I can see why we primates* would have a taste for alcohol: boozy = fermenting = full of sugars = nutritious. It works fine if all alcohol we see is “in the wild”. But once you learn to farm and ferment, everything goes downhill, because you’ll have a lot more alcohol available than just a bunch of overripe berries.

So it’s a lot like a sedentary lifestyle, junk food, attention economy, etc. Our instincts working against us, because they were shaped by a different environment.

*I’m not even sure if it’s something as recent as primates. Other tetrapods seem to really like booze too, as this rather cute video shows. Elephant, birds, hogs, everyone gets drunk.