Alcohol

I have always admired G.K. Chesterton. I don't share his religious persuasion, but his thoughtful, intelligent, witty, and philosophical writing style has made him one of my more consistent heroes. On alcohol, he has this to say:
"A modern vegetarian is also a teetotaler, yet there is no obvious connection between consuming vegetables and not consuming fermented vegetables. A drunkard, when lifted laboriously out of the gutter, might well be heard huskily to plead that he had fallen there through excessive devotion to a vegetable diet."
In my recent experience, the use of alcohol as an anesthetic should not be underestimated. We see it used in so many movies when some doctor is extracting a bullet from a gunfighter. that it has become so ubiquitous that it seems to have lost its meaning.