We were made to be intoxicated. Altered states of consciousness are vital to the effective creative functioning of an intelligent being. I can't prove it yet, but one day it will be science, rather than just hangover justification. But I am serious, I really believe that the successful functioning of human society requires that we get ourselves completely wasted (every now and then).
Before I can explain my belief in "getting out of it", I may need to explain a little about how I see our intelligence functioning. I'll talk about this from the approach of a programmer cause it might sound more credible that way. So here comes the "Agile Development view of day to day life".
Our consciousness is one, decently complex, integrated system. Every time we make a decision, we apply our ruleset, check the results and make a few rapid updates to the code. We make these adjustments in a very ad-hoc way, based on the information at hand we make assumptions, build them into our system and then move on. No hanging around, no deliberation, just do it. We may be deliberating or hanging around up on top in our consciousness, but at an operational level, that does not happen, well, not till later.