A friend underwent some very trying times. His days and nights were visited by chilling panic and uncertainty. Anxiety attacks became unannounced visitors that took his mind from work, removed his ability to sleep, and unwound his ability to be unruffled or think rationally. He was embarrassed by it. He felt no control over his life. He was afraid. It was an overpowering, pungent pain that our empathy or reassurances could not relieve.
So he took to daily drinking. Without a cocktail he had no emotional control over himself. Indeed, when things seemed less ill-omened, he could even skip his daily drinks. And when things finally resolved enough that the future wasn’t as menacing, his drinking returned to his occasional, social level. (He also repeated over and over how humbled he had become, saying that could not imagine life if such a problem did not find a resolution.)
He told me that when the good news came that the problem may have a resolution, he wanted to ask us over for a drink to celebrate. How odd, he thought, that alcohol, which he used because he was afraid of the future, was now being used to celebrate the future.
He asked what it was about tranquilizers that had this duality of effect. How is it that the same substance which was used to separate him from his fears, which worked in a way to extinguish the pain of his anticipated emotional annihilation, was now being asked to undo the past tensions and take joy in the end of war? He found it intriguing that alcohol and tranquilizers softened our projections of a painful future, and yet they could also highlight, with euphoria, our projections of a new-found, or newly beginning, better future. “How so?” he asked.
Could it be that these substances induce a euphoria that dilutes out the pain when the future is bleak or scary, but when it doesn’t have to dilute out the bleak or scary, it leaves us with the euphoria. Is it like cooking? Can a single spice be used to cover up bad taste to make a dish less distasteful, and yet this same spice can embellish something which is already tasty? It appears so.
But it is not always so simple. Alcohol can also worsen depression, be dysphoric, unleash emotions or complicate a multitude of other variables in a person’s life.
But for the purpose of this post, we expect tranquilizers to infuse euphoria. Their ultimate effect depends on into what situation are they being infused.
