Alcoholic by Nature: The attraction of ethanol may have evolutionary origins in the selective advantage it conferred on our frugivorous primate ancestors. But it appears to be an evolutionary trait gone wrong. Biologist Robert Dudley of the University of Texas speculates on this. The Times of London I was reminded of the thinking of Andrew Weil several decades ago in The Marriage of the Sun and Moon. Proposing that the attraction of mind-altering substances is innate, he said that the natural psychoactives our ancestors used were healthier than modern purified and extracted ones. The impurities acted to self-limit consumption to manageable amounts, because one would get sick from ingesting too much. Consider the contrast between chewing a coca leaf and freebasing cocaine. (Here‘s a less-than-laudatory 1998 essay on Weil’s reasoning by the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Arnold Relman MD.) [One of the best things in Marriage…, IMHO, was the essay on the ‘right’ way to settle into the euphoric buzz you get from hot peppers such as jalapenos.]