I don’t mean the drinking needs to be done immediately, just that the purchase must happen immediately.

Oh fair enough. But I still disagree. That just doesn't seem very in line with how most of the curses we've seen so far seem to work.

he will pretty much have to be in his hiding spot when drinking

Hmm. Yeah that raises a pretty good point. Especially since this season's rules are meant for the public, anything involving alcohol could quickly get very tricky. Where I live, for example, alcohol is not allowed to be drunk in most public places. So unless you can get to an actual pub (not too hard in most places, but a few of the more remote places might be tricky), or to a bottle-o and then to a licensed location (of which there are, I think, only 2 or 3 public parks)

The casting cost could be “your future fellow seeker will perhaps slow you down”. That would motivate the card being played as early as possible instead of hoarding curses and then not get to play them…

I like the idea of something that encourages early use of the curses. But I'm not sure this is it. For starters, I just don't think the intoxication caused by 2 drinks is enough of a hindrance to be worth considering. But more critically, from a game design perspective, I think targeting one specific seeker with a curse assuming the rotation of 3 hiders in the broadcast version of the game, with the idea that a curse's cost could be bad for the current hider because...it might make things worse for them after they've been found, feels quite clumsy and not in keeping with the usually very good design of the rest of the game.