 Why is Joe trying to get drunk?
"Hey. You trying to make yourself sick?" "Not sick. If I get drunk, I can join the AAA and get free room and board for a month while they give me a treatment." Each bartender could not only mix drinks but could also judge by a man's actions and speech when he was on the verge of drunkenness. Joe had tried dozens of times in dozens of bars to outsmart them, but had always failed. And in all of New York's millions, there had been only a hundred cases of intoxication during the previous year. "If you're that hard up, I don't know if I should take this fifty or not. When you try to get a job, they ask to see your ID before they even tell you if there's an opening or not. I've been a garbage man, street-cleaner, ditch-digger—" On the other side of the room, the jukebox came to life with a roar and a group of teen-agers scrambled to the dance floor. Feeling safe from hidden microphones because of the uproar, he leaned across the table and whispered in the girl's ear, "That's what I want to hire you for. A civilization weary of murder, robbery, kidnapping, counterfeiting, blackmail, rape, arson, and drunkenness had originated the CPA—Crime Prevention Association. There were no longer any prisons—CPA officials had declared loudly and emphatically that their job was to prevent crime, not punish it. They had made crime almost impossible, and during the previous year, only a few hundred men in the whole country had been convicted of criminal acts. If a man was smart enough to kill someone, for instance, he wasn't sent to prison to be punished; he wasn't punished at all. Instead, he was sent to a hospital where all criminal tendencies were removed from his mind by psychologists, shock treatments, encephalographic devices, a form of prefrontal lobotomy and a dozen other methods. The CPA system was, actually, cheaper than previous methods because it did away with the damage caused by countless crimes; did away with prisons and their guards, large police forces, squad cars and weapons. He was a hero to the millions of men and women who had suppressed impulses to kill someone, beat their mates, get drunk, or kick a dog. And therefore, an EX (a convicted criminal who received the treatment was commonly called an Ex because he was in the strictest sense of the word an Ex-criminal) ...
 Joe is trying to get drunk, so he can get a month's worth of free food and lodging.
 Joe is trying to get drunk, so he can get a month's worth of free food and lodging.  Joe is trying to get drunk, so he can work up the nerve to ask the girl out.  Joe is trying to get drunk because he is depressed about his job situation.  Joe is trying to get drunk, so he can work up the nerve to commit a crime.