" Alcohol, it was said, liberated people. But nobody here wanted liberation, or would have known what to do with it. Alcohol was usually drunk in an intimate atmosphere, and an intimate atmosphere was one fraught with problems. You were compelled to conform, to respect the spreading sense of closeness in a group. If you didn’t, you were punished. If you sat by yourself thinking in a room full of the fug of intimacy, people asked you what was wrong or if you were bored, and from there it would escalate until you were being blamed as an energy-suck and a gloomy bastard. When drinking, if someone made even the dumbest joke, you had to laugh. "

― Ryū Murakami , From the Fatherland, with Love