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Let's be honest: we are neither shrews nor pen-tailed treeshrews, although some people can drink themselves into an animal-like state by consuming excessive alcohol. But to speak frankly, how many fermented fruits would a person need to eat to become intoxicated? Did you seriously just think about dozens of kilograms? Do you believe that is feasible for a modern human, who has a million alternative ways to become inebriated?

We derive pleasure from food, creativity, contemplating art in galleries, massages, swimming in the sea, adult films, children's movies, classical music, and punk rock. Some find it in dancing and skydiving. We are different; we all desire a state of pleasure and comfort. It so happens that everyone's "high" is individual and distinct. Some get their kick from adult films, others from running correlation analyses on scientific data. The reward is unique to each person. If you asked several people, "Do you like pastries?" the answers would vary. One would describe the pleasure of lemon meringue, another would prefer a tartlet with buttercream, and a third would choose a pastry with berry jelly.

Even our craving for sweets and the pleasure from pastries with light cream can be explained by nutrition specialists or considered an evolutionary remnant from a biological perspective. Through evolution, we became programmed to obtain calories from food. This is logical: sugar and fat – anything high in calories – provide abundant energy. However, the human drive to consume large amounts of sugar for sensory fulfillment is not always justified in the modern world. Yes, such a strategy was likely warranted in primitive times when hunter-gatherer tribes struggled for survival. In lean years, they had little choice but to gorge on whatever fruits, plants, or roots they found, as the chance of finding more was slim. Life was harder for primitive tribes than for modern humans. In ancient times, people often did not live past 30–35 years – a fact that the renowned Russian anthropologist, science communicator, and genuinely good person, S. Drobyshevsky, could confirm. In primitive society, the risk of being eaten by your own tribesmen or people from other tribes, dying from an unknown illness, or being killed over a piece of meat you refused to share was very high. Therefore, rapidly consuming large quantities of found fruit was a justified behavioral strategy for ancient humans. But for modern humans, the desire to "stress – eat" sweets or to refuse food in an effort to conform to contemporary standards of slimness and beauty leads to behavioral disturbances, sometimes culminating in eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating.

The point is that eating disorders represent specific behavioral patterns that lead a person to a particular dependency. We will definitely discuss eating disorders in one of the chapters of this book.

Scientists continue to debate the purpose of intoxicating substances for humans: are they a relic of the past or a special evolutionary "perk"?

Incidentally, the hypothesis that orgasm serves as a reward for reproduction is highly questionable. The role of the male orgasm as a reward during ejaculation is more or less understood, but what is its purpose for women? Millions of women in the world become pregnant and carry offspring without experiencing orgasms. Some do not even understand their purpose or know what they are. During solo sex (so beautifully termed masturbation), a person certainly does not experience orgasm as a reward for reproduction. And what about orgasms during sleep for adolescents and adults? These questions, and indeed issues of sex, gender, and reproduction in general, have been studied by staff at the Kinsey Institute since 1947.

Excessive dependency on solo sex and on sex in general can not only signal personality maladaptation but may also indicate the presence of a mental disorder; furthermore, the cause of increased libido can be organic brain disorders. So what is the common thread between the desire to get dead drunk, engage in solo sex while watching an adult film, gorge on sweets to the point of nausea, or play at a casino? All these phenomena relate to addiction. Addiction is most often what society calls a vice, and a vice, in turn, is the pursuit of pleasure through condemned means for short-term gratification, here and now. An obsessive infatuation with another person, involving pathological stalking and an overwhelming desire to possess them, accompanied by fits of jealousy, is also a form of behavioral addiction.

First, we must examine the history of substance use disorders – that is, those human habits where the instrument for achieving pleasure is a specific substance, rather than a behavioral pattern.

Proponents of the theory of evolutionary remnants believe that the human desire to drink might have been justified for our ancestors and somehow helped them adapt to a hostile environment, even though the strategy of constantly "drinking heavily" is irrational today. However, we drink together not to later sentimentally confess our love under alcohol's influence, nor even because drinking alone is frowned upon (this doesn't stop alcoholics), but because this tendency developed over the course of evolution, as biologist R. Dudley has written – if you read the first chapter, you know whom I'm referring to. His theory is, of course, controversial, and not all biologists agree with it.

According to R. Dudley, we drink and eat together, in company, because from an evolutionary perspective, sharing food with one's family, pack, or community is rational. Within the evolutionary process, we unconsciously perform this atavistic action even today. We seemingly need our pack, family, or tribe to survive. From an evolutionary standpoint, drinking in company is advantageous for higher primates (humans are higher primates) if only because if you were to get drunk alone in ancient times, a predator might drag you off and devour you, whereas attacking a drunken group of kin is not so easy.

There is no reliable evidence indicating precisely when humans began consuming intoxicating beverages. No one knows how it all started – whether humans discovered some fermented liquid by chance or devised methods to produce it from fermented fruits. However, there is a curious hypothesis suggesting that bees may have played a role in this process. According to this theory, humans might have first encountered alcohol when a storm destroyed a bee nest in a hollow tree. Water flooded the nest, causing the honey inside to ferment and produce mead. Of course, this hypothesis is about as plausible as the African myth of drunken elephants gorging on marula fruits – no evidence, just speculation.

Let us apply logical thinking: for a liquid containing sugar and yeast (essential for the process) to ferment into an alcoholic beverage, it must be contained in some kind of vessel. This would require humans to abandon nomadism and adopt a settled lifestyle.

Perhaps when humans mastered agriculture and established permanent settlements, this higher primate learned to produce beverages from plants. However, such reasoning remains hypothetical and may be erroneous despite its apparent logic. There is another, more plausible alternative hypothesis.

In modern Turkey stands the ancient megalithic structure known as Göbekli Tepe. This temple complex dates back 12 000 years, to approximately the 9th millennium BCE. Archaeologists first took notice of it in the early 1960s. Among various significant artifacts, several stone basins were discovered at the site, the largest with a capacity of 180 liters. One might assume these were used for bathing, except for one detail: the basin walls bear traces of chemical compounds called oxalates. To any chemists reading this – don't be concerned; direct all questions to the archaeologists, as this is their hypothesis. The oxalates in these ancient Turkish stone basins could have resulted from mixing barley and water to produce fermented mash. Generally speaking, this hypothesis also lacks firm evidence, and we are free to imagine people gathering at Göbekli Tepe to drink ancient mash, possibly a prototype of beer. No one can forbid us from speculating. One thing is certain: the Sumerians had drinking establishments, though their names remain unknown. But as soon as one reads Sumerian epics, it becomes clear that everyone drank alcohol on various occasions – and without any occasion at all.

The emergence of the European alcohol tradition and the use of psychoactive substances are described in the scholarly articles of Doctor of Historical Sciences V. M. Lovchev, a public figure from Kazan. Relying on the reflections of S. N. Sheverdin, V. M. Lovchev posits that when human labor began to yield a surplus from intensive crop cultivation, people started storing it for future use. This, in some instances, led to product fermentation. They could not discard the surplus, as food was too hard-won in ancient societies, so they consumed the fermented masses. Thus, so to speak, humans became acquainted with alcohol. The historian contends that alcohol is an evolutionary bug – an error, a fortuitous accident that arose because early humans, through trial and error, made discoveries that were both brilliant and, subsequently, detrimental to humanity.

Let us return to the Sumerians. In Sumerian mythology, there was a goddess, Ninkasi, who presided over beer and other alcoholic beverages. Thanks to the work of Doctor of Historical Sciences V. Afanasyeva, a poet and translator from Sumerian and Akkadian, we have the text of the hymn to the beer goddess, Ninkasi, today.

…Oh, the fine beer you are brewing,

Mixing honey and wine, you pour it drop by drop,

Oh Ninkasi, oh the fine beer you are brewing,

Mixing honey and wine, you pour it drop by drop…

Given the facts and evidence, the Sumerians cannot deny this – they clearly drank and brewed beer and wine. By studying Sumerian writing as a hallmark of their civilization, we know today not only of their epic literature but also that they wrote debt notes listing barley, gold, and beer.

One of the earliest depictions of a beer vessel dates from around 3200 BCE; it was conical in shape. As civilization developed, its representation on clay "notes" became more schematic, eventually turning into a stylized icon with two strokes. Almost nothing remained of the original depiction; the strokes evolved into a character.

Incidentally, among the Sumerians, poetry about alcohol was written by a woman named Enheduanna. Where she found the time is unclear, but perhaps this maiden had leisure for composition because she was a princess, the daughter of the Akkadian monarch Sargon the Great. In short, from ancient times to the modern world, familial influence has been important in human societies. If a person works for a prestigious company, they will likely arrange positions for relatives or friends; in this regard, nothing has changed since the Sumero – Akkadian era. Enheduanna was the king's daughter, and, of course, her father appointed her as the high priestess of the moon god Nanna in Ur. Sargon had a wife, Tashlulum, who bore him five children. But only Enheduanna composed impassioned hymns to the Sumerian gods, which were later translated into Russian by V. K. Afanasyeva.

According to O. Dietrich, the Sumerian production of alcoholic beverages was not intended for long – term storage but rather involved large-scale, single-batch production for specific ritualized feasts. Such libations were not exclusive to Sumerian civilization; later, the rulers of China's Yellow River valley and the Incas in South America also used the production and consumption of alcohol at festivals for political purposes, such as forging alliances with neighboring rulers. Rulers also used alcoholic drinks to mobilize labor; for instance, ancient Chinese rulers rewarded their subordinates with alcohol for collective work.