Saturday, May 15, 2010

The Drunken Mind Speaks a Sober Heart

Do you drink a lot? And, if so, why do you? Is it perhaps to express your emotions more clearly?

I used to drink and not really for the taste it I can tell you, but more for what it produced for the mind; certainly for other effects. Inebriation soothed perhaps the mind, and allowed the ordinarily suppressed heart to vent in more sober appreciation of its reality. And then I learned when I gave up drinking, that expressing my sober heart with a sober mind actually worked better!

To drink or not to drink? For some this is to express feelings that aren’t otherwise—feelings well beneath the surface and remain there for want of a drink or other drug. For me it was to get to my more creative side. That’s what I really drank for. (But now I get to a far greater creative side, sober!)

The title of this article is actually robbed from a friend’s Facebook status.

You know the moment you read something and it just rings true. Then I Googled it. It’s quite a famous colloquialism, actually.

Why is it so? Well, again, those who aren’t so free with their emotions are afforded the ‘Dutch courage’ or spiritual lubricant in order to share with their mates.

We can always tell this by virtue of the change in the person when they’re drunk. Some are happy drunks and some are not-so-happy. I remember a guy who used to get resentfully angry almost every time he drank. He intuited pity from his friends around him as he wallowed in a pitiful stupor. For some people it pays not to drink for they expose too much of themselves.

Emotions are actually designed to authenticate the person, drug-free. We use them to display what we really feel. The better we control our authentic emotions the more characteristically adult we are.

Emotions are not designed to be buried and only to surface like a U-boat when we’re half cut.

They are there to testify to the authenticity of the person.

© 2009, 2010 S. J. Wickham.

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