Making love to their tonic and gin

Nadav and Avihu, loving brothers, and Aharon's two oldest sons were burnt to death by a heavenly fire on the same day as another heavenly fire consumed animal sacrifices brought by Aharon and his two sons. This incident remains one of the most inscrutable - and unclear - in the whole of the Torah, the opinions running the gamut as to why they were taken before their time, in the most demonstrative and symbolic of ways in the place that was designated for animal - and not - human sacrifices. Some say because they were single, an ominous warning and admonition for those who need an extra push, others, because they were inebriated, and still others, in delayed punishment for the sin of the golden calf, the foreign fire the Torah states they brought pushing them over the top and making them fully culpable for Aharon's former transgression. 

Alcohol, the Torah seems to hint, did play a part. Far be it from me to weigh in on the matter, but something odd does occur after Nadav and Avihu are prematurely taken from their parents (assuming their mother, Elisheva, was still alive). Hashem, perhaps in rewarding Aharon for his silence in the wake of the tragic death of his children, speaks to him directly, in an unmediated way. 

And Hashem spoke to Aaron, saying:  Drink no wine or other intoxicant, you or your sons, when you enter the Tent of Meeting, that you may not die. This is a law for all time throughout the ages,

for you must distinguish between the sacred and the profane, and between the impure and the pure; and you must teach the Israelites all the laws which Hashem has imparted to them through Moses.

Hashem tells Aharon that to be able to serve wholeheartedly alcohol can not be consumed prior to service so as to a. preserve the Temple's holiness and b.discern between the pure and impure. 

The Even Ezra states that this directive is so that Aharon and his sons don't confuse between animals that are pure and those that are impure. That seems clear from the juxtaposition between this and the next parshah which delineates all the pure animals, and those that are impure, the camel, the pig, and the rabbit. Was that, though, the chief concern? Would somebody unwittingly bring a rabbit to the holy temple, or a pig for that matter, and then, find that animal brought on the altar because the cohen in a drunken stupor failed to prevent it? 

It seems like there is a deeper meaning here. Drunkenness can blur one's senses to an extreme, taking away one's intrinsic sense of holiness and profanity; one can't serve in such a manner - but the Torah is teaching us that it is to such an extent that even a higher standard can be lost, sense of what is pure and right, and impure and wrong. The Ramban defines holiness as such, a sense of what is what God seeks, i.e. that something can be permissible according to the law but wrong at heart, "Ess Past Nisht!"

Making love to "one's tonic and gin" can be an escape mechanism for the average Joe, someone who needs to "forget about life for a while," but a Cohen, who needs to bridge the divide between the ethereal aspirations of mankind, and the mean, and even base state of mind he may find himself in, cannot bring a "foreign fire" - an esh zarah - that further alienates a man from his true, deepseeded and heartfelt intentions. The bringing of a sacrifice is a pure act, a humble one, where connection to the Almighty is the only motivating factor, nothing driven by personal desire and the like. 

Ironically, a friend named Nadav told me that it would seem that the Torah uses the same terminology for the fire that consumed Aharon and his sons' offerings and Aharon's sons themselves because the sons, on a subconscious level, were trying to steal God's thunder; at a moment of great revelation, there was no place for any human involvement over and beyond that which was subscribed - and circumscribed - by God himself, making any human meddling no more and no less than a foreign fire.