Whatever you think of alcohol, you have to admit that it’s versatile. Ever since the first humans started smashing up fruit and leaving it in pots to chug a few days later, we’ve been relying on it to celebrate and commiserate, to deal with anxiety and to make us more creative. We use it to build confidence and kill boredom, to get us in the mood for going out and to put us to (nonoptimal) sleep. Where most mind-altering substances have one or two specific use-cases, alcohol does the lot. That’s probably why it’s been so ubiquitous throughout human history – and why it can be so hard to give up entirely.

“We often call alcohol pharmacologically promiscuous,” says Dr Rayyan Zafar, a neuropsychopharmacologist from Imperial College London. “It doesn’t just calm you: it can stimulate reward pathways, dampen threat signals, release endogenous opioids that can relieve pain or stress, alter decision-making and shift mood, all at the same time.”

By way of comparison, we know that cocaine primarily acts on our dopamine and noradrenaline systems (which drive motivation, alertness and energy), MDMA primarily stimulates the release of serotonin and oxytocin (which elevate mood, empathy and social bonding), and opiates such as heroin work on the endorphin system (which induces deep relaxation and euphoria). Alcohol hits all of these, and also the two most common neurotransmitters in your nervous system: glutamate, which fires up your brain cells so they can send information, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (almost always shortened to Gaba), which slows down or blocks certain signals to help the brain relax.