by Ronin Volf
I used to be more enthusiastic about AI. Not just interested—genuinely excited in a way that felt almost intoxicating. The possibilities seemed endless. Write a book in weeks instead of years? Done. Generate comprehensive analytical frameworks on demand? Easy. Have an intellectual sparring partner available 24/7 who never gets tired of exploring complex ideas? Finally.
It felt like being drunk on potential. Every interaction revealed new capabilities. Every task became easier. The friction that used to slow creative and analytical work just… disappeared. I wrote a book defending AI-assisted creation. I built an entire framework around the concept of “aithorship.” I was all in.
Now? I’m hungover. Maybe still a little drunk, honestly—drunk enough to keep using these tools, but hungover enough to feel the nausea of disillusionment creeping in.
The Drunk Phase: Everything Feels Possible
When you first start using capable AI tools, the experience is genuinely intoxicating. You discover you can:
• Draft comprehensive documents in minutes instead of hours
• Explore complex ideas with something that actually follows your reasoning
• Generate frameworks, outlines, and structures for projects you’ve been putting off
• Get past writer’s block by having a conversation partner who helps clarify muddy thinking
• Produce volume—so much volume—without the usual exhaustion
The productivity high is real. You feel like you’ve unlocked a superpower. All those projects you kept saying you’d get to “when you had time”? Suddenly you have time. Or at least, the tools to execute them quickly enough that time constraints matter less.
This is the drunk phase. You’re riding the initial buzz. Everything feels easier, faster, better. You evangelize. You defend AI against skeptics. You write manifestos about how this changes everything.
The Hangover: When You Hit Your Wall
But then you hit a wall. Not the same wall as everyone else—that’s the thing about the AI hangover. It’s personal. The specific limitation that kills your buzz depends entirely on what you actually needed from the technology versus what it can actually deliver.
My wall: Distribution and discovery
I can generate excellent content. White papers, analytical frameworks, books—AI helps me produce all of it faster and often better than I could alone. But it can’t make anyone see it.
I have self-published books that exist but don’t sell because I haven’t promoted them. I have ideas and frameworks that could be valuable but sit invisible because algorithmic systems bury them. I have a blog that needs an audience I don’t have—and probably never will, given how audiences are built now.
AI is phenomenal at production. It’s useless at distribution. And distribution is my actual constraint.
So I sit here with a catalog of work that exists but doesn’t matter, produced efficiently with AI assistance, wondering what the point was. The hangover is realizing that the tool solved the wrong problem. My limitation wasn’t production capacity—it was promotional tolerance and audience access. AI can’t fix that. In some ways, it made it worse by making production so easy that I now have more invisible work instead of less.
Everyone’s Wall Is Different
But here’s what makes the AI hangover so disorienting: not everyone is hungover at the same time, because we all hit different walls.
Some people are still drunk because their walls haven’t appeared yet:
1. The “I can’t structure my thoughts” wall - If your constraint is organizing ideas, AI is magic that never stops working. Your wall might never come because the tool solves your actual problem.
2. The “I need help with execution” wall - If you know what you want but struggle with technical implementation, AI handles that beautifully. You stay enthusiastic because your limitation is one AI directly addresses.
3. The “I’m not a native English speaker” wall - If language fluency is your barrier, AI transforms your capability instantly. The buzz doesn’t wear off because the value doesn’t diminish.
Then there are walls AI can’t solve, which create different hangovers:
1. The creative authenticity wall - Some people discover that removing struggle from the creative process makes the work feel hollow. The efficiency becomes the problem. They needed the friction to feel like the work was “theirs.”
2. The decision paralysis wall - AI can generate options endlessly, but it can’t tell you what you actually want. If your constraint is knowing what to do rather than how to do it, AI just gives you more sophisticated ways to avoid deciding.
3. The expertise wall - In specialized domains, AI hits knowledge limits fast. It can help with structure and generic content but fails at nuanced, expert-level work. If your constraint is deep expertise, AI mostly wastes your time.
4. The motivation wall - Some people need difficulty to force evaluation of whether something is worth doing. AI removes that forcing function. They produce more but care about less. The hangover is a catalog of completed-but-meaningless work.
5. The human connection wall - If your constraint is networking, relationship-building, or social performance, AI is actively useless. It might even make things worse by letting you avoid the human labor that would actually solve your problems.
The “Still Drunk” Problem
There’s also a peculiar state I find myself in: simultaneously drunk and hungover.
I’m hungover enough to recognize AI hasn’t solved my actual constraints. But I’m still drunk enough that I keep using it, keep engaging with it, keep producing with it. I wrote this essay with AI assistance. I’ll probably write more. The tool is too useful for the things it does well to abandon, even though I’m acutely aware of everything it can’t do.
This might be the most disorienting phase: knowing the limitations while still finding enough value to continue. You’re clear-eyed about what doesn’t work, but not sober enough to stop entirely.
The conversations are still intellectually engaging. The production is still easier. The sparring partnership is still valuable even if it doesn’t translate to tangible progress on actual constraints. So you keep going, hungover but not quite ready to quit.
Why the Hangover Matters
The AI enthusiasm cycle is predictable:
- Discovery: Holy shit, this can do that?
- Integration: Let me rebuild my entire workflow around this
- Optimization: I’m producing so much, so efficiently
- Wall: Wait, this doesn’t actually solve my real problem
- Hangover: The nausea of wasted effort and misplaced optimism
Most writing about AI focuses on phases 1-3. Tech evangelists stay perpetually in the drunk phase, either because they haven’t hit their wall yet or because their wall is one AI genuinely solves. Critics dismiss the whole thing, often without having experienced the genuine utility in phases 2-3.
But the hangover phase is where most people actually end up. It’s the space between hype and rejection, between evangelism and dismissal. It’s where you recognize both the real value and the real limitations, and you’re stuck trying to figure out whether the value justifies continued use given the limitations.
What the Hangover Teaches
The disillusionment isn’t about AI being bad or overhyped (though it might be both). It’s about misalignment between capabilities and constraints.
AI has genuine capabilities. But whether those capabilities matter to you depends entirely on where your actual constraints are. If AI addresses your specific wall, the enthusiasm never becomes a hangover—it becomes sustained utility. If your wall is elsewhere, the buzz wears off fast.
The hangover teaches you:
• Production capacity wasn’t your constraint - If making more stuff didn’t solve your problem, making stuff faster won’t either
• Your actual constraints are often human/social/systemic - And those are precisely the things AI can’t touch
• Efficiency isn’t always valuable - Sometimes friction serves a purpose
• The tool optimizes for the wrong metric - It makes production easier while you needed distribution, decision-making, motivation, or connection
Where I Am Now
I’m hungover but still functional. I use AI tools daily. I find value in them. This essay exists because of AI assistance—I articulated ideas through conversation, refined them through iteration, structured them with help.
But I’m also acutely aware that none of this solves my actual problems:
• My books still sit undiscovered
• My ideas still lack distribution
• My tolerance for promotional labor hasn’t increased
• My ability to build audience hasn’t improved
• My work exists but doesn’t matter in the ways I might have hoped
The AI enthusiasm hangover is recognizing that capability and utility are different things. AI is remarkably capable. Whether it’s useful depends entirely on whether its capabilities align with your actual constraints.
I’m still drunk enough to keep using it. But hungover enough to know it’s not the solution I thought it was. And that’s probably where most people end up—not in the binary of evangelist or critic, but in the messy middle of “this helps with some things while highlighting how much it can’t help with others.”
The buzz has worn off. The nausea is setting in. But I’m not quite ready to stop drinking yet.
Maybe that’s the real hangover: knowing you should probably stop, but finding just enough value to keep going, one conversation at a time.