Alcohol: The World's Oldest (And Most Popular) Drug

Alcohol: The World's Oldest (And Most Popular) Drug

Let's get one thing straight: alcohol is a drug. Not a beverage category. Not a "social lubricant." A drug.

And it's the oldest, most popular, most socially acceptable drug humanity has ever mass-produced.

We've been fermenting things and drinking the results for at least 10,000 years, possibly longer.

Ancient Sumerians were brewing beer around 4000 BC and writing hymns about it.

The ancient Chinese were fermenting rice, honey, and fruit around 7000 BC. Humans figured out how to get drunk before we figured out how to read.

Think about that. We prioritized intoxication over literacy.

Why Alcohol Won

Alcohol didn't become humanity's favorite drug by accident. It had a few things going for it:

1. It was safer than water. For most of human history, water was a gamble. Fermentation killed bacteria, so beer and wine were literally healthier than the alternatives.

2. It grew everywhere. Grapes, grains, honey, fruit—if it had sugar, humans figured out how to turn it into booze. Geography didn't matter. Ingenuity did.

3. It brought people together. Alcohol made strangers into friends, enemies into allies, and awkward dinners slightly less unbearable. Social bonding through mild poisoning turned out to be a universal human strategy.

Kentucky's Role in the Story

Kentucky didn't invent alcohol, but we perfected one version of it: bourbon.

In the late 1700s, settlers in Kentucky started distilling corn into whiskey because they had more corn than they knew what to do with and no good way to transport it.

Turns out, liquid corn travels better than bushels of it. By the early 1800s, bourbon was Kentucky's signature export, and it still is.

Today, 95% of the world's bourbon is made in Kentucky. And if you really ask me, bourbon can ONLY be produced in the state of Kentucky.

We're not just part of alcohol history, we're actively writing it, one barrel at a time.

Why It's Still King

Alcohol remains the most popular drug on earth because it's legal, accessible, and culturally embedded in nearly every society.

However, alcohol is also one of the most physically destructive drugs we use.

It damages the liver, the brain, and just about every organ if you overdo it. It's addictive.

It kills tens of thousands of people every year through overdose, accidents, and long-term health effects.

But because it's legal, regulated, and woven into the fabric of civilization, we treat it differently than other drugs.

We toast with it. We cook with it. We age it in charred oak barrels and call it "craft."

So next time you pour a bourbon, remember, you're not just drinking. You're participating in a 10,000-year-old tradition of getting slightly buzzed and pretending it's sophisticated.

Cheers to that.