But the "Active dose" to "lethal dose" ratio, aka "therapeutic index" of alcohol is pretty bad.

Don't you mean that it's quite good? It's easily more than an order of magnitude for many people (not sure about chronic alcoholics with high tolerance). How many medications can you 5x your dose and not have some risk of ending up in the hospital?

	▲	aeonik a minute ago \| parent [-]
		Heroin (IV) ~6x GHB ~8x Ethanol ~10x Methamphetamine ~10x DXM ~10x Cocaine ~15x MDMA ~16x Codeine ~20x Methadone ~20x Mescaline ~24x Flunitrazepam ~30x Ketamine ~40x Phenobarbital ~50x Nitrous oxide ~150x LSD ~1000x Cannabis/THC ~1000x or greater Citation: Gable RS. Comparison of acute lethal toxicity of commonly abused psychoactive substances. Addiction. 2004;99(6):686–696. doi:10.1111/j.1360-0443.2004.00744.x