Depends on a person. A sip of brandy - a TABLESPOON essentially - is enough to take the edge off the day. In this aspect I am a lightweight. Also fine motor skills go out the window right away - that's why Florida Highway Patrol will never have a pleasure arresting me for DUI, at the wheel I am stone cold sober. Even at business dinners I am known for sticking with OJ or nada-colada if I have to drive.

However, Mr. sci_femme and I are known to polish off a bottle of vine with nice home-grilled lamb kebab without a second thought, and I am usually responsible for 2/3 of the bottle. No hangover. What it really messes up is my sleep. So we do not indulge on weeknights.

That, my friend, is all the difference between faith and organized religion, very astutely observed too. Nearly every cult (including three major religions as well, they just got there first and became Really Big Cults) regulates what to put in one's body (from total alcohol abstinence to nearly mandatory pot-smoking), how much skin to show (skewed overwhelmingly towards women, but men have their share too), and - here is your aha! moment - what to do with one's property, be it something relatively moderate as tithe or extreme as Jonestown.