The Grotesque

I wonder, has it ever occurred to you that a certain analogy can be drawn between drinking and suicide? It’s very apparent to me, who can now partake of neither form of release and am, instead, literally incarcerated within my own flesh. But what the drinker would doubtless spurn is the sudden death, the sudden blessed cessation of experience, and liberation from the self, that the suicide craves. Sudden death is anathema to the drinker, for the approach to the void must be gradual, it must be attenuated.