Alcohol is a many-faceted substance, most often referred to by it’s various nicknames: social lubricant, truth serum, liquid courage, and so on. It serves many different purposes for many different people. For some people it’s simply a way to relax after a long day, a quiet little escape, harmless. Some people just drink at parties for fun. Others drink because reality is a harsh mistress, and somewhere along the way they lost the ability to cope. Others are just addicts, trapped in a need, one they don’t always want to be free from.
Drink is a Trojan horse. The immediate result is freedom, or escape. When the desired effect fades away we find the poison that the drink smuggled in. We become paranoid about things we said and did when we were not entirely ourselves. Poison lingers long after the escape has vanished.
Within the drunken consciousness there is often a sober mind that wants to correct the course that the consciousness has taken, but to no effect. It’s trapped, watching a train wreck it could prevent if only it were in control. The Ego had willingly surrendered the reins to the Id, but it does not have the power to take them back. After all, that is the point of drink, of parties, of revelry in general, to lose control in the hope of being free, if only for a moment. In an attempt to free ourselves from the Ego we become trapped within our Id. It’s what we wanted all along. Nonetheless, being a passenger in our own bodies can be an unpleasant experience, though not necessarily one we learn from.
