The problem isnt so much that alcohol 'alters our natural state of consciousness'. Many things do that- prayer, meditation, jogging, music alters our natural state of consciousness so much as to have a measurable influence on the functioning of our immune cells thanks to psychoneuroimmunology. The problem with alcohol and many other drugs is in their capacity to dull the mind and cause heedlessness, making mistakes and ethical misconduct easier to do.



It is possible for people to consume it maturely. As one very blatant example, a hundred years or so back some christian missionaries went deep into africa. They met up with a friendly village of farmers who were routinely effected by famine. The missionaries used the age old trick of buying conversion with food and medicine. The tribe had an ancient custom of brewing a weak beer and drinking it, and giving the dregs to children for them to drink. They didnt explicitly know why it was a custom, they just did it by tradition. But under their new religion drinking was a sin and giving the low octane beer to children was a horror. They stopped doing both. In time the missionaries had to leave. Generations of the tribe were already converted, so they would stay that religion even without the foreign food and medicine. Soon malnutrition and infant mortality skyrocteted to levels beyond what the eldest grandparents could remember. That weak beer they once brewed had been increasing the amount of B vitamins in the grains and served as a nutritional supplement. The dregs were especially concentrated in B vitamins and prevented malnourishment and death in the children. A great many children died because of the idea that drinking was sinful.

With ethics its important to look at the process and evaluate the outcomes, and not just to follow old rules blindly.