Much of the public mistakenly believes that alcohol is a carbohydrate. Why is this actually a problem?
Firstly, alcohol is not classified as a carbohydrate. It's as nonsensical as writing that alcohol is classified as a protein, just like meat. Alcohol is a fourth and separate energy substrate after protein, carbohydrates and fat. The human body can utilize the energy from these four substrates, which is obtained by breaking down (oxidizing) the bonds between the carbons and hydrogens in these nutrients.
Secondly, the main problem is that the caloric value of a gram of alcohol (7.1 kcal/g) is almost double that of a gram of carbohydrate (4.1 kcal/g). And a large part of the general public judges alcoholic beverages only in terms of sugar content and not in terms of total energy, to which the alcohol content contributes very significantly.
You've probably heard a person trying to lose weight say "I'd rather have dry wine because I want to lose weight". But although dry wine, for example, really only contains units of sugar, because of the alcohol it contains, a 0.7 litre bottle of dry wine contains about 500 kcal. That's the energy equivalent of 25 sugar cubes, to give you an idea. Therefore, from a weight loss perspective, alcoholic beverages are not just about the sugar/carbohydrate content but also very much about the alcohol content.
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