Whoever told you that is an idiot.
Alcohol makes my brain work poorly. When my brain can’t solve the various problems it encounters it becomes confused and frustrated and if that continues, it becomes angry.
I don’t strongly disagree with those who say that alcohol amplifies a person’s existing personality more than it changes their personality but a personality that can’t handle extreme confusion and frustration may never be pushed to the breaking point as long as its brain is working properly. My grandfather was the gentlest soul I’ve ever met but as his Alzheimer’s progressed he put at least two nursing home staff on workers’ compensation.
Just another factor in the mix.
That’s odd. Alcohol makes me smarter, wittier, and more attractive to women.
I drink, but I avoid actually getting drunk, largely for control reasons. For me, at least, that doesn’t mean losing control of violent impulses. There are two parts of it:
Physical control–I’m pretty strong. Not competition-level steroidal nightmare bodybuilder strong, but substantially stronger than average. Enough so that I make a habit of exercising a certain amount of care to avoid inadvertently causing pain or breaking things. Being drunk makes it more difficult to tell whether or not I’m exerting undue force.
Mental control–I am, frankly, accustomed to being smart (not unlike many other Dopers). I enjoy being smart. I like being able to observe, analyze, problem-solve, and so forth. Being drunk interferes with that; it prevents me from marshaling my full faculties, denies me access to abilities I’m used to commanding. It’s particularly frustrating if something comes up that those abilities would be useful with, but even absent such a scenario, it takes away something I enjoy. Being drunk makes life less fun for me.
I grew up with an angry drunk parent, and my entire extended family is full of them. Perhaps it’s genetic, I don’t know. But I didn’t think this was a new phenomenon. My dad was an angry drunk, and so was his dad. My mom’s mom was an angry drunk, and so was her dad. My mom isn’t because, like me, she made a conscious decision to stop getting drunk. She doesn’t drink AT ALL. I do drink socially, but stop before the sloppy part. I’ve gotten falling-down drunk many times in my life, though (heh, college), and I’ve never gotten MEAN. I’m more likely to get silly. Occasionally I might get maudlin. Never angry.
I mean, some people are just angrier than others as a baseline. When the inhibitions are gone, they express their anger more readily than they do while sober. Sometimes they do it violently.
With all due respect, this is horseshit. Beer was the alcohol of choice for my dad, my uncle, my grandfather, my grandmother, my aunt, and various cousins. It turned them into monsters (or perhaps they were monsters all along, but they didn’t have to drink hard liquor to get meaner than a junkyard dog).
And to add: Although I’ve tried to like it, beer is gross. Hard liquor is the only thing I drink (in mixers). And I was never a mean drunk.
Interesting point. True for me as well – it’s difficult to describe, but when one’s brain is used to thinking logically, and the only things that emerge (verbally or mentally) are a bunch of nonsense crap, it’s kind of frustrating.
My doctor had an interesting thought when I mentioned that it’s sometimes appropriate, to my way of thinking, to have a few beers while playing a game of pool. The point was that – I didn’t hold him to giving cites from the literature – the brain just doesn’t work that well with any amount of alcohol in the blood. I think that’s true. While alcohol consumption may mitigate equally devastating effects, like anxiety or some kinds of inhibitions, it probably shouldn’t be counted as a net positive.
Of course, even he admitted back when I was playing more music regularly in public, it’s pretty hard to turn down the chance to tip some microbrews with a group of people which include some pretty nice looking females who just want to chat. He had to fall back on the “well, I’m used to being on call since med school.”
One thing that’s uniformly shitty is that non-alcoholic beer is always more expensive at bars, and that a lot of microbreweries don’t even sell it. I like bars – just hanging out, reading, surfing the net, playing pool, killing time – but after a few hours of drinking pints, eventually you’ll get impaired to some extent.
Beer Street and Gin Lane, of course - though I’ll bet a bottle of good Scotch I don’t need to tell you that.
I’m a violent drunk, and I’m not sure what you (the OP) are asking. Why do I feel violent when I get drunk? Why do some people giggle when they get drunk? Why do some speak louder? Why do some feel tired?
Fact is, different people react to substances differently, that’s all.
ETA: For the record, I’m not angry at all, just violent. I’m the kind of person who will get drunk, bitch slap someone, and then run off giggling because it seems funny. I’ve learned that doing push-ups or pull-ups is a more constructive way to release this pent up energy.
That kind of rings true for me a bit – not really angry, but there’s a kind of physical pleasure in going full out. I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone out for a little run while drunk, and my thing over the past almost year when I see a friend who goes to boxing rings as an amateur is to just spar with him while we’re drinking beers or, in my case, whiskey, out on the porch of the condo common-area we both live. Actually, I’ve learned quite a bit I didn’t know – it’s not anti-intellectual – but it’s fun to just punch inanimate objects, like a wall, trying to perfect form. Of course, the hands don’t look so good afterwards, but, hey Red Garland was a boxer before he was a pianist, so, probably not too bad if you do it right.
ETA there’s a difference between “drinking” and “drunk” – I couldn’t run a half-mile “drunk.” To me, drunk means can’t stand up, can’t speak. Drinking is anything short of that.
I admit that I’ve probably watched too much Intervention, but there’s been a lot tossed around that the abuse of alcohol/drugs/etc is because the person has some deep-seated emotional issue they’ve buried and are trying to medicate away. There are also some medical issues such as bi-polar and ADD where people self-medicate (my BF did that for a long time with his ADD).
I want to have compassion, but I’ve seen so much horrible behavior under any influence that seems to be just the result of really stupid choices. It’s hard to have much compassion for that. I want to say, DON’T BE AN IDIOT!!
I know I’m simplistic and naive 
but it seems like for a long time I’ve been trying to find the line between compassion and enabling. I’m not talking from the point of having someone in my life, but in how I look at addictive behavior in general.
I’m not really sure what I’m asking so I’ll just keep reading your insights. :dubious: Thank you for sharing them.
Not at all… but it does force you to be a little more selective about the bars you frequent. 
I’ve found that too. And it also makes the women around me smarter, more attractive and more beautiful, even if they haven’t been drinking. I think it’s a miracle.
No it doesn’t.
How do you know what happens to the women around me?
Do you really not understand what he meant there?
I don’t know. It was a joke, but I never had a drunk on that turned magically horrible, uninteresting women into fantastic unicorns. Would screw? Sure. Did screw? A few times.
Funny thing is that even with expressive capacities diminished, I never was under any illusion that a woman was anything other than what she was.
ETA In my defense I’m much nicer drunk than sober – maybe it’s that I genuinely like people and am more willing to forgive some of their stupid anecdotes.
Over the years I have had many different reactions when drinking, including “angry drunk” at times. When “angry drunk” showed up in me, standing outside myself I found it somewhat fascinating. It was really like I was taken over by another personality, and I did not know where it came from. It was very much a chemical thing in my brain. Once it started I really had no ability to staunch it. All I could do was control my outward behavior. I have learned to control my impulses significantly when drinking. I now am generally quiet when drinking to avoid any negative situations. However, I do find that the impulses are still there, and the inhibition governor is compromised when drinking - so I work at control.
Consequently, I am just a wee bit sympathetic to folks like Mel Gibson and his drunk ranting. In the past I have been in a mildly similar state and afterwards felt “Did I really say that? 'cause why would I say THAT?”
You’re right. Alcohol is alcohol. I think the difference is in the pacing where with beer you have to go slower and have less of a chance of blacking out and losing control.
I felt the same way for a long time… then I discovered tequila.
Seriously, though, what I learned is that I’m not my Dad. I know how to drink in moderation. He has pretty much openly acknowledged that he drinks to avoid his problems. Me, I face my problems head on. I’m not afraid of grief, or terror, or bad memories, or loneliness, or all of the things he feels the need to hide from.
As it is, I usually drink about one a month, maybe twice, and no more than three drinks… usually just one. But man, I enjoy the hell out of it.