Back when I would get schlostered in college, I would say I drank because it accommodated “cool experiences.” The boldness and vigor that alcohol infused me with invariably led to a more hardcore engagement with life. Most simply: Wild stuff would happen.
I’d be audacious enough to make the right joke, or be wild enough to steal the spotlight in the way I wanted to. Maybe I’d even get lucky! Well, that was rare, but no matter how I spun it, getting drunk was not ever about the taste of alcohol. It was rarely an escape from my problems or to shoo away anxiety.
Alcohol can give us courage, an iron fist to meet life head-on—or it can shut us off from life, enclose us within our own dark world into a space where we create our own little world for a while.