Alcohol Isn’t Medicine, It’s a Story We Like
I don’t think alcohol is “the best medicine”; that’s a convenient story we tell to justify a psychoactive drug that can feel good in the short term but clearly harms health as dose and frequency creep up. The real danger is the narrative itself—“as long as you don’t overdo it” is so elastic that it quietly shifts what counts as normal, while your brain and body (sleep, mood, dependence, cancer risk) are being shaped by something we’ve rhetorically rebranded as harmless therapy.