It really is. I mean, think of how crazy it is, that a substance that is so fun and so therapeutic and has such an important role in nearly every culture that ever crushed a grape or fermented a grain…a literal elixir of joy, comfort, and well being, can simultaneously be a force of destruction in a scale more vast than any war, genocide, or natural disaster, could ever be.
If you run some big raw numbers over the centuries, I would bet real money that booze has caused more devastation and death and shortened/worsened life spans, year in and year out, than any other source. World war 2 and the various holocausts and purges in that same decade- sure, those few years were far more deadly than booze. But booze is doing it’s damage every, single,day, and has been for thousands of years without pause