How do the intensely self-aware become alcoholics?

[elfs]

I have no particular fear of becoming an alcoholic. My drug of choice is still caffeine (although I understand better alternatives are avaialble), but I do like to have one glass of wine while I'm cooking dinner. Sometimes, especially when I have an empty stomach, I get a little light-headed. This makes me somewhat self-conscious.

How do the intensely self-aware ever become alcoholics?

Because I am intensely self-aware when I've stared to get silly. I become even more self-monitoring, more self-concerning. I create a "in advance notice" narrative in my head of how I should behave, how I am behaving, and turn my self-behavior monitors up to no-really-full. This causes me to dial back and let the rest of the glass wait untill the light-headed sensation and silliness has passed. (For one thing, I'm cooking. You know, knife skills. Pots of boiling water. Sizzling cast-iron pans. Actual loss of fine motor skills would be bad.) I'd make a bad alcoholic-- more than once I've found that one glass of the day on my end-table the next morning still half-full.

I'm just trying to figure out how writers, who usually have some inner life to call their own otherwise they'd never have one to give to their characters, how those people develop into alcoholics. I mean, wouldn't it just kill your ability? How the Hell did Hemingway, or Chandler, or Faulkner, to point to three famously alcoholic writers who had much more than just one book inside, function at all? I can't write when I'm even a little tipsy-- the abilities just aren't there.

Maybe I just don't find downers all that attractive. It's probably a good thing I don't have access to the good ol' drugs like Benzedrine.

Yes, I listen to the Spice Girls. Still. Just like I am a Brony. Deal.

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's an easy one. Writers drink or smoke or toke or rub hallucinagenic frogs on their bellies in order to DROWN OUT the real world and better immerse themselves into their imaginary one. Whether they write about their private universe or not, they use such stuff to push reality aside to experience the tenuous faux reality better.

Myself, I drink some. But not to excess, because I'm a sleepy drunk.

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

Guessing, as neither a writer nor an alcoholic, but...

Anesthesia. Being intensely self-aware doesn't alleviate the pain of depression; I'd expect quite the opposite. I would guess that the point of alcohol is to obliterate, or at least blunt, that awareness for a time.

[kengr]

Don't forget that studies showed that if you learn something while drunk/stoned you'll remember it *better* if you are drunk/stoned.

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

Alcohol seems to take the uppermost layer of control off the mind. Some inhibitions keep one from doing stupid or mean stuff; others keep one fettered and impotent; some prevent one from doing things that are personally unacceptable. Taking off that layer can be useful for creativity if one tends to block oneself. I have an easier time starting school papers and cover letters if I have a beer: it gets me past the blank-page anxiety. I can see how this could lead to relying on the alcohol to get past temporary creative paralysis, and the required dose increasing with acclimatization. Add to the mix less social stigma around alcoholism in the past and you get your Hemingways, Chandlers, and Faulkners.

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

I suspect that alcohol still causes reduction in fine motor skills no matter how close attention you pay.