Today I was walking through some of the deserts roughly 1 hour south of Dubai. This was my first time in a desert and I wanted to know what it feels like to walk for a while with no water in sight. As I got to the top of a sand hill and felt how powerful the sun really is in a desert, the following hit me: Drinking alcohol frequently leads to dehydration, which can be a death sentence in the desert, or atleast divert limited water from more important uses. Since Islam developed in the Arabian Peninsula, much of which is a desert, it might make sense to discourage drinking alcohol so that the group makes the best use of the relatively little water it has.
Of course, there are dozens of reasons to avoid drinking literal poison. Many Indian states, for example, go back and forth on whether to ban alcohol consumption. Mohandas Gandhi had his own reasons for wanting nationwide prohobition. This random thought is probably unfalsifiable and can’t be taken too seriously.