“Why do you do this to yourself every weekend?” That’s what I asked the guys on my hall during my Freshman year in college. Most of them went to parties on Friday and Saturday nights and thus spent significant daytime hours of every weekend with the headaches and the nausea of a hangover. “You just have to try it,” was the response I got. They thought they were having fun, but I wasn’t that interested in any activity that would make me feel like I had the flu.

Solomon wasn’t either. Now, remember, he was no prude, no prig. In Ecclesiastes 2:3, he points out that he knew how to use wine for enjoyment without going too far. But even that, he says, was as useful as trying to catch the wind (Ecclesiastes 2:11).

And in today’s passage, he points out the danger of intoxication. Oh, the delirium and the bedspins are bad enough. The morning regrets and confusion about what you said or did can have lasting consequences. Solomon put it this way: “Your eyes will see strange things, And your mind will utter perverse things. And you will be like one who lies down in the middle of the sea, Or like one who lies down on the top of a mast” (Proverbs 23:33-34).

Yes, it might seem fun to college kids to live the lyrics of Shelly West’s “Jose Cuervo:”

Well it’s Sunday morning, and the sun is shining
In my eye that is open and my head is spinning.
Was the life of the party, I can’t stop grinning,
I had too much Tequila last night.

But even that song admits you can end up in bed with someone you don’t remember. Just so, drunkenness often leads to broken relationships and broken health, or as Solomon puts it, to woe and sorrow, to contentions and complaining, and even to personal injury (Proverbs 23:29). Worse yet, it often leads to the slavery of addiction, which can’t put down the bottle. No, it turns out that the best the drunkard can hope for is not “Jose Cuervo” but Collin Raye’s “Little Rock” with its desperate attempt to restore a life destroyed by drink.

“They struck me, but I did not become ill; They beat me, but I did not know it. When shall I awake? I shall seek another drink” (Proverbs 23:35). How could living like that really be any fun?

Proverbs 23:29-35 (NASB)

29 Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaining? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes?
30 Those who linger long over wine, Those who go to taste mixed wine.
31 Do not look on the wine when it is red, When it sparkles in the cup, When it goes down smoothly;
32 At the last it bites like a serpent, And stings like a viper.
33 Your eyes will see strange things, And your mind will utter perverse things.
34 And you will be like one who lies down in the middle of the sea, Or like one who lies down on the top of a mast.
35 “They struck me, but I did not become ill; They beat me, but I did not know it. When shall I awake? I will seek another drink.”