Infidelity, acting like an ass, etc, under the influence of alcohol…
Did the alcohol change this person into something they’re not? Or did the alcohol strip away their inhibitions to reveal who they really were?
Personally, I think it’s the latter.
I’d agree with the latter.
Door #1: Alcohol changes behavior. Sure booze can strip away inhibitions but aren’t inhibitions part of who and what we are? Bill is a thoughtful soul. A real deep file. If you ask him to ponder a question he’ll put some serious thought into it, but get a few drinks in him and the proverbial filter is off - what an obnoxious drunk. I’d like to think maintaining a good filter is a positive character trait. Everyone has inappropriate thoughts jump into their heads, what separates desirable from undesirable company is partly the quality of one’s filter.
Some mixture of the two. Removing inhibitions doesn’t have to be just removal of the filter on the output, it also allows a person to head out in new directions. One of the signs of alcoholism is also a radical personality change, there’s no telling if that’s something already inside the person coming out or malfunctioning due to the alcohol. Like much of everything else in life there’s no simple answer.
I believe it does both. It does or can reveal things deep inside (this is a good thing and a healthy use of it in a good supporting setting ), though it can cause one to be influenced and take on other traits that the person does have, even to be taken advantage of or seduced (This is usually not a good use of drinking, but is used often in this way).
So it does strip away one’s defenses to be who they are, however who one ‘is’ without their defenses is a very vulnerable position and can easily be influenced.
I think this is like asking whether a zebra is white with black stripes, or black with white stripes. Someone can totally be a different person when drunk or sober. But what do we call the “real” person? If somebody has destructive impulses, then yes, that’s part of who the person really is… but if that person also steadfastly works to hold those destructive impulses in check, then that’s also part of who the person really is. And maybe a person can successfully keep their impulses in check when sober, but when drunk, that steadfastness erodes. So the alcohol is revealing one aspect of their personality, by subverting another.
In the end, I’m not sure it actually matters what you call “real”: If sober-you is a better person than drunk-you, then stay sober.
Your inhibitions are part of who you are. So is your behavior when drunk. They’re both the real you.
I will go with door #1. I have known “good drunks” and “bad drunks”, and it seems sorta arbitrary who fits in what category: some good people are “bad drunks”, and vice versa.
The ancient Persians, according to Herodotus, always considered a decision made while sober again while drunk, and a decision made while drunk again while sober … 
The reverse of this is something I struggle with.
By definition, I’m a (high functioning) alcoholic. But part of the reason for that is, people tend to like me better after I’ve had a couple of drinks (not drunk).
Completely sober; I’m quiet and suck at conversation. After a couple of glasses of wine, I’m more engaging and more a part of the conversation.
LOL. I have a love hate relationship with alcohol.
In your case your real personality could be simply muted without a few drinks. You aren’t demonstrating any substantial change. I don’t know how much you drink but you barely qualify as an alcoholic based on that simple description, at least to me, and I’ve seen some serious drinking problems in people. Maybe there’s much more to it, or even much less, but what you describe is self-medicating to deal with some social misfunction of no great consequence. If there is more to it that would be your worry.
I’ve always felt that it reveals the true you, to a large extent. It makes that “filter” or screen that we use to separate our real selves from the rest of the world, transparent, or at least translucent.
Some people just become a more exuberant version of themselves, or a more loquacious version. That’s one where the screen wasn’t all that opaque to begin with.
Others have a fairly large change- some people become angry, others depressed. And some people go from being taciturn and somewhat crabby to being really pretty agreeable. That’s when the screen goes from being entirely opaque to being much less so.
How do you know it’s that or something like a fun house mirror or kaleidoscope that shows a distorted image? I couldn’t argue much with the idea that it usually shows the true person underneath, but I can’t accept that it always does. I think if you know a person well you can tell the difference, but I’ve also seen people that under the influence may show completely different personalities at different times. In those cases I think it just exaggerates their current mood instead of revealing anything basic.
I envy you. Completely sober, I’m quiet and suck at conversation. After a couple of glasses of wine… I’m quiet and suck at conversation.
I’ve seen a lot of examples where booze makes people stupid. They make crappy decisions, can’t do basic logical thinking and on and on.
I can’t see how that would be the “real person”. If they normally make good decisions, can create and explain logical reasoning, etc. why would anyone consider this to be the “fake” person?
I think this argument can be similarly extended to other mental traits such as emotions.
I feel it has to be the revelation of traits that were already inside of the drinker. Anything else seems ridiculous. Is anybody seriously claiming that there are human emotions contained in a can of beer and they get passed into your brain when you consume the beer?
No.
But “who you are” is a function, basically, of how your neurons work. Change that, and you may be able to change “who you are”. Alcohol has significant effects on how your neurons work, and so, on how your brain works; the argument would be that, at least in some cases, those effects are so significant as to change the functioning of the brain, making “who you are” different.
You see this sort of effect most clearly with people who have survived serious brain trauma - it can change their basic personality.
I know some people who get very angry when drinking. They don’t seem like they’re hiding their anger the rest of the time, them seem happy and normal. I’m a very mellow drunk, but I wonder if alcohol triggers anger issues for some people, independent of “lower inhibitions”
I vote for “both”.
a) Most people have inhibitions against doing things they actually want to do if they assess that doing them will evoke unwanted consequences; most people have some degree of lowering of inhibitions when they drink alcohol. So in the sense that the same person NOT under the effects of alcohol but in a situation where the unwanted consequences were not an issue, you could make the case that their engaging in that activity when under the influence of alcohol shows what they’d do if there weren’t inhibiting consequences and that that shows their “true nature”.
but
b) Alcohol is also a modifier of some people’s personalities and motivations and priorities, at least over time and with high levels of use. Once alcohol consumption creates withdrawal symptoms for the person when they have not been drinking, their neurochemistry is a complex equation. Anger and violence, morose maudlin effusiveness, and other patterns may be exhibited that I would say are no more “who the person really is” than their hungover irritability and apathy the next morning.
I’ve been around people enough (and had it happen to me once or twice) where the phrase comes up, “They are not really themselves right now.” Something about a certain amount of alcohol and nope, that’s not Keith anymore, better try to make sure whoever is inhabiting Keith doesn’t hurt Keith.
Comic Iliza Shlesinger call it your Party Goblin.
Now, obviously, I don’t believe that someone can be “inhabited” by another being, etc. But the connection to the real person is somehow not really there anymore. This is measurably different than someone who has had a few and whose inhibitions are compromised.
I accept the idea that things like brain injuries or Alzheimer’s disease can have physical effects on your brain that alter your personality. I’m just questioning whether alcohol has the same effects.
If alcohol is physically changing your brain, why do people revert back to their normal personality when they sober up? If alcohol is physically changing your brain, what’s changing it back?
If there is something in alcohol that produces changes in the brain, you’d expect to find the changes to be consistent. If two people split one bottle of whiskey, they’re sharing the same brain altering substance. But the personality changes can be significantly different. At the same time, if alcohol just produced random changes, then you’d expect to see drinkers behaving differently every time they got drunk. But you often see drinkers repeating the same drunken behavior. So a single source of alcohol can produce different changes in different brains while different sources of alcohol can produce consistent changes in a single brain. These patterns leave me to believe that the drunken behavior originates in the brains not in the alcohol.