In high doses, alcohol impairs our reaction times, muscle control, co-ordination, short-term memory, perceptual field, cognitive abilities, and ability to speak clearly. But it does not cause us selectively to break specific social rules. The effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms. There is enormous cross-cultural variation in how people behave when they drink alcohol. There are societies (such as the UK, the US, Australia, and Scandinavia) that anthropologists call "ambivalent" drinking cultures, where drinking is associated with disinhibition, aggression, promiscuity, violence, and anti-social behaviour. There are other societies (such as Latin and Mediterranean cultures), where drinking is not associated with these undesirable behaviours -- cultures where alcohol is just a morally neutral, normal, integral part of ordinary, everyday life -- about on a par with, say, coffee or tea. These are known as "integrated" drinking cultures. Most integrated drinking cultures have significantly higher per-capita alcohol consumption than the ambivalent drinking cultures. Instead the variation is clearly related to different cultural beliefs about alcohol, different expectations about the effects of alcohol, and different social rules about drunken comportment.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15265317?print=true
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