Watching my mother go through rehab has really made me realize how little I understand about it!
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The active ingredient in the alcoholic beverages that we consume is ethanol, or ethyl alcohol (C2H6O). It’s a naturally occurring byproduct of plant fermentation, and it’s an effective antimicrobial agent because it can dissolve the phospholipid bilayer that make up microorganism cell walls. It’s also a psychoactive drug.
Why humans get addicted to things is a whole other area of research, but anything that causes noticeable changes in neurochemistry can be addictive, like gambling, shopping, sugar, cocaine, and alcohol. But, due to its antimicrobial properties, fermentation was historically used as an effective way to preserve food as well as drink disinfected liquid. I’m sure along the way, people discovered that alcohol can feel pleasant in the right amounts. Fermenting fruits and other plants to make alcohol has been traced back to many different historical cultures in almost every part of the world.
This next part is speculation/observation: because of its anthropological importance and prevalence, the culture around drinking alcohol has evolved in a way that normalizes what would be considered a serious addiction if considering the use of any other substance. Another aspect is that ancient alcoholic beverages did not typically contain nearly as much alcohol as they do today.
So, I think that the prevalence of alcoholism in humans is not necessarily due to some inherent biochemical characteristic of ethanol, and more so that it’s a drug that’s been with us since very early on in our history.
Best of luck to your mother’s recovery!
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