/ck/ - Food & Cooking

Alcohol is perfectly fine

Why legalize pot?

There's a lot of reasons alcohol is so popular (besides its legality, which itself is due to its popularity).

Alcohol acts as a sort of leveler in social situations. You might come into a social situation feeling awkward, or sad, or simply on a different level emotionally to your company, and alcohol levels this out with those around you: having a few drinks puts you in a similar mindset to everyone else, making it easier to interact with people (this only really applies to people who haven't had a huge amount to drink though, and will probably become more obvious when you can legally drink and excessive drunkenness loses its novelty)

You can drink alcohol fairly heavily your entire life and still end up reasonably healthy. Of course alcoholism is terrible for your health, but compared to other drugs, the level of alcohol use that constitutes "alcoholism" is huge

Alcoholic beverages genuinely taste good. I understand you said you don't like the taste, and some drinks are certainly an acquired taste, but from my own experience it's probably got more to do with what you're drinking. If your drinking below the legal age, you tend to be drinking cheap spirits and cheap wine, because they're easier to smuggle around than beer, which is too bulky to carry in reasonable quantities, and the consequences of getting caught with them and having it confiscated by police is substantially less finacially. These drinks usually taste awful.

Lots of cultural practice relates to alcohol consumption. Christianity and Judaism both require it in certain rituals, and lots of secular cultural rituals heavily feature alcohol (horse racing, sports, going out to restaurants, clubs or bars, dinner parties, house parties etc.)

You can drink a lot and still go to work the next day, which isn't true of many drugs

Being buzzed in itself just feels fun. Conversation is better, you're more relaxed, company is more open etc.