So the old adage "you can't buy beer but only rent it" doesn't really hold (water, ha!) any longer. How about "you can't drink beer anymore but are welcome to stare at the bottom of the glass"?
On the theme of contemplation, what I'm left wondering is whether it is possible to come up with these ideas while sober? A scary thought; or perhaps the imposed sobriety of superficial rationality is robbing society of its imaginative capabilities, a drought (pun intended) of ideas disembodied in virtual beer. There are theories that agriculture (at least as far as grains go) started as people were innovating easier methods to brew alcoholic drinks. This is simplistic of course and I'm more prone to believe in processes of human-nature co-domestication than singular explanatory stories.
Worrying though. An avatar can certainly be made to simulate some aspects of inebriation (visual and motor functions can easily be blurred) but on the other hand this is very much instructive of the limits of virtually embodied being. I've heard anecdotes of people experiencing drunkenness on account of having consumed something they presumed to have alcohol content but a placebo (or is it rather a nocebo) effect doesn't seem to apply here. On a serious note, humanity and its potential could as well be diminished as augmented by virtual "realities"; we underestimate the richness of experience in trying to emulate it, or risk a dilute experience in trying to distill its essence.
This, in my humble opinion, exemplifies that there are no stupid or banal questions when considering the very modes of our being.