A large part might be due to genetics. I recall when westerners exploited native Americans with distilled liquor. Westerners had many generations of alcohol use, the natives = zero. Europeans have become resistant to alcohol. It might be faster metabolism/excretion? - a physiological adaptation? or is it social experience to walk/talk in a straight line? In small Northern Ontario mining towns the native population is like my mother - drink/fall over. We would hire(in my claim staking days up North) local labor for supervised line cutting/sampling, but we paid the local band through their rep - who then paid the workers late on Friday, we started work again on Monday. On helicopter-in jobs, we paid at job's end and usually worked the long Northern days about 18-20 daylight hours(long days up in NO in May-August) with foods/cigarettes flown in every ~2 weeks (and some local deer shooting as a supplement - we had cooks who ran the camp)/ When the job was done = large payday = all went home. By the end of August there were some freezing nights. Some crews had heated double walled tents and stayed longer, but by the end of September the cold weather most of this was curtailed.

I was born in the UK, my Dad never drank a drop - my Irish mother would drink until she fell over. Dad had lock up the liquor - or else = all gone = fall over. My brother and I do not drink a drop?? I am not drawn to liquor, and tobacco smoking or cannabis = I never touch at all.