In an age where other beverages are as easily accessible for people living in the modern world, it’s utility isn’t there any more and you are left with all the downsides.

Coffee, tea, and tobacco, became at least as widespread once global trade made that possible. Coca was late to the party because it doesn't grow well outside of its native region.

Cannabis is an odd one, in that it was extremely widespread and making solid inroads in Europe and North America, when it became a weapon for United States racial policy, and a jobs program for federal police after the repeal of Prohibition. Coca and cocaine got caught up in the same dragnet.

Opium and its derivatives are genuinely pernicious and attempts to normalize their use outside of medicine have been resisted repeatedly throughout history.

Which leaves psychedelics, which are... weird, and also were largely unknown until some anthropologists in the 40s and 50s drew attention to them.

The history of 'modern' drug prohibition owes more to politics than the inherent properties of the substances in question.

You can definitely see the benefit for an ancient civilization, since you're able to store many more calories which allows you to grow a much larger population base. But like many things associated with the move to agrarian civilizations, being good for the civilization doesn't necessarilly correlate with being good for the individual.

You get alcohol when fruit spoils. Our experience with it is quite literally as old as foraging. This doesn't tell us anything about how harmful or not harmful alcohol is.

As far as ubiquity, plant-based substances had to follow migration or trade routes to gain use outside of their native habitats. Alcohol was coextensive with any food .