Well, breathing alters me, at a molecular level. Everything does. But I think you know that isn’t what I’m talking about.

Here’s an example. In the movie Annie Hall, Annie and Alvy are about to have sex. Annie wants to smoke marijuana first. Alvy doesn’t want her to. “It relaxes me,” she explains, and Alvy replies, “Oh, so you have to be artificially relaxed?”

It doesn’t matter to me that most people who drink don’t become violent or angry, or the opposite of themselves. They become something — something they wouldn’t be otherwise. An artificial alteration: that is what I dislike. It skeeves me out. Think of it as a gag reflex. Or a phobia. Irrational, perhaps, but no less real.