Back in September, Cheesy had had an argument with a guy about whether drunken happiness was as authentic as sober happiness. Cheesy’s argument had been that happiness is simply a chemical state in the brain, so it doesn’t matter whether happiness comes about via alcohol or otherwise. The guy had come up with a wicked rebuttal, but Cheesy couldn’t remember it anymore because she had been drinking at the time of the argument.
Which means the question still holds: if we synthesize happiness from such trickery as alcohol or self-deception, are we falling short of “real” happiness?
It turns out that many people have asked themselves the same question before Cheesy. Some have even taken the initiative to research an answer. For example, Dan Gilbert and Barry Schwartz make the case that people are happiest with what they’ve got when they know they can’t have anything else. The more alternatives and opportunities people have, the less happy they are with the status quo – even though you’d expect that having more choices would make people happiest. Researchers call this inverse relationship between happiness and freedom of choice “the paradox of choice” (see link above).
In theory, then, we could manufacture our own happiness just by telling ourselves, “I’ve got no other choice; this is how it’s gotta be.” Or, we could choose not to inform ourselves about alternatives to what we have. In fact, we synthesize happiness all the time when we conclude a bad episode with the words, “It was for the best.” By imagining that our choices were limited, we make ourselves happy with how things actually are. It’s called happiness synthesis.
Gilbert’s research has suggested that “synthesized” happiness is more potent than “natural” happiness. That is, we are happier in situations that we feel are inevitable than in situations that we’ve chosen from a set of alternatives. For example, you come back from a trip around the world with gifts for your friends. If you just give your friend Lou a gift, he’ll be thrilled with it. But if you present Lou an array to choose from, he’ll be less happy with the gift he’s chosen than the one he’d have if you had forced a gift upon him – even if he gets to choose his favorite in the array. The synthesized happiness he feels with the imposed gift (“Ha! I bet none of the other gifts were as great as this one”) is stronger than the natural happiness he feels when he chooses his gift (“Yay, I’ve gotten the best of the lot! But what if I’d chosen….”)
So, we can synthesize happiness when we perceive the status quo as inevitable, and synthesized happiness is actually more potent than the happiness that comes from having chosen amongst a set of alternatives. This is a pretty momentous discovery. It stands against some fundamental values in North America. All that freedom and opportunity we strive for might not make us as happy as we think. We can now turn to Cheesy’s original question: if synthesizing happiness is one of the most effective ways of boosting happiness, and if we can synthesize happiness through drugs and alcohol, then is inebriation actually a more effective way of achieving happiness than sobriety? Should we all be getting drunk, all the time?
First thing’s first: not every drunk is a happy drunk. Reactions like violence, paranoia, and illness can happen under the influence. Especially when you get addicted. The more you consume, the more you need to consume to achieve the same level of happiness you originally felt. Second thing’s second: happiness is actually not all there is to life. Valued activities like working hard, travelling, or sharing nice memories would be quashed by being constantly intoxicated. If you don’t care about anything but happiness, then cheers.
Third thing’s third: you can remember sober happiness, since it’s a conscious happiness. It follows that the effects of sober happiness can a last long time. When you’re drunk, you can be happy as a peach, but you’ll forget it all in a matter of hours. So, you have to get drunk again. And then you forget again. And the cycle repeats until, voilà! You’re an alcoholic. (We must not beg the question by assuming alcoholism is a bad thing, which is precisely the subject of this debate. But it’s a tough argument to make that addiction to anything, alcohol included, is good.) (Can addiction be a good thing?)
And a fourth thing – soberly happy people tend to spread their happiness everywhere they go. They want to share. A happy drunk can be happy alone or with a few buddies. If the buddies aren’t drunk, they’ll probably just be annoyed at their friend’s drunkenness. So while sober happiness is multiplicative, intoxicated happiness can actually be isolating. Then again, if everyone else is drunk too, who cares? But a fifth thing. With reason or not, the West does consider alcoholism and drug use a bad thing. So if you’re drunk all the time, you’ll probably be subject to shame and stigmatization. Shame is generally not conducive to happiness. So, given the actual values of our society, booze and drugs may not be the most effective paths to happiness.
Sixth of all, we must not forget the voice of the brooders and purists. They insist that drunken happiness just isn’t legit because it comes from somewhere instead of arising spontaneously as a personal reaction to events. I sympathize with them. However, their argument begs the question by assuming that manufactured happiness is less valuable than natural happiness. This is precisely the assumption that we are putting to question.
Seventh and last, Gilbert and Schwartz’ research promotes happiness that is synthesized when we’re stuck with what we’ve got – not happiness that is synthesized when alcohol enters our bloodstream. A group of students who get drunk are not happy because they knew they had no other choice but to drink. They are happy because of the chemical effect of alcohol on their brain. I don’t know about any research indicating whether the way in which happiness is synthesized matters. Maybe that’s just the kind of research we need, to solve the matter for once and for all. The point is that the happiness synthesized from stubborn optimism is not clearly equivalent to the happiness synthesized from alcohol. So we can’t conclude that alcohol-synthesized happiness is valuable just because optimism-synthesized happiness is.
I know people who drink to celebrate life and people who drink to forget life. In the end, you have a choice – and that’s maybe what makes it hardest. If the world simply forbade alcohol, then we wouldn’t drink, and according to the research we’d all be pretty happy with our lack of choice. To me, a good rule of thumb is that if you can remember your happiness, then it doesn’t matter whether or how it was synthesized. Happiness that vanishes without a trace isn’t worth much.
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