The use of alcohol as a drug is ageless. In its various forms, alcohol has been part of most cultures since they began. Fermented drinks come from nearly every fruit, vegetable, and grain available. It is easy to assume that the tendency to escape from reality rather than confront and solve problems is part of the human condition.

Our European roots view alcohol as a normal part of life, to be used by almost everyone at nearly all social events. The legal age for beer consumption in Germany is 14, while the French and Italians allow toddlers to sip their parents’ intoxicants.

Because of the religious foundations in American history, we have had a love-hate relationship with alcoholic beverages that has polarized our culture. Some of us view alcohol as an acceptable part of life, while others abstain and are critical of its use. Americans have blamed alcohol for the sins of society and attempted to make it illegal, only to discover that conditions worsened when it was forbidden. Today, alcohol accounts for more direct and related ills and deaths than any other drug or activity, yet more money is spent on alcohol promotion than any other product.

Chemically, there are different forms of alcohol that can be used as cleaners or solvents, but ethanol, or grain alcohol, is the form that is consumed in alcoholic beverages, and it is not as poisonous as the others. Ethanol is created when grains, fruits, or vegetables are fermented, a process that changes sugars into alcohol.

When alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream, it affects the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) as a sedative, which blocks or changes the perceptions, emotions, movements, vision, and hearing.

addiction

Alcohol is both physically and mentally addicting, a condition we call alcoholism, and the addict himself we call an alcoholic. How likely is it that a person will become an alcoholic? The more one consumes and the younger one starts, the more likely it is that he will become addicted. More than 40 percent of those who begin drinking before the age of 15 eventually become alcoholics.

There are four symptoms of alcoholism:

Craving: A strong need or compulsion to drink;

Loss of control: The inability to limit one’s drinking on any given occasion;

Physical dependence: Withdrawal symptoms, such as nausea, sweating, shakiness, and anxiety that occur when alcohol consumption is stopped after a period of heavy drinking;

Tolerance: The need to drink greater amounts of alcohol to get a “high.”

the deadlier drug

In recent years, over 8 percent of drivers ages 16–20 who die in motor vehicle accidents were driving under the influence of alcohol. “Every day, about 37 people in the United States die in drunk-driving crashes—that’s one person every 39 minutes. In 2022, 13,524 people died in alcohol-impaired driving traffic deaths. These deaths were all preventable.”*

Mixing alcohol and medications can create an increased risk of overdosing, fainting, changes in blood pressure, breathing difficulties, liver damage, stomach bleeding, blood clots, strokes, elevated blood pressure, heart attacks, seizures, and even death.

The poisonous nature of alcohol poses serious dangers for abuse and dependence, and yet, as a culture, we collectively condone and support so-called acceptable forms of drinking and allow the alcohol industry to promote and lead youth into believing that one must drink in order to have fun.

As a society, while we may have matured in our responsibility of not allowing those who drink and drive to freely endanger others, we are still remiss in our failure to teach that alcohol is just another drug that will ruin lives as quickly and permanently as other drugs. We are responsible for getting a new message of truth about alcohol into our vernacular.

Alcohol: The Acceptable Addiction by Clark Carr	From the July 2025 Signs