Drunk on Poetry & Endorphins: WWAS?*
* -...what would Aquinas say?
When I was young I was drunk a lot.
Not on drugs or alcohol but endorphins. Which is what your body produces during exercise, sometimes called "runner's high". (Nowadays I run but not long enough for runner's high to kick in, which is an experience somewhere between going to a bar for one beer and getting a cavity filled sans novocaine.)
I was thinking about runner's high after reading Tom's comment with regard to drunkenness, "And how like St. Thomas to regard the loss of reason as a penalty, even if it's the end sought."
It occurred to me that the deliberate loss of reason* is far more common than commonly supposed and is certainly not limited to drunkenness. James Fixx, in his Complete Book of Running said that some runners find a trance so deep that they go through stop signs or stop lights and are killed by cars. If that doesn't represent a lack of reason I don't know what does.
Sleep, of course, is another reason defier. But also day dreaming, including the sort of day dreaming prompted by reading poetry. (Is that why Plato wanted to ban poetry?) Art in general, having no utility, might be a candidate. When you go to experience something that takes you outside the body, to "erase the map" as it were, aren't you experiencing a kind of drunkenness? If so, then I'm guessing there are a lot of drunks out there.
But St. Thomas recognized that value of play, saying that "playful actions themselves considered in their species are not directed to an end: but the pleasure derived from such actions is directed to the recreation and rest of the soul, and accordingly if this be done with moderation, it is lawful to make use of fun." He goes on to say that "reason itself demands that the use of reason be interrupted at times".
Perhaps it is reasonable to assume that the amount of reason interruptus required by an individual varies, well, by individual.
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* - dictionary definition is "the capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought; intelligence."
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