The experience of the self as drunk
In this section we examine how Alison presents her engagement with alcohol as an experience of flux, oscillation and instability. We introduce the analysis with an extract which presents some of the main features of Alison’s engagement with alcohol. It also vividly illustrates how Alison turns to metaphors to describe her experience, a feature frequently repeated during the interview:
Some big wave, you know, you just get caught with it, that’s what it used to be like, this kind of like helpless feeling, just having to go and get drunk almost, you know, not even particularly wanting to, just feeling like there’s no other way when you are in that situation.
I was very much at sea, really, and, I didn’t feel grounded . . . just this flux and thought, when am I ever going to go on land . . . and even if you were sitting on the beach, you know, you’d get caught back in, I suppose, and now, now I feel very much like I’m not just on the beach but I’m in a hut somewhere, I can go down to the water when I want and occasionally maybe like give in to it now and again to see what comes up.
The metaphors used here capture Alison’s engagement with alcohol as an experience of flux, of oscillation, instability, being lost at sea, not grounded, helplessly caught back by the wave when attempting to pause in the constant flux engulfing her. As a contrast to the fluid imagery underscored by the presence of alcohol (itself a liquid), a desire for stability and safety is expressed in metaphors of being grounded, on land, on the beach, in a hut. The water presenting at once both the risk of being engulfed and at the same time the horizon of possibility, the allure of excitement in exploring what comes up in giving in to the wave. The use of metaphors here and throughout the interview reveals emotional and imaginative nuances in Alison’s relationship with alcohol. These metaphors encapsulate what emerges throughout in the interview as a key to the dilemma at the heart of Alison’s ambivalence about alcohol, constantly hovering between what she symbolizes here in the metaphoric expressions of ‘sea’ and ‘land’.(Shinebourne and Smith 2009, 153)
References
Shinebourne, Pnina, and Jonathan A. Smith. 2009. “Alcohol and the self: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of the experience of addiction and its impact on the sense of self and identity.” Addiction Research & Theory 17 (2): 152–67. doi:10.1080/16066350802245650.