On The Essence of Drunkenness and the Pathway to Addiction: A Phenomenological Contribution

Abstract

This essay aims to examine the essence of drunkenness in its temporal and spatial dimensions. Despite the interest shown by phenomenological literature in the study of psychopathological consequences of acute and chronic drunkenness, the essential characteristics of drunkenness have not yet been addressed in depth. This essay claims that the temporal essence of drunkenness is the overwhelming, disintegrator of temporality's condition, which converges to its own extinction in a temporality, thus encompassing a distinct ability of assimilatory magnetization of the temporal dimensions. From the spatial standpoint, the essential manifestation of the condition of drunkenness is increased materiality, expressed by means of compression and exclusivity. At last, we show how the essence of drunkenness gradually leads to instability and decrease in the consciousness' ability of temporalization, which are both typical of a general condition of addiction.