This is a cross post written by Andy Masley, not me. I found it really interesting and wanted to see what EAs/rationalists thought of his arguments.

This post was inspired by similar posts by Tyler Cowen and Fergus McCullough. My argument is that while most drinkers are unlikely to be harmed by alcohol, alcohol is drastically harming so many people that we should denormalize alcohol and avoid funding the alcohol industry, and the best way to do that is to stop drinking.

This post is not meant to be an objective cost-benefit analysis of alcohol. I may be missing hard-to-measure benefits of alcohol for individuals and societies. My goal here is to highlight specific blindspots a lot of people have to the negative impacts of alcohol, which personally convinced me to stop drinking, but I do not want to imply that this is a fully objective analysis. It [...]

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Outline:

(02:30) Alcohol is a much bigger problem than you may think

(06:57) Why you should stop drinking even if alcohol will not harm you personally

(14:40) Conclusion

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First published:
August 3rd, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HAzoPABejzKucwiow/alcohol-is-so-bad-for-society-that-you-should-probably-stop

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Bar graph showing correlation between husband's drinking and spousal violence rates.

Liquor store shelves stocked with colorful bottles and price tags.

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“Alcohol is so bad for society that you should probably stop drinking” by KatWoods

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Alcohol is so bad for society that you should probably stop drinking” by KatWoods