Was it a black dog?
I have to confess I’m frequently at least a little tipsy myself when posting in the evenings here on the dope. I’ve never said or done anything I’ve regretted the next day. At most i might want to clarify a post if it seemed unclear to sober reading.
For most of us this is likely true. However I do know 2 people who had profound personality changes when drunk.
The first was a friend who’s been sober for decades, who reported that he would black out after 1 drink and get very mean and belligerent. Like scary. I never observed this myself but he’s a longtime friend and I have no reason to doubt his own word.
The second was my mom, who’s been dead since 1983, at age 50 ish from cancer. I was 18 so I remember her well enough. When she got drunk she’d flip into a raging, swearing monster. Very, very different from her waking self. Total change of voice, demeanor, posture. It knew my name, though, and wanted to hurt me. Scared the hell out of me as a small child, inspired me to NEVER have children myself. No memory of the episodes afterwards, at least never acknowledged that they happened. I later wondered if it was an “alter” (multiple personality) since it was clearly dissociative, although it didn’t seem as developed as a real alter. Can’t ask her now.
My mom’s episodes seemed tied to drinking, however, she still had them after she got sober, so I dunno.
I think for some people, a minority, alcohol gives them permission to act out some part of themselves that is normally suppressed. Maybe a traumatized part that’s still stuck.
I don’t know about that; maybe a minority that act out in a belligerent or violent way, but there are LOTS of people who get permission from alcohol to let their inner horndog that they keep suppressed. I’d guess the number of people who do that far outweigh the people who let their inner street fighter out when they’ve had a few too many.
It’s just that combative and violent drunk people make a wider and deeper impression than someone who sets their sights on someone and just quietly hooks up with them at the end of the night.
This ranting airline passenger from the beginning of the month seemed to be clearly drunk to me.
My dad has been an alcoholic most of his life and all of mine. Alcohol affects you differently as you age but for some reason Drunk Dads don’t think they should slow down on their drinking, they just drink the same as they did when they were 20.
Anyway, I’m waiting for a video like this of my dad to show up some day. This video was triggering.
Somehow everyone I know who is a loud drunk asshole is a quieter asshole when sober.
I am sure a LOT of these are caused by alcohol and/or drugs. Think how many people get on an airplane and settle in for a nap with an Ambien and a cocktail. They hope it will put them to sleep, but it’s hard to sleep on a plane.
I can tell you from hard firsthand experience that mixing booze with Ambien or benzos can turn a normal person into a raving lunatic. I’d bet that the majority of air rage cases are due to people learning this unfortunate fact for the first time, in the wrong place.
This is false. Alcohol removes inhibitions, but our whole personality depends on a properly functioning inhibitory system. Without that, it’s not really a personality, just a grab bag of random urges.
Alcohol doesn’t reveal your true personality any more than suddenly removing a ladder reveals that the natural state of the femur is to be snapped in half. It just doesn’t work that way.
Yeah, I agree with this. Everyone would be in trouble if all of our thoughts were spoken aloud. Some of what comes out of drunk people’s mouths is not what would ever come out when they are sober. For some of them, those things are not what they secretly really think – they are intrusive passing thoughts that are normally rejected and suppressed. People without drinking problems tend to learn how to keep enough control to be able to look people (or their own reflection) in the eye the next day. But some people can’t set a limit, or haven’t learned their limits yet.
This is sorta like saying that getting a spike shot through your forehead that takes out your prefrontal cortex reveals your true personality.
The prefrontal cortex is responsible for decision- making, memory and impulse control. Alcohol disrupts the prefrontal cortex so it isn’t doing its job. PET scans have shown that the prefrontal cortex is the area of the brain that has the greatest decrease in activity when alcohol is consumed.
So when someone is drunk the section of the brain that makes decisions, controls impulses and forms memories gets effectively shut down. What are drunk people famous for? Bad decisions, poor impulse control and, depending on how much alcohol is consumed, black outs.
Drinking doesn’t reveal your true personality, it kneecaps it.
Slee
If I can paraphrase Sanofi Aventis:
“Racism is not a side effect of alcohol.”
That drunk person simply feels less fear about spouting socially unacceptable things. Alcohol is not a cause for that behavior.
Missing the urinal.
Well, a quiet asshole is likely to be a drunk asshole, yes. But I know a few people whose personalities will, at times, flip quite dramatically when drunk. I’m a happy, boisterous drunk 95% of the time, but 5% of the time, if I’m already in a bit of a foul mood, then weird things can happen, especially extreme fits of paranoia. There’s this little thing in my head that sometimes flips, where there’s rational me saying “you know, you really shouldn’t do this…why would you do this?” and a part that says “ah, fuck it, let’s take a different turn from the usual and see what happens.” It’s not nice (and I think of myself as a kind person, and most would agree), hence quitting drinking at the end of last year. It really is a Jekyll and Hyde sort of thing for that 5% of the time.
And I’ve known other sweet, sunny people who just turn really mean and dark if they’re too far into the bottle. I wouldn’t necessarily attribute that to the drink bringing out “the truth.” Chemicals do funny things to your brain. I also know people who turn more kind and affectionate when drunk than sober. So I take pithy sayings like “in vino veritas” with a huge grain of salt.
I agree with both sides in this mini-debate. The “normal” drinker who ties one on every so often is the one where the “truth comes out” due to lowered inhibitions. The drinker with the problem or a full blown drunk will have started to damage the pre-frontal cortex and will start blurting out these random passing thoughts you discuss and very much NOT be his or her true self.
The guy in the airline video posted above seems like the latter.
Well then it’s not a problem, is it?
Um. Sorry, I don’t understand this comment. Did you miss that it says “without”? Otherwise I don’t know what you’re saying.
It would appear that is exactly what I did.
George Carlin commented that when he was a teen, marijuana his his neighborhood and overnight, shop projects went from zip guns to hash pipes.
Personally, I find that it’s mostly a mood enhancer. If I’m sad drinking can make me despondent, happy becomes joyful and irritation can turn into rage. Fun stuff! Anyway, my thought is that maybe people are just more angry or hateful as their baseline these days.
So if I go about my day thinking that those people walking by me are angry drunks, I’ll watch what I say more, and not rile them up.
Or play the “see an angry drunk, do a shot” game.