Alcohol is great.
People who are fun to be with while drinking alcohol are usually good fun to have around while not drinking alcohol. A nice bottle of wine shared with friends over a lenghty exchange of words and thoughts and notions that allow everyone to feel a little bit more human, a little bit more enlightened - splendid fun.
Getting completely pished out to find yourself in jail, court or some stranger's bed - no fun, methinks.
The trouble starts when people use alcohol as a cheap excuse, a tool to deliver premeditated idiocy.
If one drinks so much alcohol that it is not merely a well-accepted potion of fun and merriment, but an intoxicant poison that fogs the mind, dissolves the brain and summons up more filth and stinky bits than the average stomach content of the average human being can hold, we are in trouble territory. Most people tend to be immature and stupid at some point in their life. It's up to us if we decide to do our best enjoying life or die trying, or drink ourselves silly until we're shivering, spitting and rambling specimen A down at the looney bin.
I would expect a lot of people to have gotten into situations they wouldn't have had to endure had they not decided to drink themselves stupid. On the other hand, how many folks are jailed or fined and now convicted felons because the law allowed the other party to try and exorcise some demon instead of feeling shame for their own poor decision-making skills?
We're humans, hooray for that. But we're also little more than animals when left to our own devices. Most of us abuse our big clunky brains for nefarious or selfish reasons, it's only natural to not want to side with either the "victim" or the "rapist" if both decided to let loose and drink themselves to the intellectual capacities of amoebas with genitals.