the.com/booze

Ethanol with better marketing — liquid courage that charges interest.

means Alcoholic drink in general — beer, wine, spirits, whatever's doing the job.

from Likely from Middle Dutch 'busen,' meaning to drink to excess — so the word was already about overdoing it before English even got hold of it. There's a persistent folk tale crediting a 19th-century distiller named E.G. Booz, but that's backwards: the surname and the whiskey brand played on a word that was already centuries old, not the other way around.

etymology
from dutch buizen, to drink to excess
same molecule
beer, wine, vodka differ only in dilution
body's verdict
liver treats it as poison, processes accordingly
paradox
depressant that feels like a stimulant at first
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