In his book Lapsuuden kehityksellinen trauma, the psychotherapist Juha Klaavu uses the term “magical guilt” to describe an experience that some people have, where they feel guilty about just about everything. A description that he offers for this is that “when I’m in a park and witness a dog I don’t know biting a person I don’t know, even this seems to somehow be my fault”.
One potential mechanism for magical guilt: “I’m a good person” → “There is a world in which I would have made a difference in this situation” → “I observe I’m not currently in that world” → “The gap between this world and that world is because of my lack of {awareness, action, ambition, energy, etc...}”
The epistemic failure occurring either at step (2) or (4). Either there is no world where you can make a meaningful difference, or the thing that limited your ability to make a difference is entirely out of your control.
I don’t think alcohol as “social lubricant” is unknown in rationalist circles, but let’s assume it was. Does that new information update the utility of alcohol enough to outweigh the costs? Statistics on this are still very influenced by COVID, but I’ve tried to pull data from 2019 where I could find it easily. This is not exhaustive.
Per NIH[1]:
The Alcohol-Related Disease Impact application estimates that each year there are more than 178,000 deaths (approximately 120,000 male deaths and 59,000 female deaths) attributable to excessive alcohol use
According to 2021 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 21.0% of suicide decedents have blood alcohol concentrations of 0.1% or more
Per NHTSA[2]:
In 2019, alcohol-impaired driving fatalities accounted for 10,142 deaths (or 28% of overall driving fatalities)
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-topics-z/alcohol-facts-and-statistics/alcohol-related-emergencies-and-deaths-united-states
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/813120