/ck/ - Food & Cooking

Hey y’all. This is something that has been boggled my mind for years and I can’t seem to find a real straight answer. Ill start with my personal story. I have been drinking heavily, daily for about 10 years, there were a few times where I quit for a few months but I always end up back on/off the wagon.
Anyway, when I first started drinking heavily, like most college students, I also became addicted to crappy foods. Not surprisingly I began to gain weight. I had always been thin before this. My best friend who drank just as much as me magically seemed to remain slender and fit. In short he said to me “dude, alcohol calories don’t count, just eat right and excerise a bit and avoid sodas and mixers, jus stick to hard alcohol, light beer and wine”…. of course I laughed at him because everyone knows that a calorie is a calorie.
Well I was tired of this excess weight but also didnt want to give up the drink so i took his advice and began eating clean and walking daily. Well, any sort of change should help weight loss but I actually got THIN! You could se my abs etc. All the while i was still drinking close to a 12 pack a day….
Fast forward a few years later I decide to quit drinking because I realize I don’t want to die early. I figure that since I’m not consuming up to 1500 extra calories a day I can start eating shitty food more often… Nope! I immediately starting to get chunky again… I began drinking again and the weight didnt change, so I went back to eating lean meats, veggies, whole grains minimally processed foods etc. And I lost all the weight again!
So here is my question. Do alcohol calories count? Are my friend and I just genetic freaks of natures??? Whenever I google this the only answers are from fitness freaks who are convinced that if they even consume one beer a week that they will eventually become 300 lbs. Anyway thanks y’all!