Alcohol and other drugs feel good and allow you to have a good time by allowing you to escape negative emotional experiences and just enjoy the moment: fear, social anxiety, trauma. Without those negative feelings, you would already feel good, and the alcohol would lose it's appeal.
You're confusing "drinking as a coping mechanism" and "drinking for recreation". You know what rich college students don't have a lot of? "fear, social anxiety, and trauma". Know what they do a lot of? booze, sex, and drugs. You show me the most content, meditation-and-philosophizing-on-a-Friday-night person, and I'll show you someone who could be having an even better time on MDMA.
Booze, sex, and drugs are just life's cheat codes for giving you more dopamine. The person with fear is the one who is so terrified of judgement by society, too betrothed to the idea that they'd be sinning to actually enjoy themselves, that they deny themselves extremely fun experiences.
I agree there is a difference between abuse that comes from trying to escape negative feelings, and occasional recreation use "for fun" which is mostly self limiting for overuse- once you develop tolerance, health symptoms, hangovers, etc. the appeal wanes.
> You know what rich college students don't have a lot of? "fear, social anxiety, and trauma".
However, I strongly disagree with this. They might even tell you they don't have these issues, but they are unconscious. Hard partying "rich college students" are largely practicing binge drinking, and it is to escape negative emotions. It's not true at all that being rich and privileged protects you from these things. A very common thing is wealthy kids having neglectful or emotionally unavailable parents, and being very afraid of being "unlovable," or being rejected. This is exactly what pushes kids to participate in degrading hazing rituals, binge drinking, drug use, and generally being afraid to enforce boundaries around their own health and well being for fear of being rejected or excluded.
Psychologists are starting to notice that wealthy children often have behavioral issues that look a lot like PTSD, despite being privileged [1]. These symptoms can look like those in refugee children, or war torn areas, and were previously seen as totally impossible with wealthy and privileged children [2]. But kids don't care how much is in their parents bank account: emotional abuse and trauma is what causes this, and wealth doesn't protect you from abuse.
A higher peak perhaps - but you can't be on MDMA 100% of the time, and taking MDMA effects that other time. Whether taking MDMA works out over the entirety of your life is a personal question - many find the high not worth it.
No, you're overthinking it. I'm perfectly happy when I'm sober - I have a nice house, a great relationship, a happy family and tons of hobbies. I am in no way crippled by fear, social anxiety or trauma.
Drinking with my friends makes me happy in different ways. Alcohol doesn't lose its appeal just because I'm happy while I'm sober.
I agree an occasional drink with friends is fun, and different from abusing alcohol to escape negative emotions.
However, I think your description of external circumstances to argue that you are happy is concerning to me. People are good at ignoring negative things and deluding themselves, and happiness is mostly an internal thing and can't be measured by external success. I don't know you, but people with low self esteem in a narcissist/co-dependent marriage, with "tons of hobbies" to help them escape would still say exactly what you are saying.
No, it’s not so simple. Alcohol changes the brain in ways that affect dopamine and endorphins. You literally feel pleasure and happiness… unless and until you’ve had too much of course
