How does drinking alcohol cause heart disease?

1. Alcoholic cardiomyopathy is a well known entity. It is the direct poisonous effect alcohol has on the cardiac muscle cells manifesting as poor contractility of the heart muscles. Heart failure sets in in an intractable manner.

2. The associated unhealthy living related with alcoholism eg. smoking, poor diet, sedentary life etc. predispose the individual to coronary artery disease.

Hope this answers your question. Source(s): MD.

The alcohol breaks down the liver andtherefor it cant properly clean the blood that flows through the body.
It makes blood difficult to go through heart valves.
Causes hardening of the arteries. Especially in the kidneys. Which control your blood pressure. And in turn will cause high blood pressure. And in turn will cause coronary artery disease.
Disease related to heavy consumption of alcohol include,stroke,alcoholic cardiomyopathy,several kinds of cancer,cirrhosis,pancreatitite... well as accidents,suicide and homicide.It should also be noted heavy consumption of alcohol is a major cause of hypertension, so the diseases related to hypertension are generally related to alcohol consumption.Alcohol appears to affect heart muscle and arterial tissues directly.
www.circ.ahajournals.org