Originally Posted by EndGameNYC

Your brain and central nervous system are attacked, and eventually leveled by an alien invader, alcohol. You then putter along at a snail's space for months and years, unable to accelerate no matter how hard you try, which leads to a near-complete standstill.

You put down the drink -- the aliens are beaten off -- and then rebuilding begins. Your brain and CNS have become unfamiliar with functioning without these externally imposed restrictions. They go nuts in their efforts to rebuild, repair and restart. Your physiology and biology are now flying at the speed of light. PAWS ensues. The mad rush to make things as they were is too much for us, so we suffer the inevitable symptoms of repair and regrowth. Time is needed in order to do a good job, and the workers become restless, even despairing. Patience, now in very short supply, is needed.

Over time, we may think that it wasn't so bad living under the supression of the aliens. "At least I didn't have to go through all this suffering and do all this work...they did it for me. They also told me what to do, made me feel disgusted with myself, and took away everything dear to me in life, but I didn't have to worry about things like being happy."

So we invite the aliens back at a time when we're feverishly rebuilding. We slam the breaks on our progress while driving at one hundred miles per hour. And the devastation recurs, only this time, the work seems harder, and hope dims as we struggle to get back to the progress we achieved in the absence of alcohol. Each time the invaders return, we face an increasingly daunting task to rebuild, our enthusiasm tempered and our patience challenged in the extreme, while the damage only gets worse.