BECAUSE EACH individual has his or her own level of tolerance for alcohol, it is hard to gauge just how much one must drink in one sitting in order to be intoxicated. Those who have a drinking habit also soon develop higher alcohol tolerance levels.

	From Inumang Pinoy, Edilberto N. Alegre, 1992

When taken in moderation, alcohol causes mild euphoria and lowers inhibitions, says Panganiban. When a drinker exceeds his intoxication threshold, she says, "you lose a sense of control, and cognitively, you cannot make the right decisions."

Experts divide alcoholics into two categories: In one are the abusers — usually those caught binge drinking or driving while drunk — who already have a problem, but can still extricate themselves from it, with professional help. In another are those who are so dependent on alcohol that they can no longer live without it. It is at this point that the habit has turned into an addiction, say experts. Pascual also says this is when alcohol takes control over a person's life, and the alcoholic altogether neglects or loses interest in work, family, and just about everything else.

Perhaps the reason why Mon insists he can still walk away from his bottle of Emperador is that, unlike most alcoholics, he has so far been able to hold regular jobs. He was first a traffic officer, and was later promoted district commander of the Metro Manila Commission. Then he went to work in Saudi Arabia (he actually considers it an achievement for never having been caught drinking there despite the threat of imprisonment and deportation). A few years after his return, he became a barangay tanod. In 1997, he was appointed to his present post.

To Mon, all these prove he is still in control. "I never let it interfere with my work," he says of his drinking. "I wouldn't last as a public servant if I neglected my duties." Indeed, he is a yearly nominee to the model employee award, which he has won three times, most recently in 2004.

But Mon admits that despite his track record, there are those who aren't too happy with his drinking. There was once a petition to remove him from office because of it, although the move never prospered. The barangay captain has asked him to cut down on his drinking as well, but he has refused, insisting that liquor drowns the pain in his leg after a long night of scouring the streets for vagrants, drug pushers, snatchers, and other criminals. According to Mon, the half-bottle of brandy that he drinks once he arrives home at six a.m. also helps put him to sleep. When he rises from bed at around one in the afternoon, the remaining half-bottle acts as his wake-upper.

Mon says his drinking actually allows him to perform his job better. Not that he drinks while he is on duty. He says when he's not on the job, he grabs at the chance to bond with the neighbors he has sworn to protect and gets to know them better over shots of Ginebra San Miguel.

DRINKING, AFTER all, is a "social act," says Edilberto Alegre in Inumang Pinoy, a book on Filipino alcoholic drinks. It is in tagay where one breaks out from the selfishness of ako to kita or kami to tayo. "Sharing becomes the norm," says Alegre, "and giving the rule."

	From Inumang Pinoy, Edilberto N. Alegre, 1992

But he also notes that unlike other drinkers elsewhere who wait for an occasion or excuse to imbibe, Filipinos drink for no reason at all. "The occasion does not create the reason for drinking; the drinker creates the occasion," he writes, which, for him, makes the Filipino "the quintessential drinker."

Alegre says Filipino drinkers abide by an old "cardinal rule," which is that one should not drink to get drunk, but should "remain even-tempered, observant of traditional norms of good behavior."

Some sociologists, however, aren't too sure this still applies. Manuel Bonifacio, for one, points out that worsening living conditions has made many impoverished Filipinos turn to alcohol as a form of escape, and are prone to abuse it because the "level of deprivation is high and the opportunity to overcome it is low." At the same time, other experts say the stresses brought on by an increasingly fast-paced lifestyle have led many from the privileged classes to unwind by drinking, and several often miss the warning signs of intoxication while enjoying their night out with friends.

Zarco, for his part, observes that certainly, the "social controls" in small villages in earlier times were much stronger.

"We had informal social controls long before the Spaniards came," he says, "People who were using too much alcohol were ostracized, subjected to dirty names, and were boycotted." But Zarco says social controls have loosened generation after generation, partly because of the involvement of "formal controls" like the police. Law enforcement is arbitrary, he says, and at best, weak.