I can agree with this. The aspects of ourselves that we show when we’re drunk are different than the aspects of ourselves that we show when we’re sober. That doesn’t mean one set of aspects is more real than another. They’re all genuine aspects of ourselves.
I think maybe we’re talking somewhat at cross purposes; some of us (me included) aren’t really talking about being “drunk” in the sense of significantly intoxicated like it appears that others are.
You see some of these changes even at really low levels of alcohol consumption; 1-3 drinks in many cases, and the people involved are for the most part, sober, or very mildly intoxicated. Certainly they’re aware of themselves, and cognizant of their own thoughts, unlike more intoxicated people.
That’s why I’m saying that a sour-seeming person who lightens up after a couple of beers is more or less revealing something we may not have been able to see otherwise. And I’d also agree that the behavior of someone who’s had 6-8 drinks is really more of the alcohol talking as it’s some kind of “true” personality revealing itself.
"Hold my beer … ".
Well in a way I suppose, but it may take different levels of intoxication for different people to expose some part of a personality they are hiding.
Mel Gibson discussed his anti-semitic remarks recently in an interview and said he was loaded when he said them. I don’t know what his true self is there, but I do know he grew up with a very hateful father who left the US for Australia because the ‘white’ enclave he lived in wasn’t ‘white enough’ for him. So even if he had rejected all of his father’s hateful concepts they are still in his head, and in that circumstance I could see him under the influence saying things that don’t reveal his true self, only the unfortunate memories he cannot rid himself of, which is possibly the reason he drinks in the first place.
In a tangential case, Michael “Kramer” Richards started shouting racial epithets at hecklers under stress. I don’t know if he was intoxicated at all, but I don’t think he had a truly racist motivation there so much as an intention to be hurtful. Something like could happen when a person’s judgement is impaired.
There are obvious cases, I’ve experienced quietly making some kind of racist remark to me. I think they’re fishing for fellow haters and I wouldn’t give them any benefit of the doubt if they’d been drinking. Other situations don’t seem quite so clear to me.
Right. During our lifetimes we are inevitably exposed to tons of stimuli and information from all directions, and it’s not like those to which we got positive reinforcement stayed in and everything else was flushed clean out. What is seen/heard cannot be unseen/unheard and a lot of it stays in there, subject to your inner server one day hitting it with the content filters off.
And yes, not just individual people but our culture in general tends to dwell on how Mr. Hyde/The Hulk/transporter-split Kirk dwells within us ready to be triggered by the right catalyist/stressor (intoxication, disease, fear, peer pressure, demagogic ideology, etc. ).
They made the decision to drink.
Are we supposed to pretend that our animal instincts, our “ids,” are the only measure of who we “really” are?
Alcohol certainly can bring out PARTS of us that we usually keep under wraps, but ti hardly follows that those parts are the “real” us, and that the people we try to be are mere facades.
Yes, we have animal urges, but the people we TRY to be are every bit as real as the animals we tend to suppress.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
I don’t drink for 2 reasons.
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I can’t stand the taste. I am certain I could learn to enjoy the taste of I put enough effort into it, but that runs into
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I’ve spent decades working on building up these inhibitions, don’t know why I would want to remove them all at this point.
Fortunately, I don’t have to explain all this anymore, I just say “I’m diabetic, no thanks.”
Point taken.
Have a Snickers!
Actually, I would argue that the person you try* to be is more important than instincts you may have developed over the years.
Say a person is raised in a racist environment. During adulthood the person rejects racism and while sober never exhibits any racist behavior. They get drunk and say some stupid racist shit. Is the person racist?
My thinking is that the conscious choice the person makes to reject racism and racist thoughts and actions is more important than the racist statement that slips its way out when the higher cognative functions are effectively disabled.
Of course, we can only judge by a persons actions since we cannot read minds.
Slee
- Try assumes, in this instance, that the person who is doing the trying has some success. I know enough people who do or say stupid shit and who always claim to be trying to do the right thing that you soon realize that they use the ‘I’m trying’ bit to avoid being held responsible for their actions.
Old, old saying with a lot of truth.
“In vino varitas” => In wine there is truth.
All of this is true.
However, I would not blame someone for not wanting to be around this person–whether drunk or sober–if their drunken sayings are offensive enough.
I once read an article that provided some explanations for why black college kids don’t tend to go to the wild binge-drinking parties hosted by whites. One reason is that white drunks can sometimes say fucked up things to black folks that make the whole experience not fun.
White colleagues have invited me to go drinking with them before, and I usually turn them down. Not just because I personally don’t enjoy getting drunk, but I also don’t want to risk seeing a side of them that will make it difficult for me to get along with them on the job.
This is actually a really great encapsulation (and no, I don’t live by this myself, but we’d all be better off if we did) why it’s better to keep “workplace life” and “drinking / socialization” to a large extent separate.
I’ve heard that anecdote about the Persians before, and love the idea.
IOW … if Jekyll and Hyde both love it, then it’s a winner for sure.