Getting drunk doesn’t really solve anything
In the novel Duplicate Keys that I’m re-reading the characters get drunk because they didn’t pay attention to how many glasses of booze they had during the evening and/or because they think getting rip-roaring drunk will fix whatever is broken.
Dr. Eric Berne once wrote that people collect figurative green stamps, one for every bad thing that happened to them. Once they have a lot of stamps, they think they deserve to kill themselves, beat up people, have a fit, or get drunk. I love Dr. Berne’s cynical outlook on why people do the dumb stuff they do.
I’ve only been really drunk a couple of times. Things didn’t work out well in terms of how I felt the day after. Fortunately, I didn’t do anything criminal or otherwise negative while drunk. Tipsy is okay, drunk is bad–from my experience.
In books–and probably real-life–drunk people become abusive, do crazy things in public, wake up in the wrong bed. Saying “oops” doesn’t really fix whatever one did.
If there was ever a time to get drunk, other than World War I and II, it might well have been last week or last year. I suppose anyone who has gotten drunk thinks (while drunk) that s/he is immune to whatever’s wrong with the world. The trouble is, after the hangover finally does away, the bad stuff is still there.
If my getting drunk during a so-called lost weekend would get rid of COVID, I’d do it. But I don’t think I’d trust the bartender on such a deal. What about you? Did you ever get drunk for a damned good reason and wakeup two or three days later and find that the broken stuff in the world had gotten fixed?
I didn’t think so. Kind of sad, I think. As teens, some evil person said that getting drunk was a Panacea we could use to escape everything that’s bad. I wish it worked. I’m so discouraged that this “solution” to our problems only makes things worse.
My novels include “The Sun Singer.”
