Humanity behaves like an alcoholic civilization: unable to stop consuming, promising sobriety tomorrow, and mistaking stimulation for survival. Gregory Bateson’s insight that alcoholism is a disorder of communication becomes a diagnosis for our planetary condition — a species trapped in the double bind of needing growth while knowing it destroys us. The Anthropocene has a hangover in real time. Our only remedy is subtraction: not as loss, but as the final logic of survival. Eugen Georg is a Romanian-German writer and artist. Currently, he is the head of the Socio-Cultural Organisation Arrival Room.