Re: Conrfessions and Lamentations

I am blessed with a natural defence mechanism against alcoholism...I such a poor ability to tolerate alcohol that I will get a nasty hangover IF I DRINK MORE THAN ONE BEER! I also do not have any friends or family that are alcoholics (which considering my family's Irish origins is quite something).

That is precisely why some ethnicities are less likely to be alcoholics than others - because they get nasty side effects early on from drinking alcohol. In short, the danger from a high tolerance of alcohol is that a person can be in deep trouble before they recognize it.

The lack of this defence mechanism - which is to say, a high tolerance for alcohol - is precisely why alcohol is so destructive in those societies which do not have the newer genetic defence mechanism. This is most notable among American Indians, Australian Aborigines, and the Irish (which is why it is surprising that your family does not tolerate alcohol). These also happen to be those societies that were traditionally most isolated from both early distillation of alcohol and from the genetic variations that protected individuals from alcohol abuse.

IIRC, East Asians have the least tolerance for alcohol, followed by Caucasians, then Africans, with the three aforementioned groups having the highest tolerance and the highest rates of alcoholism. You may note that American Indians split off from East Asians perhaps 15,000 years ago, and the Irish were relatively isolated from the rest of Europe for thousands of years, and the new variant genes must have become common since then.