Interesting point about it being easy to procure or produce. One of the articles I read mentioned expats buying large amounts of sugar and fruit juice at Saudi supermarkets. I've brewed ginger beer with bread yeast, and it came out fine. I used a temperance era recipe and didn't to the subsequent steps to turn it properly alcoholic, but the first step to produce a naturally brewed fizzy drink was damn easy.

I looked the up the proportion of people who are dependent on alcohol to a mild or harmful degree, and in the UK it's 1.9%. Though another source claimed that in the USA it's 7.7%, but I find it difficult to believe that the two countries have such different rates of alcoholism, and I guess that it's been measured differently. Even the higher rate wouldn't explain so much drinking.

I'm wondering if there's a general expectation, which I've seen mentioned in some articles, that even in places like Saudi that the police will just look the other way. E.g. the article where someone said that they asked Saudi friends to carry the alcohol as if they were caught they'd just give the police a bottle and be let off