Return of the weekly bon mot

"Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is purely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness."

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Of course, that assumes that you were unhappy in the first place, Russell, you miserable git. It's not unknown for people to get drunk to celebrate a cause of happiness; or to get drunk when they are neither particularly happy nor unhappy.

With me, however, I generally feel that drunkenness distils my unhappiness - enabling me to drink it down like medicine, and get it out of my system. Ah, the endless self-justifications of the manic depressive....