The Stagnation of Dreams
Lyric said:
Actually, I always thought I was a social drinker. I didn't drink alone because that would mean I was an alcoholic, so I thought. I was so social that I drank to socialize---every night of the week after awhile. I'd get so impatient for the weekend that I'd start the real partying on Thursday.
Heh. Yeah, that is why I mentioned that the person is "currently" a party drinker. But as you astutely point out, it doesn't take long for them to start partying earlier and earlier until they've left 9/cups behind and moved into 7/cups.
I have a question. Why would you see the 7 of Cups in relation to addiction? Would it speak to you of the hallucinations of withdrawal or what?
The traditional 7/cups Waite image has a man in shadow--we fixate not on him (as in other cup cards where the people dominate) but, like him, give our attention to the cups. Cups filled with temptations: castles, jewels, laurel wreaths--also poisonous snakes, and cloaked figures--it is all about dreaming of what might happen. If you do this...this might happen...but if you do this instead, this might happen. You dream about all the different things that might happen, instead of doing something and seeing what will happen. And the dreaming combined with not knowing which dreams are real (and possible) and which are fantasy keep you stagnant, unmoving.
Even if you WERE to do something, which would you do? How would you choose? Which are likely and which are not?
It's very much a card related to the lotus eaters of Odysseus fame. Or, even more aptly, Eugene O'Niell's "The Iceman Cometh" about people in a bar talking about their pipedreams (how they'll make their fame and fortune one day), while drinking and doing nothing.
By itself, this is not an alchoholic card, but with the Devil? I really think that pretty much says it all in reagards to drink. Each cup speaks to the reasons why people drink--to get over fears and lonliness, to feel happy, pretty, confident. To escape reality and dream of better days or how they'll someday make it big, find true love, be happy--rather than make a real attempt to achieve something and chance failure.
Dreaming of life rather than living it is the most devilish temptation of all. And like the liquor of dreams, alchohol can becomes the be-all and end-all, replacing life and living.
And yes, those cups could contain a "drug" rather than alchohol, something like opium or marijuana most particularly. When I say The Moon = Drugs, it's because I realate the Moon to drugs that cause a more immediate and unpredictable reactions, like LSD hallucinations, Heroin trips and highs, cocaine insanity. The person taking these drugs is hit pretty instantly (i.e., doesn't have to drink down several bottles of beer over three hours) and never knows exactly what results they will get. What they will see or do.
