Prolonged moderate alcohol consumption is a survival mechanism. We could ask the descendants of those who abstained and drank the water, except there are few left to represent because cholera killed their would be ancestors.
Nothing exists without purpose. Those who we are descended from drank wine and mead and beer, not because they knew the water would kill them. They were just the lucky ones who did not perish.
Jewelry and alcohol are as old as recorded history.
Both are a testament as to why we are here today.
You’ve well explained the present-day propensity to drink alcohol, but not necessarily the present-day salutary effects—in other than third-world countries.