I don't understand drinking alcohol

I never drank much. I tend to feel sick hungover after just one or two drinks. When I was about fifty, I sat a ten-day Vipassana silent retreat and the teacher, S.N. Goenka talked about not drinking. Anthroposophists, which is the closest thing I have to a spiritual faith system, believe drinking alcohol burns holes in your etheric body. Your 'etheric' is your energetic sheath, a layer that holds a 'kind' of layer between your physical self and your spiritual self.  I am popping off. Serious anthroposophists would probably be aghast to read what I just wrote. And I am not a student of Buddhism or Goenka-gi's take on Vipassana so I am probably off in whatever I say there.

I heard a Vipassana teacher say 'drinking alcohol affects your work, your real work of being' and I patched that with the 'burns a hole in your etheric, matched with a lifetime of memories of headaches and nausea after just one glass of wine and I thought 'I'm done drinking'.

I will, in theory, have a beer on a hot day, with a friend, for the conviviality. I enjoy the taste of a good beer.  I also enjoy the taste of good wine. And I think that organic wines don't leave me feeling sick.  I don't really feel hungover if I drink 'hard liquor' but I've never really done that.  I never really liked the taste of gin, scotch, vodka, bourbon, whatever.  Do they have tastes?  I'm fuzzy on the deets. It's been a long, long time.

I love the glam of fancy cocktails in fancy glasses.  I love fruity tastes and bitter blends in sweetness.

But I never really got why so many people like to alter their consciousness with drugs. Alcohol is a drug, right?  I just don't get the appeal of the drug aspect of booze.

This might seem unusual.  I have four brothers and I think all of them are alcoholics. They would probably all angrily denounce that statement.  Lots of alcoholics never end up in the gutter so they think they aren't alkies.