If a magical switch was thrown today that suddenly made humans immune to the effects of alcohol? I’d probably still drink it, though in smaller quantities.
If that magical switch had been thrown when I was, say, ten years old? I can’t imagine a world where I would have developed a taste and palate for the stuff.
The exercise question is harder to answer. Are we positing a world where humans are incapable of improving themselves? Nobody can train to run faster, jump higher, lift heavier? Say goodbye not only to sports, but to any activity that requires any degree of strength training - no more musicians, no more dancers, no more acrobats.
Are we also getting rid of atrophy? Can a person lay in a bed for two years without any negative effects at all? In that world I suppose we’re immortal and also maybe robots. The immortal robot Johnny Bravo would be too busy killing all humans to worry about exercise.
I think it might be perfect in s culinary sense, drink for the taste, yes.
Would I drink Bourbon (Scotch, in my case)? Yes. I only occasionally drink scotch as a way of getting drunk. If I want to get drunk, I use beer because it’s way cheaper.
Like good food, flavor matters with hard liquor and I drink it for that flavor. Of course, part of the allure is that bite from the alcohol, but if it could be replicated without alcohol, I’d still enjoy it.
Same for exercise. I really enjoy it, especially sport. I’d play hockey, basketball, soccer, ultimate, etc. even if I didn’t get any fat-burning benefit. I may forgo weightlifting if there were no benefit. That’s pretty dull and the ‘thrill’ is from having done it, not from the lifting itself. However, part of the fun of playing a sport is getting better. If exercise conveyed no benefit, would everyone have the same abilities? That may make sport kind of lame.
I like the taste of bourbon, and I drink a fair amount of it, but it’s an acquired taste, and I have a hard time thinking I would have bothered to acquire it if it didn’t get you so deliciously drunk.
Would not work out for its own sake because I don’t like having nothing to show for my effort, which is why I no longer work out at a gym. I’ll happily split firewood or do construction and yard work all day long because at the end of it all I can look at what I’ve done. After an hour at the gym I have a wet t-shirt, desperate need of a bath, and no muscle control. Poo on that.
I love the taste of good beer, and of absinthe. Everything else pretty much grosses me out. Virgin absinthe I would still drink just for the flavor if the aromatic volatility could be somehow duplicated, just as I will steal all the black jelly beans from the kids’ Easter baskets and buy BlackJack gum by the handful when I can find it (it’s been a long time since I’ve seen any though). I have to be honest about the beer though. I don’t think I’d bother with it without the buzz.
I would probably not drink most alcohol if it didn’t give a buzz. I do like some kinds of wine with a meal and I would definitely drink mojitos. When my DILs were pregnant I tried to find some kind of non-alcoholic mojito, and they were just different without the rum. As in, not quite right.
Without the buzz, I doubt distilled spirits would ever have been developed to the point where people would drink them for the flavor. Distilling drinkable booze is hard, and the techniques have been worked out over centuries. If you don’t know what you’re doing you get rotgut. What incentive would people have to try to figure out how to make something drinkable when their first attempts would be so awful?