As long as we have intoxication

How has the alchemy of ethyl alcohol on the human brain been able to produce such powerful cultural and symbolic universes? This is the subject of this reflection on intoxication. In the literal sense, intoxication comes from a vegetal gem, either from the vine or from cereals transformed into a drink, a source of life. But symbolism has taken hold since antiquity of this mental transformation, of this metamorphosis of consciousness, beyond reason, logic, and the prison of reality. Similar to madness, transgression, and dreams, the primary intoxication, that of wine and all alcoholic beverages and spirits, has inspired magnificent symbolisms since antiquity. In Greece, it is the controversial god Dionysus, taken up by the Romans under the name Bacchus, leading processions of maenads, satyrs, bacchantes, mixing exaltation and sexuality, "comic" violence (the Greek komos is a phallic procession) and pleasure. It is also the vine, a divine gift, that causes an innocent patriarch Noah a scandal associating immodesty with recklessness. A celebration of life, intoxication is sacred. Its effects are excessive and contradictory. The ebrius ego is alone in the affective communion of the Banquet according to Plato. Intoxication is associated with the dangerous artifices of imaginary paradises. Just as the god-monster Dionysus, inspirer of all creation, is rejected in the name of Apollo, but active within us, intoxication is condemned and celebrated. Spartan educators teach their children to disdain the "drunken helot" - Rabelais extols the "well-drunk," worshippers of the Divine Bottle. Because intoxication, the physical power of divine drinks, escapes towards other thrills. Lovers, mystics, transcendents, devotees all testify to intoxications without any alcohol. They are intoxicated with passion, happiness, God, humanity, but also intoxicated with power, money, anger, hatred... The privileged domain of immaterial intoxications is certainly that of artistic and poetic creation, up to the demand for the "derangement of all senses" (Rimbaud). And there are also the intoxication of knowledge, of reason, that of the mathematician, that of the engineer. Depending on the eras and civilizations, one can perceive major territories of intoxication: Greco-Latin antiquity, Western Middle Ages, Arabo-Persian Islam, China and Japan, with their poets, artists, musicians, thinkers, mystics. From Matisse to Hiroshige, from Baudelaire to Hâfiz, from Rabelais to Nietzsche, from Proust to Kerouac and many others...