I don't drink at all and never have, so it's never been anything that would necessarily affect me.
I've always worked in Acadaemia. At my last job, there would be a few special occasions where they would serve alcohol. The graduate student organization in the department(of which I was president for two years while still a student) typically was part of two of those occasions. That's actually the only time in my life I've bought alcohol
. Our first was the back to school/welcome back picnic/BBQ which was usually about 5:00 on a Friday afternoon and we would serve beer. I never saw anyone get silly at that one. The other-every year we would invite a Nobel Laureate to give a couple of talks, take them to the Kentucky Derby, and also have a banquet for them. The banquet was in the evening and we had pretty free flowing beer and wine there-I did see a few people get silly.
The big and surprising one, though, was the Christmas party, which the department did. To avoid university purchasing regulations, etc, I'm pretty sure a few faculty members would buy all the alcohol. It was generally beer, wine, and bourbon. It would start at 11:00 or so, often on a mid-week day, and reliably a few people(some of the same every year) would go completely overboard. I can remember our then department chair being one of the ones one year. It honestly was a side of a lot of people I'd prefer not to have seen, and given that most would leave immediately after.
I can remember one year still in graduate school, though, where we had a group meeting scheduled after the party and half the students in my research group along with my advisor had been in the "probably a little too far" club that day. Our group meetings were often notoriously long anyway, and that day was miserable as I think it dragged on for about 5 hours as some stumbled through presenting data and a few had slipped out right before the meeting to buy more beer and continued drinking during the meeting.
The last smaller scale one there were defense parties, where generally after someone defended their thesis or dissertation they'd pop a bottle of champagne and everyone present would sign the bottle as a keepsake/momento from it(given how big of a deal that occasion is). I do remember one, again in my research group, where they broke open a metal can of some stuff that people always brought back from China...that one was interesting although I cut out before it got too wild.