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Vernon Scannell

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from The Tiger and the Rose: An Autobiography

It must be difficult for rational, non-drinking people to understand why heavy drinkers go on knocking themselves out with alcohol, wasting countless hours in bars, squandering money, energy and even, sometimes, wit and invention, and then, the next day or in the case of large-scale booze-ups over the next two or three days, suffering fairly intense physical and mental distress. I have sometimes wondered if the hangover is not unconsciously desired by the boozer, that he feels a need for it just as some people gamble heavily because they crave the punishment of losing, for both the hangover — about which I know quite a lot and the compulsive gambler's reckless plunges into the sense of loss — about which I can only guess — seem to me experiences that offer parallels with, or perhaps parodies of, mystical states of consciousness; and most of us, who are deprived through lack of faith of the more orthodox and authentic forms of religious experience, are still assailed, perhaps more often than we know, by 'a hunger ... to be more serious'.

poetrymagazines' note: Copyrighted work reproduced from Collected Poems of Vernon Scannell 1950-1993 (Faber) with kind permission of the Estate of Vernon Scannell.

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