Good News: Alcohol Doesn’t Actually Kill Brain Cells

Derek Brown investigates:

Recently, I’ve felt like everything that I learned in grade school is a lie. The Triceratops might not have existed, Pluto isn’t a planet, and now this: alcohol doesn’t actually kill brain cells. Yes, that’s right. Alcohol neither kills nor prunes the little party of punctilious petri specimens we have in our heads. I recently read Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine, by Stephen Braum, and came across this nugget: “… alcohol does many things to the brain, one thing it clearly doesn’t do is wipe out neurons indiscriminately.” So I turned to a quick survey of reputable sources and, what do you know, there seems to be enough research to back it up.