The various types of altered consciousness--drunkenness, ecstatic hallucinogenic states and acute
neural stimulation--represent ways in which rational individuals exercise an impact on the realities
in which they are anchored, as opposed to quiescently accepting their circumstances. It
might be argued in the light of this that they are therefore comparable to artistic creativity.
Furthermore, in that they decorate and dynamize the world around us just when it has come to be
perceived as bleached and static, these intoxicated states may also activate a critical faculty in us
that prompts us to make judgements about the everyday world, and ask ourselves why it is we
should wish to alter it so regularly.
Out of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication, Stuart Walton