Getting Authentically Drunk
From a recent article in the Hedgehog Review:
http://iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2017_Summer_Edmundson.php
Do we act in bad faith when we get drunk? Is it inauthentic to escape our anxiety and live for a time as if nothing else matters and that we will never die? If so, is there anything wrong with that?
A couple of points in favour of drinking. Drinking can reveal what I'm capable of, at least in social interaction. My quick and surprising response to a question, my ability to avert boring conversations and situations, my responsiveness to people and the environment (clearly I'm thinking here of peak tipsiness rather than the common sequel of oblivion). That feeling of being what you feel you are supposed to be--the feeling, in fact, of being authentically you: "ah, this is what it feels like to be human!" I'm suspicious of the facile response that it's just an illusion, even if that's kind of how we feel about the night before when we're hungover.
And in any case, this feeling of losing oneself and becoming oneself at the same time, and feeling at home in the world, happens at other times, such as when one is immersed in work, especially technical or manual work such as writing an algorithm, building a wall, or gardening; or when one is playing a game, taking part in sport, doing photography, playing music, or painting a picture.
So couldn't we say that drinking is also a creative pursuit, but in the context of socializing? More generally, isn't drinking another route to a full, innocent engagement with the world? It may be a bit like becoming an animal, but we're interesting animals even without our anxiety and our awareness of mortality.
I expect the prigs of TPF to tell the rest of us how contemptible they find such indulgence, and how pathetic it is to need drink to achieve that feeling of at-home-ness, and so on. That's okay, but I'd like to see some nice sober discussion here more than trolling.
The hangover has a physical dimension, no doubt about that. You’ve gone and poisoned yourself. But it’s something else as well. The hangover is mourning for the feeling of wholeness that you had the night before. You look back at a time when you attained—or stole—the experience Jean-Paul Sartre calls being in itself. (Though Sartre does not approve of this condition, not a bit. It’s fine for plants and animals, but not for humans.) You had made yourself fully present to life and fully at ease within it. You weren’t oppressed by the past and you weren’t worried about the future. But now that time’s gone and you feel the loss. There’s nothing to do, then, but make your way to the end of your grief, and return to the habitual self. Singing the blues may help a bit, like singing a rowing chantey as we pull and pull and the boat slowly makes its way back out to sea. Then we’re back into time and back into being for itself—when we’re awake to death and awake to limits—when we have again become anxious and partial beings, entering the state that Heidegger and Sartre think our most authentic.
http://iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2017_Summer_Edmundson.php
Do we act in bad faith when we get drunk? Is it inauthentic to escape our anxiety and live for a time as if nothing else matters and that we will never die? If so, is there anything wrong with that?
A couple of points in favour of drinking. Drinking can reveal what I'm capable of, at least in social interaction. My quick and surprising response to a question, my ability to avert boring conversations and situations, my responsiveness to people and the environment (clearly I'm thinking here of peak tipsiness rather than the common sequel of oblivion). That feeling of being what you feel you are supposed to be--the feeling, in fact, of being authentically you: "ah, this is what it feels like to be human!" I'm suspicious of the facile response that it's just an illusion, even if that's kind of how we feel about the night before when we're hungover.
And in any case, this feeling of losing oneself and becoming oneself at the same time, and feeling at home in the world, happens at other times, such as when one is immersed in work, especially technical or manual work such as writing an algorithm, building a wall, or gardening; or when one is playing a game, taking part in sport, doing photography, playing music, or painting a picture.
So couldn't we say that drinking is also a creative pursuit, but in the context of socializing? More generally, isn't drinking another route to a full, innocent engagement with the world? It may be a bit like becoming an animal, but we're interesting animals even without our anxiety and our awareness of mortality.
I expect the prigs of TPF to tell the rest of us how contemptible they find such indulgence, and how pathetic it is to need drink to achieve that feeling of at-home-ness, and so on. That's okay, but I'd like to see some nice sober discussion here more than trolling.
Comments (67)
Does "creativity" result from being simply absorbed or is a cognitive element necessary I wonder?
Well, I don't think we can oppose them, because being absorbed always involves cognition, though maybe not reasoning.
Anyway, given that extroverts are more creative and alcohol encourages extroversion then you may be right.
This means that I'm way more likely to become more agreeable when I'm drunk. I'll be kinder and worry about keeping people happy, and less likely to voice concerns or rock the boat. That's what I was like when I was a kid, I'd let people do just about anything without showing concern or disapproval, so when I'm drunk, I become a lot more like that.
I feel better about myself and a lot more true to myself telling people how it is, and what I feel, but I have a hard time doing it calmly, and it's draining.
I don't know about "authenticity". Maybe I'm an authentic asshole. I think that following your better judgment, which may take more thought and effort in order to do what you think to be right is better than authenticity.
No socializing for this guy. What a pity!
Off the top of my head: inventiveness and originality, and a willingness to transgress boundaries (obviously important for creativity); a willingness to engage with people you'd otherwise be too inhibited to strike up a conversation with (material and avenues for further creativity); openness to different ideas thanks to one's openness to different people.
The creativity I'm talking about is that of making new kinds of conversations, new ways of making collective decisions, new ways of behaving in public, of experimenting beyond the mores of propriety. I wouldn't say that alcohol works well as fuel for other creative activities like writing or making music (up to a certain point it can occasionally work, but generally anything that requires sustained concentration only suffers).
Make sure you're not on the roof when you feel like being authentically you!
Originally liquor had some value to us because it's a liquid that keeps for a very long time, whereas water tends to go stagnant, but whatever our original reasons for taking up the drink, since liquor has been with us for so long we might begin to consider it as an element involved with human evolution itself. Mankind has had such a long lasting relationship with spirits that I'm forced to speculate about all the up-shots that it must bring...
The main possible upshot I can fathom is purely psychological/emotional. The hangover we experience after a night of indulgence is indeed painful and makes us yearn for the basic state of health and sobriety that we sought to escape the night before. It definitely makes us appreciate good health, and so I would hazard to say that the pain of hangovers can be a cathartic experience that helps us appreciate life overall (even if in a small way). Where actually being drunk is the pleasurable high, the hangover is the uncomfortable low that re-calibrates our ability to tolerate our default state of being.
Perhaps there is also something to be said for the value of temporary oblivion in and of itself, and possibly the long term emotional effects that alcohol might have (when consumed with some moderation). The ability to forget and to move on in life is definitely something that is of great value to our emotional states, and I reckon alcohol can sometimes be of assistance in that regard...
In short, perhaps the ideal experience with alcohol is for it to provide you with a temporary reward and pleasure - an escape - and afterward providing you with a temporary punishment that forces you back into the real world.
I think that value of the hangover itself is mostly a modern phenomenon brought on by a decrease in the prevalence of human suffering in general (people didn't need hangovers to appreciate health for instance), and so I would also hazard to say that historically the main benefit of alcohol to humans has been it's ability to dull our senses to a state where the drudgeries of average life become more tolerable (drinking ardent spirits through the work day used to be very common practice).
People sometimes call drinking for relaxation "un-winding" as if to say they're letting go of emotional and psychological baggage... Perhaps this un emotionally-fettered state is the overall authentic state of human cognitive health that consuming alcohol truly serves (definitely so by Sartre's authenticity). To be human, to be happy, may not inherently require a state of constant sobriety and deep inward reflection to achieve; happiness for some seems directly correlated with distraction and escape.
I've always found arguments appealing to some true nature of mankind to be highly dubious. We view man-kind as special and unique because we break so many molds and expectations, but then we go on to assume that there must be some comparative mold we fit neatly into.
I would first ask Sartre if he thinks that acquiring knowledge and building more successful civilization is a part of authentic human desire. Once he nods with wide eyes, I would then ask him why alcohol has been so ubiquitous throughout every successful human civilization that has produced lasting knowledge...
Okay Evol, at the risk of being too serious: I'm sure there's an endless supply of videos of drunk people that we can watch at our leisure on YouTube, but as I said in the OP, I'm not really talking about getting totally wasted.
Sorry, jamalrob, I've had a few and missed that. :-*
To put things into context first, I personally don't drink alcohol. I drank once to that point and all it did was make me feel violently ill because I (only recently) found out that I have pancreatitis, so the only drink that goes down without actually hurting me is red wine from Tuscany (chianti), I think because of the way that it is made.
Nevertheless, I can say that there are a number of people who drink to hide their social fears when it comes to approaching others and it provides them with a scapegoat or excuse to justify their own bad behaviour. There is an inherent weakness in this where people delude themselves into thinking that their choices are no longer theirs and thus they are morally safe; hey, it wasn't really 'them' just like how people blame others for their own misdeeds or even play social games to sneakily avoid responsibility for what is essentially their wrong decisions. From an epistemic angle, it is the same reasoning behind semiotics or hermeneutics in that people indirectly invent stories or parables to try and make an unclear point because saying what something is, as it is at face value, can sometimes be just too controversial or difficult.
I don't like that. It lacks existential adventure because to me, I find it thrilling facing my fears and being brutally honest. The alcohol in the above-mentioned is not revealing anything but your cowardly escapism from the sensation of social anxiety that you may feel, but for me coming face-to-face with that feeling and defeating it is so exiting. You expose your vulnerability, your need to feel belonging by doing the same thing for the same reason that others are, a need for love and a fear for rejection. You are escaping from your reality rather than changing it and making it what you really want, which is just a shame really. Overall, the number of deaths on roads, violence in the street and against women in homes far outweigh the 'good' it does for society.
I guess it can be like that, but mostly what I observe in myself and others is (and the article goes into this) shame the following day, the shame of having revealed oneself too openly or of having transgressed boundaries. The quintessential shame of the hangover represents an inability to avoid personal responsibility, and those who feel the most shame are very often let off the hook, not by themselves, but by others. (I must stress that I'm talking about what I regard as the normal experience of drinking, not the violence and destructiveness that alcohol abuse can produce).
Quoting TimeLine
Certainly drink can be cowardly escapism, but this is such a pedestrian point that I feel there must be something deeply wrong with it. First note that by "anxiety" I mean it more in the general existential or Heideggerian sense than simply "social anxiety", although that may be an expression of it. I mean that in drinking we choose to drop this basic anxiety for a while and forget the paraphernalia of who we are, that we might have larger projects in life, that we will one day die and what are we going to do about it? It's easy to regard this as escapism, but I've tried to suggest a different way of looking at it. In the same way as "don't take yourself too seriously" is sometimes good advice (advice that bores and snobs and fanatics never learn to take), "get drunk once in a while" might be similarly good advice. In fact, getting drunk once in a while is a good way to stop taking oneself too seriously. It's a way of taking up an essentially humorous or playful stance on the world.
I don't drink because the social anxiety builds up until, on Friday evening, it all gets too much and I retreat into a warm loving wine. That is your caricature, and it doesn't fit many of the drinkers I know (except for a couple of alcoholics, who don't wait till Friday, or evening for that matter). It's a definite decision, a decision to have fun. You may choose to regard it as mindless fun, inconsequential fun, irresponsible fun, and no doubt many other bad things, but to me it is not like that. And I don't especially want to either escape from or change my reality. I want to take up a different stance on it, or get inside it in a different way.
Drink is not without its downsides, of course, and the very fact that we must mourn for that sense of wholeness in the morning suggests it's no more than a small glimpse into a kind of life we might be able to achieve some other way. But at the very least, given the kind of society we live in it seems rather too earnest and proper to turn down, based on some inflated sense of one's bravery in the face of the unintelligible universe, the chance of improved social interaction.
Quoting jamalrob
Well it's not bad faith if one is being authentic: they are opposites. On Sartre's model, it is the waiter more so that he finds to be in bad faith. And indeed I doubt that there is a living saint who could serve the likes of Sartre in good faith without pouring the embrocation over the condescending prick's head.
In counselling, we talk about 'genuineness', in politics it's 'sincerity', and the paramount virtue is honesty to oneself and the other. But waiters that throw stuff at the clientele do not keep their jobs for long. Society requires us to be alienated from ourselves and perform a role as worker, as husband or whatever, and only in his shed can the philosopher remove his mask and start really wielding his hammer.
There, and in the holy state of inebriation wherein, with no hard feelings, we can batter each other to the pulp we all are behind our masks.
I agree that liquor frees up inhibitions, that there is an immediacy which is not mediated. The things I say after a few drinks are more automatic. Of course in college beer was de rigueur and I did over indulge more than once or twice. It was a Catholic college, where the friars who were primarily WWII veterans would to go through an unbelievable amount of beer on the weekends.
It is said that Socrates could drink and drink and never get drunk, and I wonder if Aristotle ever did drink, but in ancient Greece drinking wine straight was considered barbaric. It was always mixed 2 to 3 times with water, which meant a lot of drinking was possible. In vino Veritas.
I think Charles Bukowsky was on to something when he said:
That's a question best discussed stoned at night in the middle of nowhere burning a couch that somebody didn't like.
A fool's paradise.
Cruisy gay bars are no place for sobriety. As a soft ball Methodist faggot I can't generate the requisite joie de vivre without chemical assistance--I prefer beer. After a couple of quick beers I begin to experience and display that certainje ne sais quoi which signals that yours truly is a good time that could definitely be had.
Ethyl alcohol dissolves the tight wrappings of repression. It loosens up the bondage of overly restrictive morals and manners. Ethanol sets the erotic spirits free. Drinking reliably disinhibits one's overly restrictive cautious policies. Of course, one doesn't want to disable one's reality-testing facilities totally. I mean, smart shoppers evaluate the prospective trick. Does he seem like a more or less normal guy -- not more psychopathic than the average Joe? If he's driving, does he appear to be sober enough? How far away does he live -- one doesn't want to get stuck in exurbia with a nutcase. And just how far-out is he? Wild? Kinky? Merely adventurous? Vanilla tastes? Overly phlegmatic? Too dull to bother with? And really, just how good looking is he? (The downside of inebriation is the over estimation of positive features and the under estimation of negative features.)
Enough beer can make downbeat Protestants upbeat and lively. That's what I am there for.
I avoided Oblivion at the bar. Unless one has someone in attendance to watch over one, guys who fall into oblivion in bars tend to loose things -- stuff like wallets and the content thereof. Plus, if it's winter and one is Oblivious, the possibly frigid windy walk home is ice, snow, cold, and misery. I guess if you lived in Tucson, Arizona or L.A. that wouldn't be a problem.
It would be bad faith if you drank a quart of gin and believed that you wouldn't get drunk.
God recommends "strong drink".
Deuteronomy 14: 22-26: You shall tithe all the yield of your seed that comes from the field year by year. And before the LORD your God, in the place that he will choose, to make his name dwell there, you shall eat the tithe of your grain, of your wine, and of your oil, and the firstborn of your herd and flock, that you may learn to fear the LORD your God always. And if the way is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry the tithe, when the LORD your God blesses you, because the place is too far from you, ... then you shall turn it into money and bind up the money in your hand and ... spend the money for whatever you desire—oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the LORD your God and rejoice, you and your household.
So there you go: If you can't haul your tithe to Jerusalem, get some strong drink and celebrate the blessings you have received. The is not, by the way, a suggestion. It's an order.
There's nothing inauthentic about having a few drinks to quiet one's fears for a while. Carpe diem: Seize the day. Eat, drink, and be merry, or gather ye rosebuds while ye may (take your pick) -- for tomorrow we may die.
If Jean Paul Sartre doesn't like it, tell him to go fuck himself.
In fact, the anxiety-ridden people of Paris are marching through the streets this very minute chanting
"John Paul, baise toi-même! John Paul, baise toi-même!"
Ok now...I work in the wine industry...perhaps it's just a simple matter of the antioxidants that red wine offers (thanks to the inclusion of skins) which white wines don't? Chianti is a sub-region in Tuscany, and the wines aren't specially made in any particular way.
How does it fit into this depiction of retreat from hyper-normalization?
I think it mostly depends on our relationship with alcohol.
To the son rebelling against his family, getting drunk is freedom.
To the father morning the loss of his son, getting drunk is a pain killer.
In the social sense that you're describing, getting drunk is connection and familiarity, a method for building trust. I don't think that this is inauthentic -- you know what you are doing, you're all doing it together, and you're choosing to do it because you all like it. And, what's more, if you don't even regret it the next day, if the only reason you regret the hangover is because it hurts now, then I'd say it's hard to argue that you are also somehow inauthentic for drinking.
I don't think a person is confined to one relationship or another with alcohol (or other drugs, for that matter) It seems to me that the world, depending on how we are that day and what we're drinking for (why are we communing with the bottle today), can be brought closer and more familiar, or more distant and cut off -- it can fill it with secrets and excitement, or sap it of all variety until all you see is the dark truth you have always known. You can be filled with regret while drunk, and absolution with the hangover, too -- it can go in reverse (don't you deserve to feel this way, after all?)
In any relationship with alcohol, it does seem to have a quality of self-discovery, but only when you take the time to soberly reflect upon it after the fact. And perhaps after the painful hangover is clouding your judgment too.
A hearteningly non-boring, non-judgmental response. I award you the title of honorary drunkard.
Quoting Wayfarer
No more than, say, playing a musical instrument in a band. Do you think it's always foolish to, by a special method, become temporarily at ease with life?
Everyone says this kind of thing, including me. Whisky makes me depressed for days, wine is fine, and so on. But they say (and they would know) that the kind of alcohol you drink doesn't make any difference, that the difference is how much you drink, which is what varies when drinking different kinds of alcohol.
Do you really consider playing an instrument and drunkenness to be the same experience? Have you experienced either?
Contender for the first clause of the first line of your autobiography?
Why do that if I can just have a bottle of wine? I regard the anxiety we are able to leave behind when drinking to be part of the human condition, or part of the condition of alienation that everyone experiences. That is, it's a society-wide phenomenon that is not amenable to self-help. Anyway, I don't think it's as simple as you make out, though I realize your description is the common sense one. As I've been trying to say, drinking is not merely the negative act of removing inhibitions, but is, or can be, a positive one: a choice to take up a different stance on life and the world.
Quoting CasKev
And who wants to take risks, right?
- although as I write, I am signed up to a charity fundraiser called Dry July which requires abstinence for this month. And actually I feel measurably better for three weeks not having had a drink; I'm seriously considering staying off it. But what occurs to me is that if you want to have a drink, don't try and rationalise it as some life-altering event, because I'm sure that will only have one outcome, and it won't be a good one. Just have a drink ;-)
I'm aware that the experiences are different, but they are comparable, in exactly the way I compared them. You suggested that becoming temporarily at ease with life is foolish. Or did you mean that doing so only under the influence of alcohol is foolish? If so, why?
Quoting Wayfarer
>:O Thanks, but I'm fine. I drink less than I used to and expect to drink even less in the future.
I expected the charge of attempting to dignify drinking more than it is due, and maybe I am, but really I think I'm just trying to look at it differently. And note that I'm not trying to justify my affection for drink. In English-speaking cultures drinking is often regarded as something shameful, or naughty (at least in middle-class circles), and I want to see past that, because I don't think there's anything to justify. I want to say that it's not a case of slipping weakly back to a habit or escaping into oblivion like a coward, as TimeLine believes. No: it's a way of life!
(This is TPF so I have to point out: the last sentence is not quite serious)
Although drinking may not involve acting, like the waiter play-acting the role of waiter, it could be seen to involve the avoidance of freedom and responsibility. In ceasing to worry, we cease to face up to the need to take up a stance on a life that has no transcendent meaning. At least, that's the way that drinking might be thought to be inauthentic: when we drink, we deceive ourselves for a while, and the mind-altering effects stand in for the taking on of a role. Even when thus inebriated, we know and can talk about our life projects, the problem of freedom, and so on, and yet it's as if we're talking about them as observers, unwilling for a time to grapple with them directly.
But it's this wry, sceptical, removed stance on our anxious selves that I like about drinking. Although @Moliere is surely right to point out that not everyone is like this with alcohol.
Well, if you already know what I will tell you, what's the point of me saying it? :s
Because it's not real. We're relying on artificially altering your experience, because we can't face it straight up. Surely Our Lady Sophia would say that we need to learn to value ordinary experience, to see what is valuable in it, without artificial stimuli.
Between my last post and this one, I went out and did a 5 km run (after coming home from work). Now, after three weeks of not drinking, I am doing that run about 80% better than I was able to before. I have been lamenting the fact that I'm getting too old to run - I'm in my sixties now- but suddenly, I can again! Plus I have a feeling of inner clarity and verve. So I'm thinking when my sponsorship drive is over, I'm going to stay dry for a while.
Inebriation is real. Anything we do "by a special method" (to quote myself) is artificial, and to be artificial is not to be unreal. It is artificial to live in a city, to ride a bike, to read books. I don't think we reach some privileged natural state when we avoid chemicals. Playing an instrument no doubt alters our brain chemistry. And I think that drinking is part of ordinary experience.
Otherwise, good for you (not sarcastic). I've cut down too, though I can't see myself giving up completely.
....precious....
While there are merits to remaining dry for a time, I'd say that your experience of feeling better is all one needs to point to in order to justify remaining dry for a time.
In particular, I highlight these two posts because I don't believe that altering body chemistry or artificiality are exactly correct descriptions of drinking, either.
When you run, for instance, you also alter your body chemistry. As you note, it feels very good. But the altering of body chemistry isn't a problem -- it's the manner in which you're altering your body chemistry (at this particular moment in your life) that's important. I'd suggest that drinking (in other particular moments) can feel just as good and right.
This is similar to claiming that alcohol delivers something artificial. But it's only artificial if you go into drinking believing it to be artificial. This kind of circles back to my point about how you relate to alcohol that matters most. Like any substance, depending on your relationship to said substance, that's the sort of psychological effects you should expect from it. The physiological effects will remain the same, but the experience depends on how you relate to it.
After all, there's no good reason to believe that pie is more artificial than alcohol, or gorging yourself on chocolate is more artificial than alcohol. These are far from needs, but indulging in them in the proper way can make your life fuller, as opposed to manufactured.
I force myself dry periodically because I know what you're talking about when you say it makes you feel better. And, on the whole, it sort of goes along with my notion of freedom to be able to let go of pleasurable things that are unnecessary, so I like to periodically give up drinking because of that. To break habituation. But, all the same, I don't think I'd call drinking artificial or somehow bad just because it alters my body chemistry. It just depends on where I am at in my life at the time, and how I'm relating to drinking that day.
Indeed, I was also since I really have no time to think of those squeamish youths who are afraid of saying hello to a woman. In the Heideggerian sense, one feels existentially enslaved and the only relief they feel is exercising conditions that enable that momentary escape from their own reality because they are incapable of challenging the 'Master' or whatever it is in their life that has enfeebled their capacity to take control and responsibility. So, for instance, a man is being treated badly at work and so experiences a sense of alienation and while tolerantly silent as he sacrificially abandons his ego, releases his genuine feelings of frustration through drink and come home to beat his wife or children or someone out on the street because he cannot do it at work. The alcohol merely releases them from their moral obligations since they lose 'reason' due to being intoxicated, which is farcical since one is aware prior to drinking that that is exactly what will happen.
There are a great many people who are miserable in their reality and alcohol or drug consumption is the only relief that enables them to remove themselves from that, albeit temporarily, which in itself is cowardly since they are conscious of their choices to first escape but also cyclically continuing to return back to the numbness as it becomes a vicious habit, rather than actually making a direct change in their lives. There is also a fundamental conventionalism to the practice that I find irritating and that is not to say that I am a bore, but more like what Nietzsche said: The formation of a herd is a significant victory and advance in the struggle against depression. Doing what others do on specific days of the week merely illustrate that obedient habitus that only exposes your own powerlessness.
I just don't like the idea of abandoning my will and reason. If something is compelling me to escape, I will turn and face it, change it, fight it if I have to, but not hide from it. I don't want to be a das man as Heidegger said, or an inauthentic person. I would rather use the cognitive instruments to facilitate and nuture my Being.
Quoting jamalrob
Go travelling. Do photography or paint something. Write. I don't have a problem with drinking, but getting drunk is hedonistic in that it is just too temporary a pleasure.
To be perfectly honest with you, I haven't actually tried any other wine besides chianti, except for champagne and I felt the effects of it for many days afterwards. When I was in Italy, I went to San Gimignano and had some chianti during dinner and I felt nothing. I pretend sipped a number of drinks in social settings but I never actually drank, so honestly I am not sure how it is made. Though viticulture is interesting since I love to garden.
Not so true, at least in my case. I agree that the sense of alienation forms in most everyone, but that it can be removed with conscious effort.
I used to drink alcohol to loosen up and have fun. Unfortunately, during my very stressful marriage - a time when I was managing depression via medication only - social drinking turned into occasional binge drinking. This put further strain on an already difficult situation. As you probably know, antidepressants don't always mix well with alcohol, and one of these episodes led to a nearly fatal suicide attempt.
Despite this traumatic experience, like any good alcoholic, I tried to justify social drinking for several years. It continued to help me loosen up and have fun, but brought with it its share of problems.
It wasn't until I almost lost my current girlfriend that I realized the shortcut to loosening up wasn't worth the potential cost. But I wasn't willing to give up on having fun! So I went through a period where I consistently pushed myself past the boundaries of social discomfort. A big part of this involved eliminating self-judgment and judgment of others. With judgment removed, I felt that I could be myself - I could say and do the things I would when I was feeling a good alcohol buzz.
I'm not saying drinking alcohol is inauthentic, but it comes with cost and risk. And wouldn't you rather put in the work to be authentic all the time?
Everyone says this kind of thing because their experience bears it out.
Alcohol is alcohol is alcohol, but there is other stuff in the bottle that varies enormously. Aging whisky for years in charred wood extracts various chemicals that you won't find in wine, gin, or beer. Fermenting grapes will contain a host of chemicals not found in whisky or beer, and so on.
Granted, how much alcohol one drinks (in whatever medium) will have effects quite apart from the medium.
Quoting Wayfarer
Most people self-regulate drinking and they don't go on to become alcoholics. Some people, however, don't/can't self-regulate well at all, and for these folks moderation in the use of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, heroin--whatever intense pleasure-producing chemicals they try--just doesn't happen. Escalation is a given. Smokers tend to maintain the same level of tobacco usage over many years. It all has to do with the way various chemicals are metabolized and the way neurotransmitters work in a given brain.
Quoting jamalrob
Could be.
Religion, sex, drinking, pleasure, guilt... A fine mix.
The devil did come to mind, but I thought better of it.
(Y)
Quoting Bitter Crank
Indeed, I used to smoke too. In fact I have quite an addictive personality, but I've managed to become less so over the years.
Artificial stimuli? What would artificial stimuli be -- alien-operated brain probes?
Is an alcoholic fast or a worthy cause natural or artificial? And what about old men running down the street after a long day at the office? Natural or artificial--the running and the office both? Someone might ask, "What are you running from and what are you running toward?"
I'm all in favor of exercising and worthy causes, maybe even spending all day in an office. (Though, office work can be fairly perverse. You should probably consider whether it's natural and authentic to be doing whatever it is that goes on in your office.)
Well, mood-altering or mind-altering substances. I was a cannabis user all through my 20's and early 30's. I used to love getting high and listening to great music. Also had some amazing trips. Sounds so lame when you say it, but really did experience the clear light. So the impulse behind that was always 'getting high' in the sense of reaching a higher state. Off course as you grow up you realise that a lot of it is pseudo-profound, not truly profound, but it's very different to alcohol. (I mean, if all the 20 year olds were smoking dope instead of drinking, there would be zero street brawls.) Anyway I last smoked cannabis probably 12 years ago or so. I missed it for a long while but now it's not part of my life any more. (Have a look at The Paisley Gate.)
I discovered scotch about the time I married, late 20's. I drank scotch for a few years but i realised it could be serious trouble if you liked it too much so gave it up. But the last ten years or so, it's just been beer & wine - not huge amounts, but all the time. Like, get home from work, have a beer, or two or three, then a wine, or two or three. It adds up, and makes you fat and stoopid.
In respect of the philosophical point, though - yes, we have to 'alter our minds', but that is because they're mis-configured. They're not running properly. Getting that straight is 'praxis',
I drank quite a lot when I was young, and regularly throughout the years that I ran a contracting business. I think drinking is a form of self-medication; nothing more nor less. Likewise, so is drinking tea or coffee, and smoking tobacco or marijuana. The stronger drugs are more a way of life; a serious commitment (although alcohol and smoking and even coffee can become something like that). Over the last couple years I have almost entirely lost any interest in drinking, smoking tobacco or marijuana; but I still drink a little tea and coffee.
Our expectations of alcohol and drugs is somewhat constructed. Advertising prepares us to believe that drinking is very enjoyable, an essential ingredient for good times. Peer testimony performs the function of advertising for the whole range of street drugs. Word of Mouth works. We are led to believe that using drugs will give us intense measure and deep insight. Intense pleasure--sure--deep insight not too deep, not too often. As you said, its pseudo-profound.
Depending on which people one hangs around with, one might feel like a Mormon if one doesn't use any of the whizzy drugs available. (Mormons generally avoid alcohol, street drugs, coffee, tea, coca cola, etc.)
Consider how smoking and drinking have been portrayed in movies. The classic B&W movies of the 40s and 50s featured people smoking in a manner that was very seductive. The characters in Mad Men drank in a manner which the distilling industry must have loved--liquor in decanters on office credenzas, nice glasses, sometimes ice, sometimes straight up. The alcohol was consumed during work hours as if it were the most delicious thing on earth. It was the all-purpose-cure. If one was up, down, just bagged a new client, one's wife had just walked out, one had a bright idea -- about any thing was a cause to pour a drink.
And, drinking IS enjoyable, no question. For that matter, so is cannabis, if it doesn't freak you out. But I'm having to learn to go without it. Next, I have to learn to stop talking about it. :-)
Well, I do try.
You've convinced me. And I must admit to being impressed. But if I'm interpreting your story correctly, alcohol for you was a risk too big to take, or continue taking. I think for many people it doesn't carry the same risk, so here I come back to my scepticism about the distinction between a real and and an artificial opening up to the world. But sure, to be authentic all the time is appealing.
Is it inauthentic? Sure, but who the fuck cares? Life hurts and alcohol helps with that.
Nothing is nothing more. Even if drinking is a form of self-medication, it has its own qualities, is used in particular ways, represents particular ways of being both individual and social, and thus can be explored in many ways.
Sure, I used to reach profound states of self-realization and linguistic and sexual bliss when I was younger and acoholically intoxicated, especially when mixed with cannabis. If only those states lasted! Same, and even much more so, is true of LSD, Psilocybin, Mescaline, MDMA, Methamphetamine Opium and Heroin; I've experimented with them all. Basically it's a deadend road though, which I suppose doesn't really matter if you think life itself is deadend road.
But we can only work with what we are capable of at any given time, right; so I don't believe It's a question of authenticity vs inauthenticity at all.
Quoting darthbarracuda
You have to treat the causes, not the symptoms.
Weakling... :P (jk)