I'm not trying to choose up sides and smell armpits re: whether alcohol is
paleo or not.  Imbibing doesn't much interest me so I don't really need to
argue with myself the merits or de-merits of consumption or its
paleo-correctness.  --Though I did pick dewberries the other day and noticed
a very few had an alcohol taste.  Yum.   (And some tasted like cotton candy
and others like bananas and other tropical fruits!)  I read in the paper
last week that the caretaker of one of the historical cemeteries has been
busy pulling the formerly live bodies of dead drunk grackles out of the
cement pond that sits in the shade of a mulberry tree whose berries have
fermented.  Anyway, I googled on alcohol + carbohydrate metabolism and found
the following.

Theola
____________________________
According to Dr. Robert Atkins, alcoholism is so tied in
with carbohydrate metabolism that it is fair to say they are
"genetically superimposable." In other words, it is possible to
understand alcoholism in terms of carbohydrate metabolism
alone. This is an extremely radical assertion, but one that lends
important insight into a problem that plagues our society. "I
have seen families in which half of the members were alcoholics
and the other half were sugarholics," says Dr. Atkins. "And you
could switch them over. You could probably make alcoholics of
the people that were addicted to sugar, and it is well known
that when alcoholics go through a psychologically based
program, and not a biochemically based program, they have a
tendency to become sugar addicts." In fact, it is unusual for
ex-alcoholics not to become sugar addicts. More commonly,
individuals replace one addiction for the other. As Atkins notes:
"Unless people get the clue that there is a connection between
alcoholism and sugar addiction, they will just go from one to
another and will not feel any better. The phrase 'dry drunks'
refers to what happens to alcoholics that start switching to sugar
instead of getting on a diet in which all the simple sugars are
eliminated."

http://www.brilliant-smith.com/nutrit~1.pdf

And other references:

Forsander, O.A.a.A.R.P., Is carbohydrate metabolism genetically related to
alcohol drinking? Alcohol and Alcoholism, 1987. 1: p. 357-59.

Kampov-Polevoy, A., J.C. Garbutt, and D. Janowsky, Evidence of Preference
for a High-Concentration Sucrose Solution in Alcoholic Men. Am J Psychiatry,
1997. 154(2): p. 269-270.

Yung, L., E. Gordis, and J. Holt, Dietary Choices and Likelihood of
Abstinence Among Alcoholic Patients in an Outpatient Clinic. Drug and
Alcohol Dependence, 1983. 12: p. 355-362.