Insects get drunk. Elephants get drunk and everything in between. Is it the only chemical that has this type of effect on everything that consumes it?
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Alcohol is an interesting drug. First of all, it can readily be made into energy, so creatures of all sorts are evolutionarily rewarded for craving it. However, being a metabolic waste product of yeast, it’s also inherently kind of toxic, so there needs to be some sort of “too much of this is a bad thing” trigger in the brains of the creatures that seek it out. Being a little drunk is fun, being really drunk is less so. Secondly, it’s a very simple chemical. Compare the chemical structure of alcohol with LSD and the difference is clear. The upshot of this is that big complicated chemicals tend to be more specific about the structures with which they can interact while simple chemicals can interact more broadly. Biophysically, this is because bulkier, “fat” molecules tend to get in their own way when reaching for the “active sites” of things like, for instance, drug receptors in the brain, unless those receptors have evolved to fit the fat molecule. For these reasons, alcohol broadly messes with organisms in a way that is fun.
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