I'm obsessed with observing street alcoholics. This is partly, no doubt, owing to the fact that I, despite my tender years am\was (delete according to semantic taste) a "recovering" alcoholic. What I think fascinates me, and what was an important factor in my own dipsomania, is the idea that the alcoholic is like a piece of performance art, with himself as the canvas. Again in my own case, at that point of my life i didn't want to do anything, but I had all this energy, so it turned inwards, and so I gained a goal, that of self-destruction. I was and remained fascinated by the physical specimen of alcoholism; the other day I was walking near the sea, by posh seaside houses. It was a nice day, hot but thanks to the sea air not unbearably so, and fresh with morning. And far ahead of along the deserted road I noticed the shuffling gait of the chronic drinker. It's called peripheral neuropathy, I think - the nerves in one's feet are destroyed by alcohol, and so it causes pain to walk normally, and so one walks on the balls of the feet. This particular guy looked really bad, I saw as I got closer. For each step he took forward, his body would compel him to shuffle to the side, so he had the uneven pace and progression of a zombie. A zombie is exactly right - what fascinates me in the alcoholic is the non-humanity. One becomes both internally and externally non-human. Internally one is reduced to an animal; one is reduced to seeking alcohol like an animal seeks food - higher mental faculties apart perhaps from guilt are shut off. Externally, one becomes, i think, recognizably different - there is something otherwordly in the eyes of an addict, again perhaps something animalistic
( I'm reminded of Rilke:
MIT allen Augen sieht die Kreatur
das Offene. Nur unsere Augen sind
wie umgekehrt und ganz um sie gestellt
als Fallen, rings um ihren freien Ausgang.
Was draußen ist, wir wissens aus des Tiers
Antlitz allein; denn schon das frühe Kind
wenden wir um und zwingens, daß es rückwärts
Gestaltung sehe, nicht das Offne, das
im Tiergesicht so tief ist. Frei von Tod.

The creature gazes into openness with all
its eyes. But our eyes are
as if they were reversed, and surround it,
everywhere, like barriers against its free passage.
We know what is outside us from the animal’s
face alone: since we already turn
the young child round and make it look
backwards at what is settled, not that openness
that is so deep in the animal’s vision. Free from death.)

So yeah, there you go.