Do people drink so as to ‘think less’ (presumably about worrisome thoughts) or to see their worrisome thoughts as ‘less real’?
My own experience is of forgetting certain details – some names of people, places, events when I have a drink or two. Things I had ‘access’ to while sober – now seem to be just out of reach. In that sense drink appears to cause forgetting (and may also be a good way of creating the ‘tip of the tongue phenomenon’).
But even when I do remember something i.e. an emotional memory like a ‘worry’ – that worry now seems to be ‘at a distance’ in some way. Is the ‘distance’ I am feeling from that worry – a type of:
i) emotional desensitization
ii) an inability to keep that worry in memory for long enough for it to feel ‘painful’
iii) a lowering of ‘belief’ in the reality of this thought?
Or something else?
Insight Junkie 