Oxford: mental state spot-the-difference

I spend time in different mental states, but it is surprisingly hard to say how they are different from one another. For instance, I just got back from a friend’s birthday dinner, which involved more wine consumption than my typical few hours of life, and I strongly suspect that my experience is different from usual.

But how is it different? My visual field doesn’t seem to contain anything I can pinpoint as anomalous. My experience seems to basically be one of looking at that, and being aware of my own motions it, and having some thoughts that are about stuff I might do soon or inane imaginary conversations with people not present, or details of stuff that I decide to do. Nothing that unusual. It seems to contain more than the usual number of thoughts that are just very positive assessments of alcohol. But I feel like it would be surprising if that were the fundamental difference. (Although I suppose a drug that mostly instills a passionate interest in that drug would sooner or later make it into the highest ranks of drug popularity).

If I had to guess, somehow things seem cosier and more okay. As if the space around me, that I am in, is a cosy little room where everything is okay, and through the windows I can see all kinds of things going on–people talking to me, furniture, ‘problems’, whatever–but, well it is not so much that things can’t touch me, as that them touching me wouldn’t really touch me. Or, nothing wouldn’t warrant flinching. Much like being a person who has to respect walls and so on, and then becoming a ghost who can just walk through them. Also, somehow things seem more like amber liquid and less like cotton wool made of concrete than usual. These are good in combination, because often coziness is encumbering–for instance if it is got by being in a onesie under a large dog–but this is like fluid, athletic coziness. The unflinching ease of walking through walls with the freedom to jump through them… This is all the kind of thing I’d say if I had to guess.

So those are some stories I can make up–but in what sense do they seem true to me? Why did I say them? Can I pinpoint anything about my experience that makes it seem more or less like liquid vs. cotton wool? How can ‘things’ seem those ways? Which ‘things’? Is that chair in front of me more okay than usual? If I were dropped into my body five seconds ago, how would I tell if these ‘things’ were cozy or not? What am I looking at?

I wish I knew, because having access to such mental states at other times would be nice. But I don’t even know what I’m looking for, at the other times.

I also wish I knew, because without understanding the space in which my mental states move, it seems they could move somewhere entirely wrong, and I wouldn’t even be able to put a finger on what had happened, or find my way back. And even if they stay where they are, it probably isn’t the best, and there are perhaps huge gains to be had by finding a path to somewhere better.