What's Good for You

LIQUOR: THE SERVANT OF MAN by Morris E. Chafetz. 236 pages. Little, Brown. $4.95.

Alcohol is his study, and Author Morris Chafetz can speak with authority. As a doctor, psychiatrist, and currently director of the Alcohol Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital, he has observed the whole range of human reactions to alcohol, from the fanatical teetotaler to the Skid Row bum. And after all the misery that he has seen resulting from the abuse of alcohol, Dr. Chafetz still proclaims that liquor, properly used, is indeed the friend of man.

Mask for Fatigue. It is almost impossible to have an intelligent discussion of liquor today, he complains, because too many people equate all drinking with drunkenness and all drunkenness with alcoholism. Some so-called experts say there is only a hairline between the social or moderate drinker and the alcoholic. "Don't believe it," Chafetz snaps. "A grand canyon separates them." No more than 5% of Americans are alcoholics or problem drinkers destined to become alcoholics, Chafetz believes. Accordingly, Chafetz devotes 95% of his book to the beneficial uses of liquor.

What are these beneficial uses? Most people who take a drink or two before dinner, and even many of those who take three or four at a noisy cocktail party, know some of the basic facts. Alcohol is a relaxant (it appears to act as a stimulant only because it masks fatigue); and because it relaxes first the "most civilized" functions of the brain, it tends to banish worry. It makes people more tolerant of each other's foibles. It loosens tongues, and may dissolve some legal and moral restraints. But Dr. Chafetz is chary of the widely held belief that men or women do unacceptable things merely because they are under the influence. "The virgin who succumbs because she drank too deeply," he says, "was tired of waiting before her first drink."

Also Food. Dr. Chafetz has no use for bluenoses, legislators and judges who equate drinking with crime. He doubts that even fatal auto accidents involving drunken drivers are primarily the result of drinking: in most cases, he says, there is an underlying mental disturbance.

He is just as critical of his own profession. He regards as shameful the tendency to deny patients the relaxing and literally heart-warming effects of their accustomed drink. Equally shameful, he believes, is the average physician's refusal to use liquor as a medicine. It is, he asserts, not only the oldest of medicines but one of the most effective. It was the first and for long the only useful anesthetic. Alcohol is good in many cases of high blood pressure and heart disease, because it relieves the pain of angina and makes a low-salt diet more palatable. Because alcohol is the only drug that is also a food, Dr. Chafetz suggests that it might be given to some patients instead of intravenous feedings. Even in some diseases for which alcohol is supposed to be deadly, such as cirrhosis of the liver, Dr. Chafetz says the belief rests more on folklore than scientific fact.

Chafetz goes so far as to suggest that alcohol--in suitable dosage, of course --may be as good for children as for adults. He recommends abolishing age limits and allowing teen-agers to drink publicly, so as to get rid of furtiveness.

No doubt the heady spirit of Dr. Chafetz' book will be misrepresented and abused. But he puts himself squarely on record: "The person who drinks to get drunk is a fool and probably does not enjoy liquor anyway. He likely drinks for oblivion, with alcohol only the means to attain it." The civilized drinker stops far short of drunken oblivion.

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