alt Hacker NewsYou have anything backing up the last bit? My intuition/life experience doesn't lead me to believe an alcoholic preferring whiskey is particularly worse off than an alcoholic preferring beer, nor that whiskey is more likely to lead one to alcoholism than beer. Claude surfaced this review tending to agree with me, with the exception of acute overdose being more of a risk with the hard stuff.
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I read the article and it's a bit tricky to tease out but the negative association with spirits does exist. To summarize:
1. The quantity of alcohol consumed per occasion is most strongly associated with harms.
and
2. "The more alcohol was drunk per occasion, the higher the proportion of it which was drunk in the form of spirits"
The choice of beverage and how much was drunk was more dependent on cultural, social, and other factors.
My intuition tells me it's physically more difficult to consume more alcohol from a lower-strength beverage.
Hard liquor is absorbed faster than beer which leads to a stronger rush effect. It's similar to snorting vs shooting cocaine. When the effect hits faster, the psychological association between the stimuli and the effect (sensitization) becomes stronger.
This effect has been demonstrated with rat studies using cocaine:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-9568.2005...