Being Tipsy

Okay, I admit, yesterday I was initiated into an already not-so-exclusive club. One that has been around for millennia, one that you'd expect me to have joined at the age of 12 like the rest of the first world's teenagers, but no. I only experienced it yesterday.

I got drunk. Well, maybe not drunk, I don't know; I think 'very tipsy' would be the better terminology. I didn't puke and I felt good the next morning and remembered the night with clarity, but I most certainly was not of regular mind last night. I had an array of alcohol and the result, I must confess, was fantastic. The edges of your eyes begin to haze and the world develops this dream-like quality. Things slow down -- not immensely, but enough for jumping or swaying from side to side to feel amazing. The alcohol itself is disgusting (unless it's an alcopop; they tasted good. The stronger stuff were all disgusting), but it's the effect, psychological and physical, I realise, that makes people go back for more. I kept telling anybody who would listen at the time:

"My god, this is fantastic. It feels like... It feels like my social barriers have been evaporated. I'm still myself; I completely understand the world (as far as I did before) and I still recognise right and wrong, I'm not about to do anything stupid, but those barricades are gone. I feel like I can speak to anybody. I feel invincible. This must be how extremely sociable extroverts feel all the time; man, it's incredible. No wonder people are alcoholics; why would anybody not want to feel this way?"

My head is perpetually filled with a myriad of buzzing ideas anyway, but with those barriers gone, I felt like I could transmit them continuously to everybody. We were taking a walk in our drunken haze and I asked my friend if he's tired (we were going up a hill), and his response was, "I'm tired from talking to you, not walking". I took it as a compliment because he said "tired from" not "tired of". I just wanted to talk about the future, I wanted to know what everybody wanted to do, I wanted to talk about ideas, and feelings, and motivations, and love, and science, and art, and philosophise everything. I'm like that sober, but a lot more introvertedly. When I'm sober I'm hyper-aware of the fact that not everybody wants to talk about that all the time, but when you're unsober, tipsy, drunk, it matters not! Because it's interesting and if they would just listen, they will be interested! And it works! I mean, I wasn't off my mind enough to fail to realise if somebody didn't want to talk -- as I said before, I still had a sound perception of reality -- but the boundaries were gone and I found people were willing.

It really is amazing, being not too drunk, but not too sober. It's definitely something I would do again. I think it was also so great because I was with my friends and so it was even more enjoyable, but as my friend and I pointed out, "We could talk to anyone, anyone at all. There's no worry any more."

I honestly feel I have more to learn from my tipsy self than just it feels amazing and I wish I could be tipsy all the time. Those barriers have been exposed, now a spotlight shines on them. I am starkly aware that they are there, more so than before. This can only help, I think. Perhaps now, when sober, I can convince myself to climb over the barriers. Which isn't the same as invincibly smashing through them when drunk, but all the same, it's something worth considering.

Pictures, naturally. (I've become The Photographer now. Never in the pictures, always behind the camera. I don't really mind, though. I just like capturing the moment.)


Mes amis -- Down, but not out.

"It's like a Skins line-up or something" -- the one kneeling, in the sunglasses


Comments

  1. Anonymous26 July 2011 at 15:23

    Oh, I do love alcohol haha :D
    And if you think that's great, wait til you try some pot.

    ReplyDelete

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