower to make complex long-term considerations. Our neurological burglar alarm is in essence turned off when we drink. When alcohol hits our cerebellum, it will affect our coordination and balance. If you drink lots of alcohol quickly it hits the hippocampus, and you won’t remember. At BAC 0.15 you blackout. The really frightening thing is that research shows you can do anything in a blackout that you can do when you’re not drunk, you’re just not going to remember it. Research also shows that it is almost impossible to tell when people are drunk or when they are blacked out.

A couple things to remember is that we react to alcohol based on our weight, how fast we consume it, wine and spirits raise alcohol levels faster than beer, and biological women metabolize alcohol quicker because they have much less water in their bodies than biological men. Having a meal in your stomach when you drink reduces your peak blood alcohol concentration by about a third.

The book says that we should be clear that perpetrators are the ones responsible for committing their crimes and they should be brought to justice. And also says that we are failing to let women know that when they render themselves defenseless, terrible things can be done to them. Young women are getting the distorted message that their right to match men drink for drink is a feminist issue. The real feminist message should be that when you lose the ability to be responsible for yourself, you drastically increase the chances that you will attract the kinds of people, who, shall we say, don’t have your best interest at heart. That’s not blaming the victim; that’s trying to prevent more victims.

The book also says that we are failing to let men know that when they render themselves myopic, they can do terrible things. Young men are getting a distorted message that drinking to excess is a harmless social exercise. The real message should be that when you lose the ability to be responsible for yourself, you drastically increase the chances that you will commit a sexual crime. Acknowledging the role of alcohol is not excusing the behavior of perpetrators. It’s trying to prevent more young men from becoming perpetrators.

According to the book, when students were asked by the Kaiser Family Foundation what measures they thought would be most effective in reducing sexual assault they put at the top of the list harsher punishment for aggressors, self-defense training for victims and teaching men to respect women. Only 33% thought it would be very effective if they drank less. And only 15% thought stronger restriction on alcohol on campus would be effective. These are contradictory positions. Students think it is a good idea to be trained in self-defense, and not such a good idea to clamp down on drinking. But what good is knowing the techniques of self-defense if you’re blind drunk? Students think it’s really a good idea if men respect women more. But the issue is not how men behave around women when they are sober. It is how they behave around women when they are drunk and have been transformed by alcohol into a person who makes sense of the world around them very differently. The lesson of myopia is really very simple. If you want people to be themselves in a social encounter with a stranger, to represent their own desires honestly and clearly, they cannot be blind drunk. The book states, as long as we refuse to acknowledge what alcohol does to the interaction between people nothing will change.