Comment by volkl48

The book "Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization" would be a good read for you, should you wish to consider alternative viewpoints.

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Distilling what I remember about an entire book I read a couple years ago into a HN comment is difficult, but one of the more salient notes from it is this: Adult humans are naturally suspicious of others and slow to trust, particularly those they have no existing points of connection to. In contrast - children have much lower inhibitions in this sense and are much better at this.

Alcohol, in moderation, is one of the most effective tools in humanity's arsenal to more easily socialize with and create trust with total strangers.

The "reduction of inhibitions" we are all aware of in terms of being a risk of making negative choices, also serves to greatly reduce inhibition of the average adult to new interactions and experiences.

It is difficult to achieve this result in adults otherwise, especially in terms of a single activity with low investment required in time, money, facilities, and commitment.

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It is likely that as we transitioned from a society where adult encounters with total strangers were rare (tribal/village) to common (urban) that alcohol played a pretty significant role in creating the social cohesion for it.

It is not at all clear that we have found some successful alternative to this, and we may well find that even with all the documented downsides of it, we're worse off as a society for moving away from it.

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Again, this is my recollection of a book I read a couple years back - don't take this word for word. I will also note that it's not all rosy and has some thoughts on the types of consumption we should probably discourage as well and the general risk/reward of alcohol in society.