DY:
I don’t see anything in my question that should be hard to understand. We are privy to the debate about getting drunk every year, and the proponents of shikrus steadfastly insist that they are being machmir by losing all forms of reason. These threads are begun or recycled every year, and some commenters proclaim their holiness by getting completely smashed. Their claim is that this a great mitzvah. I claim the complete opposite. I hold that shikrus to be an abomination, and an affront of major proportion to the kedusha of Purim. The only sane argument these drunks put forward is the chumrah one.
My question is – which mitzvah are they adopting for chumrah? Are they showering Matanos Lo’evyonim on a grand scale, which would be a chumrah on one of the mitzvos hayom? Or are they giving Mishloach Manos on a grand scale, also from the mitzvos hayom? Perhaps they are making a huge seudah to benefit many, also from the mitzvos hayom? Are they engaged in circulating to homebound people to insure they have Mikroh Megillah – another of the mitzvos hayom? Those would be chumros, all about benefitting others, without regard to personal pleasure. The chumrah about drinking to extreme limits (which I already shared that I consider it abominable) is definitely not its own mitzvah, and is secondary (probably to the seudah).
Lastly, this deserves mention. I have often heard people discuss Purim in the context of “letting go”. I protest that. There is never any mitzvah that is about letting go. Not overeating, not overdrinking, not overdoing anything in the way of physical desires and passions. The drinking on Purim, as is mentioned in halacha, is an avodas Hashem that loses any semblance of kedusha or spiritual meaning when we cannot attend to the purpose of it. It is blasphemous to translate “ad deloh yodah” as shikruso shel Lot.