(b) It is one of the most ruinous of sins in its consequences (see 2472, 2473): first, for society, since a large percentage of crime, insanity, destitution, and misery is due to intemperance; secondly, to religion, since indulgence in one sensual pleasure sharpens the appetite for others, while creating a distaste for spiritual things, for effort and self-sacrifice; thirdly, to the intellect, for strong drink steals away the mind and memory; fourthly, to the body, for drunkenness not only prostrates the nervous system at the moment and has most painful after-effects in bursting headaches and disabled stomach, but it also causes permanent disasters (to brain, heart, nerves, kidneys, and liver), weakens the resistance to disease and brings on an early death; fifthly, to goods of fortune, since drunkards squander their all for drink; sixthly, to posterity, since intemperate parents transmit constitutional weakness to their children.
2482. Responsibility of Drunkard for Sins Committed While Intoxicated.—(a) If the drunkenness is fully voluntary and culpable, he is responsible for all the sins he foresaw or should have foreseen; for then these sins are willed in their cause (see 94 sqq.). Hence one who is accustomed while under the influence of liquor to blaspheme, betray secrets, quarrel, etc., should confess that he committed them while drunk, or that he was prepared to commit them in getting drunk. Under similar conditions one who misses Mass because he was drunk is responsible for the omission; one who is too drunk to attend to a business appointment and thereby causes loss to another is held to restitution. But, if grave sins are foreseen only in a very confused way, generally they will be imputable only as venial in themselves.
(b) If the drunkenness is fully voluntary and culpable, but the sins that ensued were not foreseen and could not humanly have been foreseen, the drunkard is excused at least in part from the guilt of these sins. Hence, a person who gets drunk for the first time or who usually sleeps after getting drunk is not responsible for the bad language he uses, if the thought of profanity was farthest from his mind when he became drunk. But if this person was not completely drunk and had some realization of the malice and scandal of bad language, he is at least venially guilty of profanity and scandal.
(c) If the drunkenness was involuntary, the drunken person is excused entirely in case of complete drunkenness; he is excused partially in case of incomplete drunkenness that did not exclude some realization of the sinfulness of what he said or did while intoxicated (see Canon 2201, Sec.3). In the civil law drunkenness is not held to be an excuse for a criminal act, but it may negative a specific intent (Robinson, _Elements of Law_, Sec.Sec.471, 525, 531).
2483. Material Cooperation in the Sin of Drunkenness—(a) If there is no grave reason for the cooperation, it is illicit. Mere hospitality is not a sufficient reason for furnishing a table with a great supply of strong drinks when some of the guests are dipsomaniacs, and mere good fellowship does not justify one who has been treated to order another round of treats if some of the drinkers are already inebriated. Parents or others in authority who get drunk before their subjects are guilty of scandal; those who encourage drunkenness are guilty of seduction; those who supply others with drink in order that these may become drunkards are guilty of formal cooperation.
(b) If there is a grave reason for cooperation, it is not illicit (1515 sqq., 1538 sqq.). Whether it is lawful to persuade another to get sinfully drunk in order to keep him from the commission of a greater evil (e.g., homicide or sacrilege), is a disputed question (see 1502).
2484. Is it lawful to make another person drunk when he will be guiltless of sin, and there is a grave reason?
(a) According to one opinion this is not lawful, because drunkenness, like impurity, is intrinsically evil and never permissible, since the end does not justify the means. Hence, just as it would be wrong to induce a drunken person to impurity, so it would also be wrong to intoxicate a child or an insane person (see 306).
(b) According to the common opinion, it is lawful to intoxicate oneself for a grave reason (see 2477 b), and hence also it is lawful to intoxicate another for a similar reason. Thus, if a criminal were about to blow up a building and destroy many lives, it would be permissible or even obligatory to put powerful intoxicants into his drink so as to make him helpless. If one were about to be roasted by cannibals and could escape by making the cannibals drunk, it would not be sinful to make them drunk.
2485. Licit Use of Narcotics.—There are a great many substances that produce the same effects on mind and body as intoxicating liquors, namely, the narcotic poisons, such as morphine, opium, chloroform, ether, or laughing gas. To them then will apply the principles given above in reference to strong drink. Thus, it would be a serious sin to make oneself insensible by using morphine, if there were no just reason; but it is lawful to take ether for an operation, gas when having a tooth pulled, morphine when it is ordered by a physician to relieve pain, etc. In his address of Feb. 24, 1957 to a symposium of the Italian Society of Anaesthesiology (_The Pope Speaks_, Summer, 1957, pp. 33 ff.) Pope Pius XII considered some special aspects of the use of drugs in the practice of analgesis. Among the questions submitted to him for consideration were the following: