The self-chosen storm of drunkenness

Others are led around into the opposite passions. They are despairing, downcast, full of pain and tears, fearful of every noise, easily terrified. The same wine, in different conditions of bodies, produces different passions in the souls. For when it makes the blood diffuse and bloom out toward the surface, it renders people bright, pleasant, and cheerful. But when it presses down the body's condition by its weight, constricting and crushing the blood, it leads them around into the opposite disposition. And why should I speak of the crowd of remaining passions? The difficulty of their character, their quickness to anger, their fault-finding, the instability of their soul, the shouting, the uproar, their easy seduction into every deceit, their unrestrained rage? The lack of self-control toward pleasures flows straight out as from a spring of wine, and the disease rushes in together with the unmixed wantonness, showing every frenzy of grazing animals toward the female to be second to the outrage of drunkards. For the irrational animals know the boundaries of nature, but drunkards seek the female in the male and the male in the female. It is not easy to go through in speech all the evils that come from drunkenness. The harms from a plague come upon people over time, as the air gradually introduces its corruption into their bodies; but the harms from wine rush in immediately. For having lost their souls in this way, so as to be marked with every stain, they further corrupt the very condition of their body. They are not only worn out and dissipated by the excess of pleasures that goad them toward lust, but they also carry a body made flabby and bloated by its very bulk, with its vital tone dissolved. Their eyes are livid, their surface is pale, their breath is labored, their tongue is slack, and their cry is inarticulate. Their feet totter like those of children, and their excretions flow out on their own as from lifeless bodies. Pitiable in their luxury, they are more pitiable than those storm-tossed at sea, whom wave after wave, overtaking and submerging them, does not allow to rise from the swell. So too the souls of these people are carried beneath the surface, sunk in wine. Therefore, just as storm-tossed ships, when they become waterlogged, are necessarily lightened by throwing out the cargo, so for these people the removal of what weighs them down is necessary. For by vomiting and spewing forth, they are barely freed from the weight. They are so much more pitiable than those who sail badly, in that the latter blame the winds and the sea and external necessities, while the former draw upon themselves a self-chosen storm from drunkenness. The demon-possessed person is pitiable; but the drunkard, suffering the same things, is not even worthy of pity, since he wrestles with a self-chosen demon. They even compound drugs for drunkenness, not to avoid suffering something terrible from wine, but to contrive not to stop being drunk. For the day is short for them, and the night is short, even the winter night, compared to the time of drinking. And there is no end to the evil. For wine itself leads itself on to more. It does not relieve the need, but creates an unavoidable need for another drink, inflaming the drunkards and always summoning them toward the desire for more.