I think many miss the point of drinking alcohol. While I perfectly respect those who avoid it, the primary benefit of alcohol is to provide the proverbial "soci

I think many miss the point of drinking alcohol. While I perfectly respect those who avoid it, the primary benefit of alcohol is to provide the proverbial "social lubrication." It "loosens" people up and tends to make people more friendly and open to socialize with (approachable), even some of the most defensive people I've met. Many in society today are fairly antisocial or fall into small groups at social events that can be more difficult to start a discussion and mingle with. They're frequently more judgemental at that point and may avoid people based on ill conceived prejudices, limiting otherwise worthwhile relationships they may form. Alcohol helps break that barrier and lets people talk who would otherwise rarely, if ever, talk. Sometimes this is fruitful, sometimes it's not. It gives people a social "out" when it's not fruitful or their social groups judge/criticize them for talking to someone different/odd, "well I was tipsy." If viewed as an optimization problem, alcohol effectively provides a stochastic gradient descent, mutation, momentum/inertia, annealing, or whichever minima escape mechanism you prefer to explore social spaces beyond what you've already found.