Figure 1. Dionysus, God of wine and ecstasy.

     Alcohol has been with humans for as long as humans have had civilizations and agriculture. Wine has been produced for at least some 9,000 years (Rätsch). If in the past alcoholic beverages like wine or beer were held in great esteem and in many places sacred, the use of alcohol today has become so casual, so mandatory, that the global agricultural society of the world is a drunkard. So ingrained is alcohol in our agricultural worldview that many do not consider it a drug. It is not in the list of Scheduled drugs in America, despite it being addictive and damaging to health when taken in large quantities over long periods of time. Alcoholism is a major problem in all parts of the world, yet this fact is never considered to have any parallels with other narcotic drugs such as heroin or crack cocaine.

     Regardless of its moral, social, and health controversies, alcohol is a product of fungi, and it is psychoactive. Festivals involved with communal feasting and drinking of wine or beer were very important in the social, economic, and political arenas of ancient cultures (Jennings et al.). Alcohol served a beneficial role in making water safe to drink in societies where boiling to remove bacteria was not yet discovered. The ancient Greeks attributed wine to the God Dionysus (figure 1) who oversaw revelry, wine, intoxication, and ecstasy. The Greeks made a wine that were described as being so potent they would require many dilutions before they could be drunk comfortably (McKenna). It is possible that some wines of this era were more like plant extracts instead of normal fermented wine, or a combination of both. Near the end of the first millennium A.D. Arab alchemists had begun distilling alcohol, and by the middle ages, distilled alcohol was well known in Europe. Distilled alcohol amplifies the dangers of alcohol and helped catapult the rise of alcoholism. In this way it can be considered the world's first designer drug (McKenna).

Figure 2. The yeast fungus Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

     Alcohol is formed when yeast of the genus Saccharomyces (figure 2) ferment sugar and free up alcohol and carbon dioxide. The production of beer begins with letting the barley (or chosen grain) malt. Malting occurs because the barley is using its amylase to convert starch into sugar. Then yeast begins to ferment the sugar. The production of wine involves crushing grapes to produce 'must' which then sits inside barrels to be fermented by the wild yeasts living on the skin of the grapes (Kendrick).