It strikes me that, unlike other drugs, alcohol does not provide you with a sense of coming down. Or at least, the rather calming connotations of "coming down" do not work with alcohol. A more appropriate term would be "coming up," and your consciousness is like a deep-sea diver attempting to avoid the bends.

You can do it, sometimes, you can keep your consciousness swimming back and forth, slowing working its way to the surface with vertically-oriented switchbacks, but the quick rush from the depths of being drowned in alcohol straight to the needs and demands that usually accompany sobriety (work, family, et al.) is what kills you, what threatens to snap your bones in half.