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This doesn't make sense to me.

Alcohol binds to the GABA receptor mimicking GABA, hence providing a calming feeling. It allows people to feel less anxious in situations they might normally feel awkward. That is definitely not cultural.

Drinking regularly may desensitize your GABA receptors and hence cause a person to end up with more anxiety as a result of drinking. I rarely drink because I found it was exasperating my mental health issues.

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That binding to GABA receptors "gives a calming feeling" is at best vaguely accurate. And even if it was accurate, there is in any case a mile from that to reducing social anxiety. Other "downer" drugs don't make people more outgoing, despite binding to GABA receptors, because we don't ascribe those qualities to them.

Even emotional states such as happy, calm, afraid etc. are higher level phenomena that don't map nicely onto hormones and neurotransmitters. The same low-level signal may even be interpreted in different ways depending on circumstance. There's a classic experiment with niacin demonstrating this, but like so many old behaviour experiments, it's ignored in favour of more "white coat" neuroscience these days.

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