The problem alcohol shares with other hard narcotics, of course, is that tolerance builds up and the consumption has a tendency to grow.

I think 80 or 90 years of "life" will bring you close to death!

This is true, but there's no known safe level of a lot of stuff, and there are various known unsafe levels with alcohol.

For instance - while it's true that the absolute safest course of action is not to drink any alcohol at all during pregnancy, it's also true that the risk profile of consuming one-two units per week during pregnancy is negligible.

I'm not trying to defend ethanol here - it is a known carcinogen, it ruins brains and livers and much else - however the tendency for bias and monochrome thinking in this space seems to go both ways.

Glass of wine good for you? This message or research was sponsored by the wine industry. Avocados good for you? Avocado industry. Smoking good for you? This is literally what the tobacco industry said until it was finally stopped by legislation and counter-evidence.

With every claim you have to assess who would benefit from it. In the case of alcohol, it's both the alcohol industry AND the state, due to high and extra taxes on alcohol (in my country at least), which are intended to discourage heavy drinking but which at the same time contribute a lot to tax income. The same weirdness is done with smoking; it's not banned because of obvious health reasons, just heavily taxed and packaging and advertising are tightly regulated, because outright banning it would cause it to go underground.

If you want to drink, go for it—for better or worse, it’s often a big part of social life. But as you say, there’s essentially no “safe” amount, just the amount of increased risk you’re personally willing to accept when it comes to addiction, risk-taking behaviour, depression, anxiety, heart disease, insulin resistance, organ dysfunction, cancer, systemic inflammation, brain damage, and so on.

Someone who doesn’t drink should absolutely not start drinking under the guise of health.

I wonder why countries that are dry don’t have better health outcomes than those that aren’t

Well, that's begging the question; how do we know that the other differences don't relate to physical health if we must do comparative studies to know if one difference (alcohol consumption) does?

Also, I wonder whether less alcohol drives global happiness up or down. Alcohol is a depression factor but could help creating bonds, massively, at a corporate or national level – so, live slightly shorter but happier?

Beyond that, this paper does actually seem to shed some light on what is and is not safe. If 0-100 grams of alcohol per week only decreases your life expectancy by 6 months, I'd consider that pretty safe. I mean, I imagine getting behind the wheel of a car to drive to work every day reduces your life expectancy in a way that working from home every day doesn't. And yet people all over the place drive daily, and we consider that plenty safe enough. At least drinking alcohol is a lot more fun.

Absolutely agree with you on the idea that there seems to be a concerted effort in research to find a way, any way, to deem alcohol consumption safe or good for you in some ways.

Why not? Psychiatrists are MDs.

strawman! you don't actually know and anyway, one is more or less essential, the other ... isn't?

Drinking significant amounts while pregnant probably isn't the best idea though, to be sure, since then the alcohol is going straight to baby's bloodstream instead of to the digestive system.