Its interesting that the article was entirely top down driven by statistics, and most of the discussion here is anecdotal. Looking bottom up from a biochemistr

Its interesting that the article was entirely top down driven by statistics, and most of the discussion here is anecdotal. Looking bottom up from a biochemistry point of view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_metabolism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_metabolism First there's ethanol itself. Enough in your bloodstream will quite effectively kill you. It doesn't take much. Its a poison and the liver will drop everything to save your life by converting it as fast as it can. It has some tranquilizing effect on the brain which is the likely source of improved lifespan... lower psychological stress leads to lower blood pressure, lower adrenaline levels, etc. Fun as it is to get high, that stuff is really bad for you. On to the first hop. The acetaldehyde conversion stage is a good strong kick in the liver. Its clearly a net negative for the liver with no possible, no imaginable, redeeming characteristics. Dosing the rest of your body with acetaldehyde is clearly not wise and its quite neurotoxic once theres enough. Not as bad as ethanol, but poisonous, sure. I am a little fuzzy on what causes more damage and kills people, the ethanol in the blood or the acetaldehyde output in both long and short run. Its interesting that kids don't express the correct proteins to clean up poisonous ethanol and its all fuzzy what is meant by "adult". Obviously fetus-grade young will be totally screwed up by ethanol and the immature liver's attempt at cleaning it up. At teen age, I donno, the normal adult response should have kicked in? Tolerance should build as teens age, I think? I think a kid that can feed itself and walk and all that is probably medically safe to drink in small amounts? The oxidation to acetic acid isn't too awful. Hard on your Vit B and Vit C stockpile. Acetic acid is great for making pickles, not that you'd want to pickle your internal organs. Its none the less less toxic than the previous step (you see the path of ever lower toxicity...) This is the step that's wildly genetically variable across races in our species. Most "whites" have the strong enzymes to devour acetaldehyde quite effectively, most asians not so much, they stew their innards in acetaldehyde, which will probably have some kind of statistical result in the top down studies. Or maybe the lifespan effects of alcohol in the top down analysis have no racial component implying its nothing to do with the acetaldehyde pathway. Acetaldehyde is specifically toxic to kidneys and I've never gotten a straight answer about alcohols legendary diuretic effect as self preservation or is it merely happy coincidence. I'm pretty sure that if alcohol didn't make you pee you'd have heavy abusers dying of kidney failure rather than liver. Now we're at the acetic acid stage. Very few people die of pickle poisoning from eating too many dill pickles. Then again soaking your blood in it for decades is likely not totally wise. At this stage I'd call it "mostly harmless" and stop excessive worrying. The next hop is to some funky intermediate that basically tosses acetyl carbons into the right place to join up with the big ole citric acid energy cycle later on. Its more or less on the carb and fat metabolism pathway, nothing too far off the map as long as you don't consume ridiculous quantities (like enough to make you fat beer belly). Now we're at the point where slamming a cup of soda or fruit juice or lard would be biochemically mostly indistinguishable from slamming booze. Of course in the top down study maybe having the time and money to slam a fruit smoothie would have the same top down study long term results, I donno. The final hop is the harmless-ish intermediate becomes part of the boring harmless normal citric acid cycle. Thats boring and theres nothing "interesting" about alcohol once it hits this stage, other than maybe getting fat. This is a rather normal and boring energy processing cycle. Anyway thats the biochemical bottom up analysis to compare to the article. So your brain chills, which might help with mental health and stress related cardiovascular stuff. Its a hard kick in the liver best avoided if at all possible. And later on its outright bad for your kidneys. How this all balances up I donno. Frankly if you want to chill your brain a little there are helpful little pills that'll do the same thing without the giant kick in the liver or punch to the kidney. Or inhale some nitrous oxide laughing gas or something. From a bottom up analysis ethanol is not looking all that good, its basically a crappy poison. If it were not socially popular, it would have a rep as being the shittiest illegal drug ever, right up there with drinking cough syrup to get high.