A thought on alcohol

I have this notion that people become addicted to alcohol because people want to experience something genuine and true.

Alcohol lowers and diminishes inhibitions.  This causes people to overstep their self-prescribed boundaries to express themselves more liberally.  Alcohol leads groups of people to forget about insecurities to generally have a good time together.

What people become addicted to, I think, is the condition of genuine closeness they feel with other people, but they project this desire for human relations onto the alcohol since it's the alcohol that catalyzes these events.  It's like loving the gasoline because we enjoy a nice car ride through the city or the countryside-- it's a displaced feeling of gratitude; we appreciate the connection, but we hold the alcohol responsible.

However, the alcohol does nothing but bring to the surface what we feel and desire.  The more alcohol, it seems, the less inhibited, and so the more likely that a person will act on their immediate feelings-- no matter how untrue those feelings may seem in a bigger context.

A group of strangers may find themselves acting in every way like friends after a few drinks one night, but upon meeting again in a sober environment, they are again seemingly distant, as if all the conversations of that night had been nothing but an act encouraged by the alcohol.  But what I think is that-- it is the night that had been genuine, and the ensuing awkwardness the act, put on by the insecurities and distance that people carefully construct around themselves.

But then that leads to the question.. why is it that we even need a social tool to catalyze circumstances into becoming mellifluous?

The only other place I've seen such carefree socializing with such personally genuine conversations in large groups has been... a church.  I think people crave alcohol because they crave truthful interactions without the weight and hindrance of insecurities.  And churches have been the only other places I've really ever seen that.

Well, at least that's what I think, anyway.