So, I’ve never gotten drunk before. I’ve had a drink or two on occasion, but never enough to get more than buzzed. And realistically now that I’m on antidepressants I probably won’t any time in the near future.
Something I’ve wondered about is when it comes up in movies or real life news stories is: Exactly how responsible are you for things you do while drunk? Not legally, that’s more concrete, but practically. If alcohol inhibits your decision making capabilities, to what extent is anything done while drunk something you “decided” to do? You could still be held accountable for getting so drunk in the first place that this was able to happen, but that seems at least somewhat different from the actual act made during inebriation. Like say, drunk driving: Is the act of deciding to drive drunk merely the act of drinking a lot plus a roll of the dice to see if you end up making a decision you wouldn’t have made sober?
Like I said though, I have no personal experience with this, so maybe I’m way off base in understanding the nature of how in control a drunk person is of their behavior.
The drunker I get, the less thinking I do for before acting. Still kinda in control but more easily swayed by myself to do whatever tf.
I have a particularly weird view on this so I don’t know how helpful it will be, but I share it when people discuss alcohol.
You, as a person, are basically an imaginary construct given meaning by consistency. Your friends trust you because you consistently behave in a way that says they can trust you. The pattern of behaviours is you because the physical parts swap out all the time. When you drink, you distort yourself a little, because it distorts the behaviour. Anyone who says it doesn’t is delusional. For some people, the distortion is minor. For others, it distorts them a great deal. The drunk you is always so distorted as to be essentially a different person, but one for whom you have total responsibility, because you ‘gave them the keys’ as it were. You are letting the funhouse mirror version of yourself take control of your body so you can be amused by the distortions. Everybody’s mirror is different, but they are all distorted. How much do you trust someone who is much like you, but distorted?
it’s crazy how many people are confidently answering “you never lose control from alcohol” when they’ve obviously never been blackout drunk.
like, sure, there’s definitely a varying degree of effects to some point but when you black out (drink so much that you don’t remember it) you lose control of your actions. when you black out you do things that you would never do sober.
most people don’t black out more than a few times in their life because it happens, they go “wow that was awful I sure don’t want to do that again” and then don’t. they are the lucky ones. then you have people like me (alcoholics) who want to be anything but themselves and want to feel anything but what they’re feeling so desperately that it happens a lot.
no it’s not just “lowered inhibitions so you do what you want to do sober but stop yourself from doing,” your body goes into autopilot. it’s more like sleepwalking than staying up so late that you start feeling loopy once it hits that point. for an example, the first time I ever blacked out I tried to convince my mom that my dugout (block of wood for holding weed and pipe) would open the hotel room door… that’s not “lowered inhibitions” that’s a brain that’s not working
now I’m a little annoyed by the amount of confidently incorrect in this thread but on a serious note I’m glad so many of y’all don’t get it. alcoholism is a terrible affliction that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. it’s a bad time, through and through.
i think a part of why there are so many wrong answers though is because of the word “responsible.” you’re responsible for what you do while blackout drunk because you are the one who got blackout drunk. nobody else poured the booze down your throat for you. so, while what you do in that state is out of your control, you are entirely responsible for it.
Thanks for the insight. That sounds pretty rough. I hope you can get better soon.
IDK if it’s just because I am autistic and have adhd but I never felt like it dropped mg inhibitions as is commonly described. I feel, mentally, exactly the same as when I am sober. It’s my body that ends up feeling different, and it’s only pleasant for a little while before I feel sick as fuck and get the spins (feeling like you’re spinning around even when you’re laying down). The physical numbness is kinda nice tho.
Lol, buncha normies up in this thread.
Being drunk can be, and often is, a lot of fun. There’s a reason why it’s probably one of the oldest and most frequently used mind alterants in history.
That said, getting drunk by itself is a pretty neutral, if not unpleasant, experience. What it does do is make everything else you’re doing more enjoyable. The music is hitting harder, the person you’re talking to is more attractive, YOU’RE more attractive, the joke you told is funnier, etc. It amplifies all the emotions, and since it also reduces anxiety, often the whole of those emotions experiences are positive.
Creativity flows, free assocation is strong, your mood is expansive and gregarious.
As for how much control you have, it’s like a sliding scale. At the light end, you’re still pretty much in complete control of your facilities, though you may do things because your mood is better. As one becomes drunker a multitude of things happen that undermine one’s self-control until there is very little or none left and people run on a kind of autopilot that is a combination of basic human instincts and the behavioral patterns developed over their lifetime.
There is a type of mental fog that gets stronger as the scale moves farther into drunkeness. This fog begins to inhibit higher order thinking until you can’t make any decisions besides satisfying the most immediate physical needs, or deep seated psychological drives.
Anyway, it’s a lot of fun until it isn’t.
Funny how you explain alcohol like I would explain weed.
Weed for me is the universal emotion amplifier. It amplifies enjoyment (music, food, anything) as much as it amplifies anxiety. In fact weed helped me confront my anxieties and become a more chill person overall. I had to choose between keeping my unprocessed fears and continue vaping weed and decided to work through it, confront and think through the weird fears that my anxious brain constantly produced, repressed and weed surfaced. In that sense, I believe weed can be a therapeutic drug, when combined with some proper self-reflection, CBT skills, and not using absurdly high THC strains.
Alcohol for me primarily increases the “not giving a fuck”-ness, causing mild relaxation in the beginning and removing self control and filters at higher dosage. It quickly becomes physically unpleasant for me to I learned “my limits” when I was younger, its not fun at all to go beyond them and not worth it so I stick to a few beer or glasses of wine at most and avoid stuff that gets you drunk quicker than you can control it. The “buzzed” sweet spot is really narrow for me, probably I’m lucky that my body rejects alcohol so that overdoing it is self-torture.
But of course everyone is different.
I’ve only been properly drunk once. For myself, at no point did I feel out of control, and my reasoning ability still seemed perfectly intact.
It was interesting to observe the effects of the drunkenness on my balance and ever increasing ‘lag’ type feeling, and I did notice I was a bit less inhibited, though I was around friends I already was quite comfortable with so I wasn’t that inhibited to begin with, but even still I did catch myself saying something I might’ve held back or said in a less direct way. At that point I was satisfied with the experiment and didn’t drink any more that night.
The experience did make me wonder how other people could convince themselves to drive while drunk, as even while I was wobbling to the bathroom, I was fully aware that I was totally incapable of safely driving.
I also had no issues recalling that night, so I didn’t get drunk enough to get ‘blackout’ drunk.
It’s completely lame as f*** and nothing at all like how its hyped up to be.
Like say, drunk driving: Is the act of deciding to drive drunk merely the act of drinking a lot plus a roll of the dice to see if you end up making a decision you wouldn’t have made sober?
It’s an act of poor planning in regards to safety. That’s what the crime or sin is in this case. Don’t bring your car with you if you’re going to drink and don’t drink if you bought your car with you.
Because being drunk fucks up your reaction speeds it’s not about making poor decisions while driving but rather not being able to react in time while driving and also misjudging how much force to apply when steering and pedalling and braking.
So some common outcomes of drunk driving are:
- drive into a tree because failed to turn enough on a curving road.
- drive into the back of another vehicle because you pedal too hard or brake too little
- drive into another vehicle perpendicular to yourself because didn’t check well enough due to impaired perception, impatience.
- also can ruin judgement of distances which will increase likelihood of all of the following occuring.
You still have complete control you just start to believe that you might actually do the things that are possible. So for example you don’t jump out of a window thinking you can fly but you do tell Wendy her eyes are like a cool breeze on a hot day and whenever you reach out you want her to be there. Then you sleep and forget it all and wake up sober and have flashbacks all day about what you said to your ex teacher that you just happened to bump into last night. You have those flashbacks for the rest of your life.
Drinking is about experience. Usually people overdo it a few times when young and from that point on know how drunk on their way to too much they are.
Personally I have gotten drunk to the point of vomiting and needing to sleep it off. Never more than that, so I can’t report on blackout drunk.
But I’m personally of the impression that drunk people that get aggressive or do irresponsible shit usually want to do this anyways and alcohol is just a way to excuse for them acting that out. The reduced inhibition and the social stigma is a good combination to dare and have cover because you are a drunk.
As to why people want to act that out, I’m assuming they have unresolved issues that come out that way. And those issues are probably hard to control. So these people should probably not drink and get therapy instead.
Least, there is a factor of mild drinking that helps talk about things. So there is a factor of alcohol that can help with certain issues like social anxiety or daring to talk to somebody about a long held problem. So its a mixed bag.
Alcohol is not healthy, no amount is. But it helps to cope with reality, so with care and the right measure it can be a plus in life.
The best description I’ve come up with:
Alcohol makes you act without thinking, and cannabis makes you think without action.
Drunken actions can be understandable, but you’re still responsible for them. If you set a valuable antique on the edge of the roof, and a stiff breeze knocks it to the ground, it’s still your fault. Sure, you didn’t cause the wind that made it fall, but if you hadn’t put it in such a stupid place, it would still be in one piece.
Most drunk accidents are exactly that. You don’t really think things through like you normally would, so you can get up and sing karaoke without worrying about embarrassing yourself and talk to people that intimidate you, or things get misplaced or broken, or you agree to temptations that you would otherwise resist.
Alcohol makes you act without thinking, and cannabis makes you think without action
I like that one.
To answer both questions, it really depends how drunk you are. To the extreme of black out, what is the experience like? You wake up somewhere hungover or still a bit drunk not knowing how you got there and not able to remember anything past a certain moment. How much control did you have? Not much. In that state any flying by emotion or idea can really take charge regardless of how bad it is. Most don’t remember doing or saying any of the things they did or said.
I think the best way to describe is that you still have total control, but infinite courage. So you might do very stupid stuff that you kind of always wanted to do but never dared to.
I always like the quote: “Sober thoughts, drunk words”.
Usually explains how some people become drunk assholes.
It’s such a hard question to answer because it varies by person, by dose, by context, etc.
It’s not like you are there at the time feeling “oh I’m only 80% in control of myself here” there’s no little sober pilot inside your flesh-mech running things, the person trying to determine how in control they are is impaired by alcohol.
There’s still a little rational thread though. Like last week I was way too drunk to ride my bike home and I thought I was fine. After I fell twice I was like “ok, we have reviewed the data and it says perhaps we are too drunk.”
I mean I am like that when I’m drunk, but that’s also who I am in general. When I was super drunk in college I would self-regulate and stop drinking and like go somewhere safe to sober up. I also never hooked up with people drunk and stuff like that.
But many folks aren’t like that, you’re right. They are not monitoring their sobriety and thinking about how impaired they are… they are just in the moment feeling what they feel and reacting accordingly.
You might have a pilot you trust, but he’s still drunk
and he knows it. the issue with a lot of drunk people who do stupid shit is they don’t know they are impaired or drunk. often, in fact, they vastly overestimate themselves and their abilities due to the alcohol impairment. hence why they do stupid shit.
the only mitigating factor is that you’re so relaxed physically from being drunk, you’re less likely to hurt yourself. hence why drunk drivers are injured less than their victims.
if i notice myself trying to convince myself that i’m fine to drive, i don’t drive
“If my mind is doing things to my mind on its own, I just use my mind to tell my mind not to do that to my mind.”
Being drunk doesn’t change who you are or make your body perform actions that you didn’t choose (other than digestive system side effects like puking). It’s always you in control of your body, making choices to do things or to not do things. It won’t make a good person turn bad. It can make you less inhibited and make it harder to think clearly, but that’s not going to make you forget how to be decent.
To expand on that if I may:
What alcohol does is impair your judgement and your motor control(reaction time)
So things you normally would not do for a variety of reasons(like, yell at a giant easily angered bouncer), now seem like a great idea.
It doesn’t make you do things, it allows you to do things your sober self might find reprehensible into outright vile.
This is also true of all drugs in my experience. People that don’t even consider doing things that harm themselves and others don’t start doing it when high/drunk/wasted.
