I guess to be more clear, people were drinking super fucking hard leading up to prohibition and even when repealed there were a fair bit of people it did work on who kept sober, like, say youre a 12 year old in 1920 and 25 in 1933, there is a decent chance that booze just wasnt really part of your upbringing and also now you can't afford it anyway. It wasn't like the streets were flooded with whiskey and everyone became drunks again immediately, ww2 did that and even then, it is absolutely fucking crazy how mainstream absolutely hardcore alcoholism was in the US prior to prohibition. It led to people trying cool new drugs like heroin instead. There are interviews with heroin users in the 40s and 50s who said it got big among the youth of the time cause they saw thr destructive effects alchohol had on their parents and felt at least nodding out essnt hurting anyone else