Whenever I get drunk I feel that I can think more clearly. Not for things like math problems, but for personal issues i’m facing. Its like my anxieties and normal prerequisites no longer apply and I am only left with what I truly think and feel underneath it all w/o the fear/shame/ambition,etc distracting me. Like if I am having a problem or issue i’m trying to think about when i’m drunk the answer seems clear. I assume and hope this is due to my lowering of inhibitions which leaves me with no fears or hang ups and lets me just respond naturally to a situation. Then again, is this all a BS hoax due to me being too loopy to understand how reality actually works and applies to me. I know some indian cultures use alcohol for spiritual purposes, but being too out of it to understand reality isn’t a good thing.
Well, even detractors of drinking would say that it lessens anxiety (at least initially) and inhibitions. Maybe in your case just simply being more relaxed could help you think more clearly occassionally. When I was learning to speak Czech, it often seemed that having conversations was easier after I’d had a few beers – I wasn’t thinking about doing it, I was just doing it.
Wes: I actually understand exactly what you’re talking about. It’s not like you think you can discover a cure for cancer, but it sure seems like you know how to solve any personal problems you might have. It has to be breaking down of inhibitions. Your non-drunk brain has more checks and balances, more fear of being embarrassed, and more concern about hurting others’ feelings.
Although I don’t feel I personally experience the same thing, given the complexity of the brain and the way alcohol interacts with the processing, I think it would wrong to say that it’s not possible alcohol can improve thought for some set of problems.
Although itcould be the reason your thinking seems so clear is because your brain is completely forgetting those 10 other nagging points as you come to your conclusion.
Ever heard of beer-goggling? Or, you know that poster with the happy-looking 50s-clip-art-guy holding a big frosty mug that says “Beer: Helping Ugly People Get Laid Since 3000B.C.” (or whenever).
Apply this concept to your own intellectual self-assessment while fitshaced. Some pretty damn hideous things become downright adorable when viewed through booze-colored glasses. I have had the toe-curling experience of listening to a tape-recording of myself wax idiotic while almost incoherently drunk. It was an archival gift to me from some of my “friends” in undergrad, who felt waking my overhung self with the sounds of my oral diarrhea turned up to ghetto-blasting volume was a fine “good-morning”. Words cannot describe the horror.
A life free of threats and stress that are money related. It seems like my major goals are just to avoid pain. I have no positive goals, just goals designed to avoid negative things.
No better, no worse than average mediocrity is no goal at all.
Any one can achieve better than average with just a little effort.
Most anyone can achieve excellence if he is willing to apply himself!
OR…
I think sometimes, when drunk, people don’t suffer from as many distractions; perhaps what you were experiencing was not clarity so much as focus; you’re able to get that tunnel-vision to solve a problem.
Of course, just as often, I find that drunkenness leads to being more easily distracted. It’s one or the other.
I actually think that “more clearly” is something you seriously have to reconsider BECAUSE of drinking. Your assumption is that drinking makes you terrifically stupid, and this assumption isn’t wrong. But it also knocks you enough off kilter from your normal way of seeing things that you realize that the brand of stupidity and foolish thinking that you have when drunk is disturbingly similar to that which you have when sober.
