Why do we get intoxicated?

Below I’ve given my explanation, but I very much would like to hear your thoughts on the matter as well.

From my viewpoint the main cause of getting intoxicated is because we lack understanding of how suffering (displeasure, dis-ease, unsatisfactoriness, boredom, etc) operates.

I genuinely think to understand this process requires 3 things: mindfulness, patience, and loving kindness. But without getting too complicated I’ll only break down the first two, as those alone can directly lead to understanding how the process works. Once understood, then suffering goes away on its own.

Mindfulness allows us to have that clarity and sensitivity to what’s going on right now in our body and mind, which detects the arising of unwholesome thoughts or stimuli. Without mindfulness, when there’s a trigger or some stimulus, some pressure or some temptation, then our good intentions can be swept away; and we’re quite literally oblivious to the current unpleasantness until after the damage is done.

Then there are the occasions when we do have mindfulness of unwholesome intentions, but a lack of patience. Here, even though we’re sensitive to the arising emotion/feeling, without patience, after a while the mind will just follow its own habits again and give in to the temptation.

So essentially, we have to be aware of the moment an unwholesome urge, feeling, or emotion arises, and we also have to patiently endure the feeling until it dissipates. This only works because everything in the universe is impermanent, including thoughts, feelings, and memories (I know I sound like a broken record lol). So urges and feelings will always follow the template of arising, persisting for some time, and going away. When we resist and interrupt this process, by either being unaware of the feelings within us (lack of mindfulness), or by knowing how we feel but not patiently enduring the feeling until it goes away, then we suffer. And when we suffer, to alleviate this discomfort, we get intoxicated.

It should be noted that when this process of emotions arising is interrupted, it will persist indefinitely until its allowed to pass. Intoxication delays this process. And consistently delaying the process is what leads to more severe mental states, like depression, substance abuse, anxiety, etc, which causes the cycle to continue for weeks, months, and sometimes entire lifetimes.

Long story short: the emotions/feelings/urges within us come of their own accord. We can’t control whether they arise, but they are guaranteed to come since they aren’t us. If we simply patiently sit with them until they go away, then no trouble comes. But most of the time we resist this and bottleneck the process. After a while, the bottleneck causes us to break down, blow up, or most severe of all, commit suicide.

When we get good at this is where loving kindness comes into play to permanently cease the arising of unwholesome thoughts. But for now, I think this is enough.