What need does drink fulfil?

We all have our own unique personal relationship with alcohol. We all have our triggers that make us choose to drink, alcohol-related habits and we all have situations where it does or does not occur to use that a glass or more might be the way forward. I have given this some thought over the years and this is what I have noticed and concluded about my own liaison with alcohol.

- I only really drink socially. I very, very occasionally have a glass at home to celebrate the end of my working week (and this has only happened in the last four years or so) but I mostly associate drink with being out and mingling with people. I think, early on in my relationship with alcohol, I used it to ease a slight social awkwardness. Also in my youth, it was good to have alcohol to blame for many of the silly things I did.
- Being drunk is fun for me. I love the feeling of being inebriated. I really do. So much so that often, when I have drunk I crave a cigarette because the nicotine buzz enhances the altered state even further. I am an out-of-control freak.
- Around the ten years ago mark, I drank whenever alcohol was on offer. It never occurred to me not to drink when the opportunity was presented to me. I also always finish my drink before leaving.
- Once I start I NEVER get the sensible 'stop drinking' alarm some people seem to get. I can keep going and I mean really keep going. I think my consumption is exponential over the course of an evening.

- I absolutely love how alcohol loosens everyone up. A really good night out for me is where everyone is talking to everyone and I have many encounters with strangers and friends of friends with laughter, free-and-easy chat and banter that rarely happens when a group of people are sober. I am naturally gregarious and outgoing and stand out a little sometimes in a room of sober people. This effect is not so marked in a room of tipsy people.
- There is a short-lived, but powerful catharsis to getting hammered. A catharsis that is certainly undone the next day.
- In my younger days, going out and drinking was what everyone did a lot of the time. Drinking and the following day's hangover used up a lot of time. A void is created when you don't drink. If you haven't learnt to fill that void up with good stuff, drinking seems like the only thing to do.

And that is a couple of decades worth of reflection on a prevalent pastime of mine. Over and out.