Drinking alcohol isn’t for everyone. Most people either love it or hate it. Some choose to enjoy a drink or two in social situations but would be just as content sticking to soft drinks instead.
But one thing is as clear as crystal clear vodka: Alcohol has played a critical role in the development of civilizations across the world and continues to impact our society today.
Here are nine incredible facts about alcohol. Cheers!
1. The First Known Alcohol Drink
The world’s first known alcoholic drink quenched the thirst of people in Northern China about 9,000 years ago. Their cocktail of choice? A fermented mix of rice, honey, and hawthorn fruit or grapes.
Residues of the alcoholic concoction were discovered in pottery found in Jiahu, a Neolithic village in the Yellow River Valley in Henan province. The drink’s sediment was dated back between approximately 7,000 and 6,600 B.C.
Archaeologists led by Dr. Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum made the discovery.
About 500 years later, the first barley beer and grape wine started being produced in the Middle East.
2. Adding Toxic Chemicals
During the Prohibition Era in the United States, which lasted from 1920 to 1933, the consumption, production and sale of alcohol was prohibited.
This was done in an effort to promote temperance and reduce crime related to alcohol abuse. However, it did not take long for people to find ways around this law by producing and selling alcohol known as “bootleg liquor”.
The federal government responded by mandating that industrial alcohols be poisoned with substances like quinine and methyl alcohol.
As Prohibition continued, the enforcement strategies implemented by the government became more intense. Along with strict law enforcement measures, the government also used tactics such as tax audits and surveillance to crack down on the illegal alcohol trade.
However, one of the consequences of these strategies was that many Americans were unintentionally poisoned by contaminated liquor.
3. Opportunity Seized
Did you know that World War I played a significant role in initiating Prohibition? By the time the U.S. entered the war in 1917, public sentiment had already turned against alcohol use.
The Anti-Saloon League held great political influence. As the war escalated, the organization’s propaganda painted German-American brewers, who owned most of the breweries, as traitors.
This rendered German-Americans politically powerless, as the prohibition debate played out in Washington and state capitals.
The U.S. Food Control Act of 1918, which intended to conserve the nation’s resources for the war effort, also gave the government an excuse to hit brewers’ bottom line. President Wilson reduced the supply of grain to brewers by 30%.
4. Declaration of Intoxication
When the former British colonies in the New World were uniting to become a single nation in the 1700s, alcohol was considered a healthy drink. As a result, people drank much more of it than Americans do today.
The average American in 1790 drank 5.8 gallons of pure alcohol annually, a figure that grew to 7.1 gallons by 1830. Today, the average American drinks only 2.5 gallons a year.
Before the nation had access to safe drinking water systems, alcohol was often seen as a safer alternative to drinking bacteria-laden water.
5. Beer Brewing Boom
Over the past decade, the number of breweries in the U.S. more than tripled, from 3,162 in 2013 to 9,812 in 2023. The nation’s total beer production nearly doubled, rising from appoximately 15 million barrels in 2013 to 23.4 million barrels in 2023.
According to the Brewers Association, the number of operating craft breweries soared to an all-time high of 9,683 in 2023. The overall count of U.S. operating breweries reached 9,812, up from 9,730 in 2022.
6. It Hits Quick
Alcohol can start affecting your brain in just six minutes. That’s how fast it passes through the stomach lining, into the bloodstream, and up to the brain.
Within 10 minutes, alcohol starts to affect your behavior. Within 20 minutes, your liver starts processing the alcohol.
The liver can metabolize about one ounce of alcohol per hour. Your blood alcohol content, which determines how intoxicated you feel after drinking, rises if you continue drinking faster than the liver can metabolize the alcohol.
If your blood alcohol content reaches .08%, the limit for legal driving, it takes about five and a half hours to clear all of that alcohol from your body once you’ve stopped drinking.
7. Driven to Drink
Alcohol sales and consumption increased significantly at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with related health problems.
It’s not unusual for societal drinking to increase during and after disasters, as people seek relief from the stress involved. The pandemic was no different.
Alcohol sales in the U.S. increased 3% year-on-year during the first year of the pandemic in 2020. This represented the biggest rise in more than 50 years.
About 25% of people drank more than usual. Liquor, or spirits, drove most of the sales increase.
8. It Keeps The Pipes Clean
Drinking alcohol moderately is good for your circulatory system. The key word here is “moderately.”
Studies have found that light-moderate consumption increases your so-called “good” HDL cholesterol levels. This reduces plaque build-up in the arteries and helps prevent blood clots.
Of course, drinking any more than that offsets these benefits by increasing your risks of death from other types of causes. They include heart disease, cancer, neurological disorders, liver cirrhosis, and traffic accidents.
9. Rum? Yum Yum
Of the 189 nations around the world included in a CIA comparison, none consume more alcohol than the inhabitants of the tiny Cook Islands in the South Pacific.
The average Cook Islander drank 12.97 liters of alcohol annually as of 2019, edging out Latvia as the most boozy country, at 12.9 liters per capita, according to the CIA’s Worldbook.
Seven of the 10 nations with the highest drinking rates are located in Eastern Europe. These are Latvia, Czechia, Lithuania, Austria, Estonia, Bulgaria, and Slovenia.
This article was produced by TPR Teaching.
Caitriona Maria is an education writer and owner of The Facts Institute. A teacher for seven years, she has been committed to providing students with the best learning opportunities possible, both domestically and abroad. Dedicated to unlocking students' potential, Caitriona has taught English in several countries and continues to explore new cultures through her travels.