Max Littman, LCSW
October 19, 2025
There’s a reason alcohol has been called “spirits.” Long before it became used as a way to numb or let loose, it was a gateway to the divine. In ancient Dionysian times, wine was more than drink: it was a ritual of communion and celebration. It dissolved boundaries, loosened inhibitions, and offered participants a fleeting experience of something larger than the individual self. The intoxication was meant to open a channel to the sacred, to what we might now call the bigger, collective Self: the unguarded, connected aliveness beneath our protections and our differences.
What was once a ritual gateway can easily become an escape hatch. For many, alcohol offers temporary relief from parts that ache, guard, or carry unbearable burdens. The first sip can feel like spaciousness: a breath where anxiety softens and the system relaxes. But the same mechanism that silences the inner cacophony can also mute connection to those parts and our Self who could help them heal.
In Internal Family Systems language, alcohol can be seen as both a potent tool for firefighters and a false prophet. Firefighters can rush in to douse pain with alcohol, protecting against the overwhelm of exiles’ grief, shame, or fear. As a false prophet, alcohol can offer an imitation of transcendence—connection without intimacy, openness without integration. The relief is real, and so are the costs: the hangover of disconnection, the dulling of vitality, the slow erosion of trust between parts that feel betrayed by the temporary reprieve that never becomes true repair.
Still, it would be simplistic to call alcohol merely a numbing agent. For some, moments of drinking have indeed brought glimpses of Self energy—laughter that feels unguarded, tears that finally fall, courage to speak truths otherwise trapped in the throat. These openings are often what make alcohol so seductive. It’s not just that it dulls pain; it hints at the freedom of being without pain. It offers a taste of the unburdened, even if fleeting. The tragedy is not in the glimpse itself, but in mistaking the chemistry for the source.
The Dionysians understood something we’ve largely forgotten: the container matters as much as the content. Their rituals were communal, rhythmic, and embodied. The ecstasy had structure. It was not private binge but collective release—a ritual with clear beginnings and endings, each woven with intention and meaning. Offerings were poured, songs were sung, and dance gave the body rhythm and boundary, transforming intoxication into sacred participation rather than merely an escape. In our culture, the ritual remains but the meaning and intentionality have been stripped away. What was once sacred is now self-medication.
That awareness of “container” has found new life in modern psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. The medicine alone is not the healing; it is the context—ritual, preparation, relational safety, and integration—that transforms the chemical into a catalyst. When practiced ethically and with care, psychedelic guides devote precious time to shaping an attuned environment for the one journeying. Plant medicines, in an unsafe or misattuned container, can retraumatize. In a sacred one, it can liberate.
Perhaps the same wisdom could apply to alcohol. In certain contexts—a communal meal, a shared toast, an evening of storytelling—alcohol can still function as a gentle loosener, helping parts feel more connected and alive when surrounded by trust and care. Safe containers for alcohol use might include clear boundaries: being among people who know and honor each other’s limits, setting intention before drinking, tending to the emotional tone of the space, and having rituals for closing the experience rather than drifting into excess. In these conditions, alcohol can sometimes rejoin its original lineage: a bridge to spirit.
Yet within the therapy world, there is a pervasive caution that often borders on condemnation. Many therapist parts carry cultural and medical-model burdens that equate all substance use with pathology. These parts have good intentions—they wish to protect, to prevent harm—but they can also inadvertently exile the very curiosity and compassion needed to understand why a part drinks. When alcohol use is mentioned in therapy, clinician protectors can stiffen: worried about liability, relapse, or “enabling.” In doing so, they may unconsciously echo a cultural voice that shames rather than inquires. This can close the space for exploration that might lead to genuine healing—and to reimagining alcohol’s use in intentional, sacred ways.
Instead of policing the behavior, we can be curious about the relationship. What does alcohol offer internally? What parts depend on it, and what exiles are they guarding? What longings might it be trying to express? By bringing Self energy to the inquiry, we can begin to disentangle the use from the user, the chemical from the calling. Alcohol, when viewed without moral charge, becomes a lighted path, showing us where connection is missing.
To approach alcohol consciously may mean remembering both its power and its peril. For some, abstinence becomes the truest honoring of what it once symbolized: reverence for the sacred within. For others, mindful use might allow a re-relationship with the ritual, bringing awareness to what it evokes internally—what it quiets, what it calls forth, what it mimics.
In the end, perhaps alcohol’s enduring presence across cultures and centuries reflects a shared human need for union—with each other and the divine. The word spirit comes from spīritus, meaning breath, life, or soul—an echo of what we instinctively long to touch when we drink. Beneath every pour may be the ancient impulse to feel the living breath of connection move through us once again.
For feedback and comments, I can be reached at max@maxlittman.com.
I provide consultation and therapy for therapists.
Purchase my new book IFS Therapy for Gay and Queer Men here.
