A man may feel so completely thwarted that he seeks no form of satisfaction, but only distraction and oblivion. He then becomes a devotee of “pleasure.” That is to say, he seeks to make life bearable by becoming less alive. Drunkenness, for example, is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher

Conquest of Happiness, Part 1, ch. 1 “What Makes People Unhappy?” (1930)
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