Aeron: Longest Pisser

(a copied comment from my reddit)

Originally, I read it that Aeron-is-the-longest-pisser shows his deeper motive is to cope with his trauma. I thought Aeron's pissing contests in the dungeons of Lannisport proved he did not yet have a religous awakening by drowing, since he was still the longest pisser there. The implication is that Aeron's identity as a priest of the Drowned God is an adopted act to cope with his abused past and this suggests him to be at least slightly fraudulent.

The Drowned God gives every man a gift, even him; no man could piss longer or farther than Aeron Greyjoy, as he proved at every feast. Once he bet his new longship against a herd of goats that he could quench a hearthfire with no more than his cock. Aeron feasted on goat for a year, and named the longship Golden Storm, though Balon threatened to hang him from her mast when he heard what sort of ram his brother proposed to mount upon her prow. - AFFC The Prophet

Yet the god was not done with Aeron, and carried him to shore. Some fishermen took him captive and marched him down to Lannisport in chains, and he spent the rest of the war in the bowels of Casterly Rock, proving that krakens can piss farther and longer than lions, boars, or chickens. - AFFC The Prophet

Then, someone in the r/asoiaf Q&A long ago this year, pointed out a discrepancy in the wiki. It suggests Aeron did later have a religous experience by drowning. It just wasn't something that had happened by the time he was a prisoner in Lannisport.

My new understanding is that Aeron-is-the-longest-pisser is an intentional ambiguity constructed by the author to both indicate my original understanding and to refute it. It's not quite a contradiction for a priest to be both a man of deep convictions and a man who has literally drowned. Aeron is a wonderfully wrough image of religion as copium, a theme that may look more major than minor as the series continues. We see religous rites as copium in Arya, Victarion and Daenerys: characters who combine more than one religion in a personal way to manage crisis. I bet this is setting up for Euron's (personal?) (concocted?) religion to factor.