Funny how you explain alcohol like I would explain weed.

Weed for me is the universal emotion amplifier. It amplifies enjoyment (music, food, anything) as much as it amplifies anxiety. In fact weed helped me confront my anxieties and become a more chill person overall. I had to choose between keeping my unprocessed fears and continue vaping weed and decided to work through it, confront and think through the weird fears that my anxious brain constantly produced, repressed and weed surfaced. In that sense, I believe weed can be a therapeutic drug, when combined with some proper self-reflection, CBT skills, and not using absurdly high THC strains.

Alcohol for me primarily increases the “not giving a fuck”-ness, causing mild relaxation in the beginning and removing self control and filters at higher dosage. It quickly becomes physically unpleasant for me to I learned “my limits” when I was younger, its not fun at all to go beyond them and not worth it so I stick to a few beer or glasses of wine at most and avoid stuff that gets you drunk quicker than you can control it. The “buzzed” sweet spot is really narrow for me, probably I’m lucky that my body rejects alcohol so that overdoing it is self-torture.

But of course everyone is different.