"Alcohol is a pervasive fact of life, but an extraordinary fact-pleasurable and destructive, anathematized and adulated, and deeply ambiguous ... the genie in the bottle."

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Other countries drink to get drunk, and this is accepted by everyone; in France, drunkenness is a consequence, never an intention. A drink is felt as the spinning out of a pleasure, not as the necessary cause of an effect which is sought: wine is not only a philtre, it is also the leisurely act of drinking.

— Roland Barthes