Civilization evolved with beer, wine, and mead, but we’ve only recently had liquor. (Roughly, minimum 7000 years of beer, 700 years of liquor). One observation I am very confident of is that my college’s underage alcohol policies drove people to liquor because it was easier to conceal, and this went very poorly for a number of my friends, while the students who started with beer before college generally did alright. I have some suspicion that this is representative, and a large fraction of the damage we see from alcohol is distillation specific. I also suspect that this generalizes- for example, we handled fruits and seeds for millions of years and are getting wrecked by high fructose corn syrup and canola oil, listening to song and stories around the campfire is good for you and tiktok isn’t, etc.
Civilization evolved with beer, wine, and mead, but we’ve only recently had liquor. (Roughly, minimum 7000 years of beer, 700 years of liquor). One observation I am very confident of is that my college’s underage alcohol policies drove people to liquor because it was easier to conceal, and this went very poorly for a number of my friends, while the students who started with beer before college generally did alright. I have some suspicion that this is representative, and a large fraction of the damage we see from alcohol is distillation specific. I also suspect that this generalizes- for example, we handled fruits and seeds for millions of years and are getting wrecked by high fructose corn syrup and canola oil, listening to song and stories around the campfire is good for you and tiktok isn’t, etc.