I. I know muslims are technically not supposed to drink alchohal, but have they historically, and if so how much and under what circumstances, how common was it... ect?
It depended greatly on which part of Arabo-Muslim world we're talking about. Places that had a tradition of winery maintained usually to have an alchool production for driking. Persia, Spain, Syria, North Africa...
However, in places that didn't have such, alchool consumtion was more anedcotic. Of course, it's worth noting that in the aformentioned regions, non-Muslims were often in charge of this trade, as it was considering forbidden by religion as well to gain from alchool trade even if you didn't drink it.
And, where you had Jewish and Christian population, you had wine consumtion that was pracited inside an islamized society and certainly had an influence : in places like Al-Andalus that had large non-Muslim populations, it certainly played a role.
But even in these regions, it was considered as a "deviant" attitude (more or less associated with debauchry, luxury or crypto-christianism), and prone to be used by legist/religious school and by rivals (that usually drank as well, more hidden). But in old wine production regions, particularly in Spain and neighbouring regions, it was an regular and widespread one up to the crisis that knew Arabo-Andalusian society make these behavior less acceptable but still current.
Again, in regions without wine tradition, or alchool production, it was more limited.
If you're interested, and understand french, I strongly advise you this recorded conference about "
Wine and Wineyard in Islamic Spain"
So, wine consumption was relativly widespread in Mediterranean basin, but tended to be less accepted with time : razing wine markets, closing pubs, punishing drinkers...But even that didn't really prevented the consumption.
Is this similar to how a lot of Christians have sex before they are married?
Not exactly. It was more of a social convenance than a religious rule. Church didn't meddled with what happened in bed up to some time. It was less regulated than alchool in Arabo-Muslim world.