What EXACTLY is it… that makes alcohol affect people like it does?
While consuming the lovely brew/liquid, people lose their inhibitions… we all know that DON"T WE???
BUT why???
Is that a part of the personality that is held under wraps due to
acceptable society constraints or truly a trait that wouldn’t
manifest itself under any other circumstances?
hmmmmm
It’s sort of a past-time of mine to watch the incredible evolving
“non - personality” of people drinking alcohol, it’s really quite amazing to watch the transformation…
That’s a very interesting article, but it doesn’t answer what I think is the most interesting question - Does alcohol reduce the inhibitions, thereby allowing someone to act out a behavior that is usually repressed but present in the psyche, or does it produce behavior on it’s own that is not present in the person’s psyche (conscious or subconscious) without it’s influence? I hope that makes sense.
I think a lot of it is actually psychological. People expect alcohol to do something to them, and react appropriately. They do actions they wouldn’t normally do, but do them because they can say “wow, shit, I was drunk…”
Don’t believe me? Make some sort of fruity drink, and then tell your friend that “wow, that shit mixes so well that you can’t even taste the alcohol.”
Then, of course, play the role yourself, start to act tipsy… and most people will begin to act drunk and “lose their inhibitions” despite not having a sip of alcohol.
In biology, we learned that alcohol (and other CNS depressants) sedates various “layers” of the brain. (These layers are intellect, emotions, consciousness, and then the automatic functions like breathing and heartbeat.) When one layer is sedated, the one immediately below that becomes predominate.
The first to go is the intellect, which also includes inhibitions. Without this, ones emotions are acted on without forethought. This gives rise to the incidence of people getting intimate with people they’d normally not.
With more alcohol goes the emotions. This is where you get stuporous drunks; awake but very unreactive.
The next is consciousness. With anethesia, this is its purpose, to put the patient to sleep. With alcohol, it’s (hopefully) the body’s safeguard that you won’t drink to the next step.
That step is sedating the breathing and heartbeat. When this step reached, coma and possibly death come about.
Sadly, some can reach this last step quickly by chugging strong liquor, like vodka.
Perhaps, but they generally don’t go on to strip naked and dance on the table, smash their car, beat someone bloody, or poop in the punch bowl.
The vast majority of the effect is not psychological, but physiological, via the mechanisms outlined above. And I am a firm believer that it lowers inhibitions enough to allow actions which are normally inhibited, as AWB so cogently posits.