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by sublinear 1254 days ago
I'm not personally defending alcohol, but I think the reason it works for so many people is as long as you drink moderately the effects aren't so psychologically divisive (it works about the same on everyone), the health effects aren't that severe, and tolerance to it doesn't quite work like it does with other drugs. Since so many people drink, it opens up the largest number social opportunities when compared to anything else.

Hate it all you want, but I don't think anything will ever replace it. All its serious competitors have been around for just as long. There must be some deeper biological reason for it to be favored so heavily. I really don't think it's just marketing and cultural norms.
4 comments
Etheryte 1254 days ago
Hard disagree with the effects of alcohol being universal. Some get energetic, some get tired, others get happy while others still get rowdy. I would say that the range of personalities hidden behind a few drinks are more varied than they are with say MDMA.

Likewise for comparing the availability of alcohol to other substances on a time line: MDMA only became widely known in the 70s! That's nothing compared to the millenia we've known how to make booze.

Shortly, I don't think either one of the arguments holds up to scrutiny.

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octatrack 1254 days ago
> There must be some deeper biological reason for it to be favored so heavily.

Or perhaps the fact that it's legal and readily available in every grocery store, restaurant and entertainment venue? Unlike any other mind altering substance we use.

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ethanbond 1254 days ago
I’ll admit alcohol is perhaps less phenomenologically diverse than psychedelics, but I don’t know of anyone in the history of the world who took a decent dose of MDMA then went home and beat the daylights out of his wife and children.

Frequent occurrence on alcohol (and a quite distinct one than the “a few beers with my friends” that alcohol can also confer)

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ghodith 1254 days ago
It's also the experience and ritual of drinking alcohol. It's something you do slowly and consistently over the course of a night which is practically an activity in of itself, similar to smoking tobacco.

Taking a pill loses all of that.

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