What it feels like to be DRUNK

“But now I discovered the wonderful power of wine.  I understand why men become drunkards.  For the way it worked on me was—not at all that it blotted out my sorrows—but that it made them seem glorious and noble, like sad music, and I somehow great and reverend for feeling them.  I was a great, sad queen in a song.  I did not check the big tears that rose in my eyes.  I enjoyed them.  To say all, I was drunk; I played the fool.”  Queen Orual, from “Till We Have Faces,” by C.S. Lewis

“Do not be drunk with wine, which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.” 

Paul to the church in Ephesus

I don’t know what it feels like to be drunk, but I have friends who do, and they describe it like C.S. Lewis did through Orual.  Drama.  Dramatization of emotion.

I used to be a bouncer witnessing drunkenness.  Sometimes it was annoying.  Most of the time it was sad.  People seemed to want to be free to feel whatever they were feeling.  Sad.  Angry.  Desperate to be happy.  Desperate for intimacy.  Lonely. 

Sometimes they’d talk to me like a long lost friend.  Confessions.  Open.  I’d listen to them being themselves, until they sobered.  The next day they’d either not remember, or act like they didn’t remember.

This bothered me.

Why can’t we always be like we are when we are drunk?

As Pink sang,

“How do I feel this good sober?”

My friend said that he felt with the Spirit of God what He tried to feel when he was buzzed.

But it didn’t end or cause him to lose control.

He felt what scriptures call “perfect peace.” "Peace that surpasses all understanding."

The Peace of God.

Others feel the joy they sought in the bottle.  Real joy.  As the scriptures say,

“In your presence, there is fullness of joy, at your right hand, there are pleasures ever more.”

Some felt uninhibited by the Spirit, because “The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

Others felt bold, because they “received power when the Spirit came upon them, and became witnesses of Jesus to the ends of the earth.”

Some felt connected to people they’d never met, because they all “drank of one Spirit,” and were all filled with the water that satisfies forever.

I don’t know what it feels like to be drunk with wine, or high on drugs.

I don’t know what it feels like to cry, or laugh, or sing with a crowd of my drunken friends.

But I know what it feels like to be connected to God.

And I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything…at all.