“We had long talks when I would still her forebodings by telling her that men of genius conceived their best projects when drunk; that the most majestic constructions of philosophic thought were so derived.” (Page 2, Big Book)
When I was drinking, I hated my life, by and large.
But when I was drunk, there were moments I loved my life.
In other words, a chemical switched me from ‘hating my life’
to ‘loving my life’.
Was there something wrong with my brain, and the chemical
fixed it?
Quite possibly. But then one should conclude: I did not hate
my life, because the cause of the hating was not my life but my brain
chemistry. My brain chemistry created a condition of hating, and that hating
projected itself onto my life.
So, is the same the case when I was drunk? In that case, the
brain chemistry created the feeling of loving, and that loving projected itself
onto my life.
It is possible, however, that the sober condition was
pathological, and the alcohol corrected it, so that when I ‘loved my life’, I
was loving the thing as it actually was, because the block had been removed.
The two theories are therefore as follows:
1. All emotional conditions are unreal. They are simply
created by the brain, and they merely seem to be ‘about’ my life. In fact, they’re
about nothing at all. They are automatically generated states. If two people ‘react’
to a particular circumstance differently, it is brain programming that is
producing the ‘reaction’, so it’s not a reaction at all. Life becomes a trigger
not a cause. Its content does not condition the content of the reaction.
2. All emotional conditions sober are unreal. They are
simply created by the brain, and they merely seem to be ‘about’ my life. The
emotional condition drunk, however, is an actual response to my life, because
the brain, once it has the chemical in it, ceases to be a factor, steps aside, and
merely becomes the channel for life making an ‘impression’ on me as life really
is.
1. would hold that everything is an illusion, almost an
optical illusion, as it were.
2. would hold that everything is an illusion, unless one is
wearing the ‘corrective goggles’, and the corrective goggles restore perfect
sight.
I don’t believe either system.
Re 1. If all is merely a biological illusion, it should be a
fairly simple matter to recognise the fact, continue to see everything as the
body dictates, but be completely untroubled by it, knowing it to be unreal.
After all, what one sees and feels is merely an illusion. It’s a state rendered
by the body, and that state has nothing to do with one’s life. There would be no point in ‘correcting’
it, because one would simply be going from one biological state to another. In
other words, no one ever feels anything about anything at all. Life and everything
in it are incapable of producing an effect on a person. What is felt is merely
biologically determined. Tellingly, the emotions persist and continue to be
believed in, even after this notion is presented and understood. This is why I
do not believe this system. In other words, I really do believe that life is
worthy of reaction, and we really are reacting to life.
It is possible that one cannot see through the illusion
because consciousness itself, and not just substantive content, is part of the illusion,
but then why is consciousness able to go so far as to formulate these ideas but
then fail at the final hurdle of drawing the final logical conclusion that,
since everything is an illusion, one need not be bothered by a damn thing? That
would be a very particular piece of genetic coding, impossibly arbitrary, and
therefore implausible: the human being is not really reacting to anything, can
recognise this, but is biologically conditioned to not quite believe it and
thus be released. That would be a trick of monstrous cruelty, and one would have to posit an evil god to explain it, which places us in an entirely different universe.
Re 2. This is even more preposterous. It would suggest that
people who are drunk or high on cocaine have merely had chemical blocks to true
sight removed and are better in touch with reality than anyone else. This is
the origin of Bill’s quotation above. Are drunks more in touch with reality?
Are people on amphetamines more in touch with reality? Are people on ketamine
more in touch with reality? We need not argue against this. The answers are
self-evident. So much for theory 2.
Dispensing with this, we have what is actually going on: I am reacting to life, and what I feel is a result of my reaction to life. What I see and therefore feel is up to me. When character defects such as pride, anger, envy, gluttony, sloth, covetousness, lust are permitted to reign, my perception and my feeling are altered. When they’re cleared up, my vision is clearer and my emotions are regulated. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.