No, this wasn't meant to be an intellectual justification. It just happened to be something I could associate with. Drinking (like heroin) eventually reaches the stage where the "reward" is non-existent. But, for a lot of people (witness the pub on a Friday night) this is part of the "reward" process. Call it "going out on a Friday night" if you like (thus getting rid of the alcohol-connotation). It could equally be "having dinner with someone you love" or "going to the opera". The point of my post related to the concept of reward, rather than the specifics entailed. I have no desire to get blind-laggingly drunk on a Friday night. I would rather be sitting at home watching my kid grow up (which is, perhaps, why I mentioned this first).

This is a problem related to age, I think, rather than to me specifically. When you are young, lots of things are exciting. As you get older, well, you've done most of those things, so you need rather larger things to get you excited. Now I've reached the stage where I can't even get excited by the concept of buying a new car. Now, buying another house, that's interesting. But, like I said, even though it's very easy to make a lot of money when your sole focus in life is making a lot of money, getting a quarter of a million quid in cash together just to "generate a bit of excitement" is a bit of a tall order.

Actually, I'm not really sure what I am getting at here, apart from the rather tedious point that, as one gets older, it's harder to find aything that surprises/excites/impresses.

Well, that's hardly an earth-shattering revelation, is it?