Drunkenness – Proverbs 20:1

What happens in the brain when you drink alcohol?  According to iflscience.org, in the first half an hour or so of drinking, you’re going to experience stimulating effects and euphoria. Alcohol reduces your inhibitions and will release a little dopamine – the brain’s big reward molecule – so you’re going to feel good.  Then the depressive effects kick in…you’re becoming clumsier, you’re not reacting to situations as quickly and your vision can start to get more blurry.  Alcohol is known to increase the effects of the inhibitory transmitter Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA) in the brain. GABA is a neurotransmitter that dampens responses. This causes the sluggish movements and impaired speech that alcohol is known for…alcohol depresses the behavioral inhibitory centers in the cerebral cortex, making you more likely to do things, or [be] someone, that you wouldn’t if you were sober.

Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise. (Proverbs 20:1, ESV)

Proverbs 31:4 – It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink,

Proverbs 21:17 – Whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man; he who loves wine and oil will not be rich.

Proverbs 23:29,30 – Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaining? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? Those who tarry long over wine; those who go to try mixed wine.

Proverbs 23:31 – Do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly.

Proverbs 31:6 – Give strong drink to the one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress

Isaiah 5:11 – Woe to those who rise early in the morning, that they may run after strong drink, who tarry late into the evening as wine inflames them!

Isaiah 5:22 – Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink,

Have you ever thought of some kind of inanimate thing mocking you?  We know rather that it is our own brains pulling on us to indulge something that will harm us and so it seems that, as in this case, that the lure of alcohol is mocking us.  It is telling us that we are foolish for saying no to it, but then when we yield the consequences are damaging, and we are telling ourselves what idiots we have been.  This could apply equally to some of the things or ways we eat, or the ways we take chances, etc.

But here the focus is on the foolishness of getting tipsy or of drinking too much alcohol.  It leads to the negation of sound judgment, one typical form of that being brawling or getting into arguments and fights.  It becomes that which controls us instead of wisdom.  It lowers our beneficial inhibitions and moves us to act sinfully.

Psalm 104:14–15 presents another side to this issue when it tells us about God, “You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart.”  It is the folly of human beings to take what is a good gift and so indulge in it that it becomes a curse.