If we’re looking for congeners to blame, we might set our sights on methanol. Levels aren’t high in anything you buy in the store, because the stuff can kill you, but it’s present at nontoxic levels in almost every alcoholic beverage. The enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase breaks it down rapidly in the body, but where ADH turns ethanol into acetaldehyde, it turns methanol into formaldehyde. These molecules are toxic and very unpleasant. The science here isn’t clear, because some studies dismiss the effects of methanol and its metabolites, but one piece of evidence is suggestive: the relative
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