No cheap moralizing here. Just facts that are tragedies in their own right. Millions of lives are shattered every year by a legal psychoactive liquid. We’re talking about alcohol, of course. A harmful and highly addictive substance that many people refuse to call what it actually is. Namely: a hard drug! And you’ll see there’s absolutely no ambiguity about this. But strangely enough, in our Western societies, it’s far more acceptable to be called an alcoholic than a drug addict, even though there’s strictly no difference between the two.

Every year, Dry January serves as a brutal wake-up call. Countless people around the world discover a reality they refused to face… They have a serious problem with alcohol. One month without drinking. Thirty little days. And then, surprise! What was supposed to be a simple challenge becomes an ordeal.

What if we pushed to require graphic warning images on alcohol bottles?

You know those cigarette packs with photos of necrotic lungs, throats eaten away by cancer, corpses in the morgue? All those disgusting images staring at you from behind the counter at the convenience store? For tobacco, we had the guts to show reality. So why not do the same for alcohol?

Let’s imagine for a second applying the same treatment to bottles of wine, beer, whiskey, and other alcoholic beverages. On the label of your $15 cabernet, a photo of a car crash with the driver being cut from the wreckage. On your bourbon bottle, the bruised face of a woman beaten by her drunk husband. On your beer pack, a close-up of cirrhosis of the liver. And why not a guy fired from his job for being wasted? A destroyed family? A child placed in foster care because their parents drink too much?

Graphic images on cigarette packs work. Studies prove it. Product attractiveness drops, people think before buying, and some quit. But most importantly, these images have the merit of being honest. They show what you’re really buying. Not a lifestyle, not a vibe, not a dream. Just reality.

And while we’re at it, let’s push this to its logical conclusion with standardized bottles. All identical. Same shape, same ugly color, same typography. No more sexy packaging, no more glamorous marketing, no more designer bottles decorating the windows of trendy bars. Just alcohol. Just a drug. With the look to match.

You think that’s extreme? I get it. Messing with alcohol? That’s almost sacred territory. And that’s precisely the heart of the problem. But just take a few minutes to read this article to the end, and there’s a good chance you’ll change your mind.

The glamour of alcohol is just the marketing scam of the century

Wine isn’t alcohol. It’s heritage. It’s culture. It’s the blood of Christ, they say! For centuries, the Catholic Church has sanctified this drug to the point of making it untouchable. Wine is supposedly divine. Literally. And this sacralization has permeated all of Western society. So you’re not drinking a glass of red, you’re celebrating a terroir, honoring a tradition, perpetuating an art of living. What a magnificent con job!

And the business world figured this out. Wine as an investment, you know about that? Bottles worth $10,000, $50,000, $100,000 sitting in climate-controlled cellars waiting to appreciate in value. We speculate on a drug. We invest our money in a product that destroys lives. But it’s fine, it’s a vintage grand cru, it’s classy.

When it comes to marketing, the alcohol industry is pure genius. They don’t sell a product, they sell a dream. George Clooney and his tequila, Depardieu and his vineyards, The Rock and his tequila, Diddy and his vodka… Celebrities no longer just lend their image, they produce their own stuff. And when you buy their bottle, you’re not buying alcohol. You’re buying a piece of their success. A fragment of glitter. A slice of the dream. Like a perfume that’s supposed to make you irresistible. What a joke!

The peak of absurdity is in nightclubs. Bottles arriving at the VIP table with sparklers stuck in them, carried overhead by servers sexualized to the max while the DJ drops a beat. Everyone watches. Everyone is supposed to be impressed. The guy who ordered struts around like: Look, I’ve got power, I’ve got money. All because he just dropped $10,000 on a bottle of champagne. Sure, this display of stupidity is definitely something else compared to a nice $10 smoothie. Except if you’re buying a $10,000 bottle while people are freezing and starving outside? You’re just a massive asshole, not a winner!

But glamour is superficial. You know what’s left after the sparklers and phone flashes? Alcohol poisoning, car crashes, violence, rapes, destroyed lives… But that stuff, strangely enough, never makes it to Instagram stories.

Alcohol automatically means partying? That’s also the scam of the century!

It’s been drilled into you your whole life! No successful party without alcohol. No backyard BBQ with friends without cold beers. No wedding without champagne. No New Year’s without glasses clinking. No respectable night out without a few drinks. The equation is carved in stone: Alcohol = Good times, Alcohol = Great moments, Alcohol = Partying. Except it’s total bullshit.

You want the truth? Everyone, absolutely everyone, has seen at least once in their life a party ruined because of alcohol. The drunk uncle making a scene at the wedding. The buddy puking in the back seat. The night that ends in the ER. The couple fighting and saying things they can never take back. The insults. The fistfights. The tears. The senseless stupidity. That’s the reality of alcohol at parties. We’re a long way from those ads with supposedly stylish people laughing on an exotic beach at sunset with a mojito in hand.

And yet, they keep selling us this fairy tale. We keep believing that without alcohol a party is bound to be boring, dull, and sad. That people who don’t drink are buzzkills. The social pressure is enormous. If you don’t have a drink in your hand, people look at you funny. They ask you why. Basically, they make you feel like you’re not normal.

But the truth is that millions of people party without alcohol. Parties where nobody ends up with their head in the toilet. Parties where nobody says horrible things they’ll regret the next day. Parties you actually remember. These parties aren’t any less fun. They’re just a lot less dangerous for everyone.

What alcohol really does to your body

When we talk about an alcoholic, we all picture the same image. The wasted drunk 24/7, the beer gut, the red nose, the stumbling walk, the bottle of cheap wine hidden in a paper bag. The homeless guy under the bridge. The lost cause. Basically, not you. Not your friends. Not the “good” people.

Except alcohol doesn’t give a damn about your social status, your bank account, or your appearance. Even at low doses, even “reasonably,” even just on weekends, here’s what this crap does to your body: Alcohol is a toxin. This isn’t a personal opinion, it’s biochemistry. When you drink, your liver goes into emergency mode to eliminate this garbage as fast as possible. To do so, it converts ethanol into acetaldehyde, a substance classified as carcinogenic. Your own body manufactures poison to get rid of another poison. Beautiful, isn’t it?

The liver, let’s talk about it! It takes the hardest hit. Fatty liver disease, alcoholic hepatitis, cirrhosis, cancer. Sure, the process is slow and silent. But when symptoms appear, it’s often too late. And the liver isn’t the only one suffering. There’s also the brain. Alcohol destroys neurons, wrecks memory, promotes depression and anxiety. As for the heart: hypertension, arrhythmia, and cardiomyopathy. The digestive system? Gastritis, ulcers, and pancreatitis. And of course, cancers! Mouth, throat, esophagus, liver, breast, colon… The list is long. Alcohol is implicated in more than 200 different diseases. Let that sink in!

And the myth of “one glass a day is good for your health”? Pure concentrated bullshit. The latest scientific studies all agree: There is no safe level of consumption. None whatsoever. The first drink already does damage. The famous “French paradox” with the little glass of red wine that protects your heart? It’s a lie carefully maintained by wine industry lobbies. The supposed cardiovascular benefits are largely canceled out by cancer risks. You’re not protecting anything at all. You’re just playing Russian roulette with your body.

Alcohol is a hard drug. Here’s the drug ranking that changes everything

In 2010, Professor David Nutt and his team published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet a study that should have been a bombshell. It was a comparative analysis of the danger level of 20 psychoactive substances, legal and illegal drugs combined. The drugs were evaluated according to 16 criteria: physical harm, dependence, social impact, mortality, associated crime…

The result is crystal clear! Alcohol comes out on top by a wide margin. It’s the most dangerous substance of all. Ahead of heroin. Ahead of crack. Ahead of methamphetamine.

Here’s the ranking on a scale of 0 to 100:

• Alcohol: 72
• Heroin: 55
• Crack: 54
• Methamphetamine: 33
• Cocaine: 27
• Tobacco: 26
• Amphetamines: 23
• Cannabis: 20
• GHB: 18
• Benzodiazepines: 15
• Ketamine: 15
• Ecstasy: 9
• LSD: 7
• Mushrooms: 5

You read that right! Alcohol, which you can buy at any corner store or gas station any time of day, is ranked as more dangerous than heroin, crack, and coke combined. And LSD and ecstasy, those drugs demonized for decades of propaganda, end up at the bottom of the ranking. Almost harmless compared to your Saturday night happy hour.

And what happened to David Nutt after publishing this study? He was simply fired from his position as advisor to the British government on drugs. Thanked for telling the truth. Same old story of science versus lobbies… You know how it ends.

That said, these numbers don’t come out of nowhere. They’re largely confirmed by the World Health Organization. In 2024, the WHO estimates that alcohol is responsible for 2.6 million deaths per year worldwide. That’s 4.7% of all deaths. One death every 12 seconds.

And behind these deaths, there’s a whole mountain of tragedies. More than 30% of domestic violence cases involve alcohol. More than 50% of sexual assaults on college campuses occur under the influence. One third of fatal car accidents have alcohol as a factor. Not to mention job losses, divorces, children placed in foster care, people becoming homeless, destroyed lives that don’t fit into any statistic. So we’ll never get tired of repeating it: alcohol is a hard drug. The numbers prove it. But we keep pretending not to see it. Maybe out of sheer habit. Maybe because of social pressure. Maybe because of marketing. Or maybe all three at once.

Why does alcohol stay legal? Just follow the money…

If alcohol is so dangerous, then why is it sold freely almost everywhere on the planet? Why can you buy it at the supermarket, at the gas station, at the stadium, at the airport, in vending machines in some countries? Why does this hard drug get special treatment that we’d never give to heroin or cocaine? The answer comes down to one word: Money. Lots of money!

The alcohol industry generates more than $1.5 trillion in annual revenue worldwide. An economic giant. A colossus with feet firmly anchored in the system. And to protect this business, alcohol giants spend enormous fortunes on marketing. More than $7 billion per year in advertising globally. AB InBev, the group that owns Budweiser, Corona, and dozens of other brands, is the 9th biggest advertiser on the planet.

Against this steamroller, prevention budgets are pathetic. The ratio is the same everywhere, no matter the country: Hundreds of millions to sell the stuff, crumbs to warn about its dangers. When the industry spends $100 to get you to drink, health authorities barely have $1 to tell you to stop. The fight is lost before it even starts!

And lobbying doesn’t stop at advertising. Alcohol industry executives have access everywhere. In ministries, in parliaments, in presidential palaces. They fund bogus studies to sow doubt about the science. They create front organizations that talk about “responsible drinking” to create the illusion they’re part of the solution. They methodically dismantle protective laws, piece by piece, amendment after amendment.

The result is that prevention campaigns are sabotaged, watered down, or even censored. Dry January, that initiative encouraging people not to drink for a month, has no official support in most countries. Some governments even refuse to promote it so as not to upset the wine or beer industry. They’d rather let people die than annoy an economic sector. So alcohol isn’t legal because it’s less dangerous than other drugs. It’s legal because it makes too much money for too many powerful people. Period.

And speaking of legality, let’s talk about job blackmail. The ultimate trump card of alcohol lobbies, the one that silences all criticism, is: “But our industry represents so many jobs!” Ah, jobs… The magic card. The ultimate wild card. Except if you push this logic all the way, it becomes literally grotesque. Because selling weapons creates jobs. Producing and selling drugs creates jobs. Prostitution creates jobs. Contract killer is a job too! So why not legalize it while we’re at it? After all, there’s demand, there’s supply, and there’s profit. Capitalism should be satisfied. So, in short, everything’s fine as long as the rich profit from it. Which shows that: legal doesn’t mean moral. And it’s high time we started making that distinction.

Toxic masculinity and alcohol: the ultimate poisonous cocktail

If you don’t drink, you’re not a real man! You’ve heard it your whole life in different forms. A real man can hold his liquor. A real man downs his beers without flinching. A real man orders his whiskey neat. Orange juice is for wimps. Refusing a drink, for some, would mean refusing to be a man. It would mean showing weakness. It would mean admitting you don’t have the balls.

And this social pressure starts early. Your first drink with family, hazing in high school, college parties where the one who doesn’t drink is an outcast… It never really stops. It continues with the office party, drinks with coworkers after work, happy hour with friends… At every stage of life, alcohol is there to prove your manhood. Drinking, for many men, is performing their gender. It’s proving you fear nothing. That you’re tough.

And marketing piles it on. Ever notice how alcoholic drinks are gendered? Whiskey is for real men. Beer is a guy thing in front of the game. Ads show you virile guys, adventurers, winners… For women, it’s sweet cocktails, grapefruit rosé, light and fruity stuff. Because women, of course, like what’s soft. They can’t drink like men. In short, we’re still dealing with full-on patriarchal marketing. Zero subtlety that hasn’t evolved since advertising was invented.

Toxic masculinity and alcohol: the diabolical duo. The cult of strength, domination, and control. The guy who orders the $10,000 bottle in the club, what’s he doing? He’s trying to show off his power. His money. His place in the hierarchy. Basically, he fantasizes about being dominant. And if you can’t keep up, according to him, you’re just a worthless loser. According to these morons who think they’re superior to everyone else, manhood would be measured by your ability to drink and blow money on a drug. Great mentality!

And what are the consequences of this toxic masculinity soaked in alcohol? Women bear the brunt of it first. The drunk guy who no longer understands the word “no.” The husband who comes home and starts swinging. Alcohol-fueled toxic masculinity destroys lives. But we’d rather not talk about it. It would kill the vibe at happy hour. Alcohol and violence, though, that’s a sad story everyone knows.

Why prohibition never works

Faced with all this damage, it’s tempting to say: let’s ban everything! If alcohol is a hard drug, then let’s treat it the same as heroin and cocaine. Zero tolerance. It’s tempting, sure. Except history has already settled this question. And the answer is clear: it doesn’t work. Never. Nowhere. Especially since alcohol is relatively easy to make with basic supplies.

The United States tried the experiment from 1920 to 1933. Thirteen years of total alcohol prohibition. The result? A monumental disaster! People didn’t stop drinking. They just started drinking garbage. Bootleg alcohol made in bathtubs, cut with methanol. Thousands of deaths from poisoning. Meanwhile, the mafias got fat. Al Capone and his buddies built criminal empires on illegal alcohol trafficking. Corruption ate away at the police, the courts, and politicians who were more than happy to play along. Violence exploded. And after thirteen years, the American government gave up. Prohibition was abolished. And the only concrete result was enriching organized crime.

But humanity has a short memory. Since the 1970s, we’ve been making exactly the same mistake with other drugs. The famous “war on drugs” launched by Nixon. Trillions of dollars spent worldwide. Millions of people incarcerated. Entire countries destabilized. For what result? Consumption has never dropped. Drugs have never been more accessible, purer, or cheaper. Mexican cartels have become more powerful than some governments. Mafias are thriving. Prisons are overflowing. And people keep getting high.

Cannabis, cocaine, heroin, synthetic drugs: Everywhere something is banned, the black market takes over. With uncontrolled products, random dosages, and dangerous cutting agents. Prohibition doesn’t eliminate demand. It just makes it more dangerous and more profitable for criminals.

The lesson is universal: You can’t legislate virtue. All wars on drugs are doomed to fail. All of them, without exception. So if prohibition doesn’t work, what’s the solution?

The only solution is evolving toward a society that no longer needs to get wasted

If prohibition doesn’t work, then what does? Prevention. Education. Information. Not stupid slogans and guilt-tripping campaigns. Real prevention, massive, funded at the level the stakes demand, that explains what alcohol really does to the body and to society. That dismantles the myths. That deconstructs the glamour. That shows reality without filters. But let’s be honest: Even the best prevention in the world won’t be enough as long as people need to get wasted to cope with their existence.

Because that’s where the real question lies. Why do people drink? Why do they do drugs? Why this constant desire to escape reality, to numb their emotions, to flee their daily life? The answer is simple and brutal: Because daily life for a majority of exploited people who don’t even realize it is just a pile of crap. Soul-crushing jobs, precarity, loneliness, anxiety, depression, loss of meaning… Capitalism churns out misery on an assembly line, and people look for escapes on an assembly line. Alcohol is a deceptive attempt to get away. Drugs are others. Screens, games, food, compulsive sex too. All crutches to try to stay standing in a world that grinds you down. Day after day.

And to make matters worse, as we’ve already seen, alcohol is everywhere. And it takes incredible courage to break out of this deadly cycle when all of society is pushing you to drink. But there is another way. Very serious scientific studies demonstrate it: In societies where people are happy, where inequalities are low, where social bonds are strong, where basic needs are met… drug use becomes marginal. Simply because people no longer need to escape their lives when their lives are actually worth living.

So imagine a world without alcohol. Not a world where alcohol is banned. A world where people simply no longer need it. No more deadly Saturday night car crashes. No more domestic violence under the influence. No more rapes facilitated by intoxication. No more cirrhosis at 40. No more destroyed families. And ultimately, the work of police and healthcare workers would be greatly relieved. This world isn’t a utopia. It’s just a society that would have finally decided to attack the causes rather than the symptoms. But that’s probably too much to ask of the immovable political decision-makers whose main activity is maintaining the illusion that we live in a democracy.

Conclusion: The real culprits are capitalism and patriarchy, hand in hand

We could stop there. Blame alcohol. Blame alcoholics. Blame human weakness. That would be so easy. That would be so comfortable. But it would mostly mean missing the real problem. Because alcohol isn’t the culprit. Alcohol is just a symptom. The real culprit is the system that needs it.

Namely capitalism, which creates the misery, then sells you a bad remedy. Meanwhile, patriarchy transforms this drug into cultural heritage and easily excuses violence committed under its influence if you have money and preferably the right skin color.

These two always walk hand in hand and couldn’t care less about the bodies they leave behind. The 2.6 million deaths per year? Collateral damage. The violence, the rapes, the shattered lives? The price to pay for dividends to keep flowing. Human life means nothing compared to profit. That’s the truth nobody wants to hear. So yes, we need graphic images on bottles! Yes, we need massive prevention. Yes, we need to stop treating this drug as if it were different from the others when it’s the worst of all. Ultimately, capitalism and patriarchy are at the root of this problem. And until we bring them down, drugs will keep killing. So, if you haven’t already, it’s high time to open your eyes and start fighting effectively so that our future is something other than lives devastated by a system with zero moral compass.

So let’s say it clearly: capitalism and patriarchy have no respect for life. No respect for this planet and its ecosystem. They must therefore be seen for what they are: Two cancers to eradicate urgently! The world will be better off for it.

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