And couldn't we say that drinking is also a creative pursuit, but in the context of socializing? — jamalrob

Does "creativity" result from being simply absorbed or is a cognitive element necessary I wonder?

Does "creativity" result from being simply absorbed or is a cognitive element necessary I wonder? — Jake Tarragon

Well, I don't think we can oppose them, because being absorbed always involves cognition, though maybe not reasoning.

It might be instructive (though not creative) to list which aspects of cognition/reasoning are impaired/improved at full tipsy and score them for tendency to creativity.

Anyway, given that extroverts are more creative and alcohol encourages extroversion then you may be right.

Alcohol reduces inhibition, so it all comes down to what personality traits you're inhibiting, I think. I have a deep seated agreeable streak which I repress for the most part when sober, and telling people what I really think and feel makes me feel good about myself. Doesn't always help my relationships, and sometimes I go overboard and have to tone things down, but it is something of an effort. I fear strangers, and have an extremely hard time meeting new people. I like familiarity, and tend to stay quiet and get overwhelmed by new influences. I'm the type of crazy that really needs a handle on things before I like to act.

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!

It might be instructive (though not creative) to list which aspects of cognition/reasoning are impaired/improved at full tipsy and score them for tendency to creativity. — Jake Tarragon

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...

Make sure you're not on the roof when you feel like being authentically you! — Evol Sonic Goo

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. :-*

A couple of points in favour of drinking. Drinking can reveal what I'm capable of, at least in social interaction. — jamalrob

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.

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. — TimeLine

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).

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. — 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.

Like most mind altering substances, alcohol is a sacrament to be used on holydays. Thus it is subject to taboo, which is to say that it is forbidden except when it is compulsory. Hence the ambivalence with which it is regarded by philosophers and others.

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: — 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.

My parents always had a glass of wine with their dinners, and at around age 7 they would mix a little wine in with some 7-Up and I could drink along with them. I've always treated wine primarily as a food accompaniment and I really can't drink wine and enjoy it without having something to nosh on.

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:

"Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now."

Sober self vs drunk self. Sober world vs acid-world. Where is the truth?

That's a question best discussed stoned at night in the middle of nowhere burning a couch that somebody didn't like.

In the Tavern from Carmina Burana (a 13th century text set to music by Carl Orff in the 20th century)

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.

A fool's paradise.

I think alcohol is a temporary shortcut to removing inhibitions. If you work on your inhibitions by addressing the reasons they exist, you shouldn't need alcohol to open up and 'be yourself'. Plus alcohol brings with it the risk of hangover, drunken mistakes, not to mention anger and depression in some people.

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. — jamalrob

Not my thoughts at all. It's not contemptible that drinking puts you in such a state, but enlightening. I always wondered what the allure to drinking really was. I didn't fully appreciate it's effect on other people. I mostly just get tired, and if diligent enough, nauseous. I always felt my limited response was a strength, but, with what you say, I'm not entirely sure. I am sure that my condition is safer than yours.

Beer: Safe and effective when used as directed.

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.

Sure, let's all work out the causes of our neurotic fears. Therapy is dandy but liquor is quicker.

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? — jamalrob

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!"

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. — TimeLine

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.

I've only gotten sick (really horrible hang overs) from wine. Some of it was good, some of it was rotgut. Didn't seem to make much difference. Never gotten sick from beer, gin, whiskey, rye...

What about the next favodity adulterant of choice, being Cannabis?

How does it fit into this depiction of retreat from hyper-normalization?

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? — jamalrob

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.

Not my thoughts at all. It's not contemptible that drinking puts you in such a state, but enlightening. I always wondered what the allure to drinking really was. I didn't fully appreciate it's effect on other people. I mostly just get tired, and if diligent enough, nauseous. I always felt my limited response was a strength, but, with what you say, I'm not entirely sure. I am sure that my condition is safer than yours. — Hanover

A hearteningly non-boring, non-judgmental response. I award you the title of honorary drunkard.

I don't know, what do you think?