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@erynne Howdy! Nice of ya to stop by.

So, it’s been a while since I drank – I quit a couple months ago, as alcohol was just making me depressed, less productive, and draining my wallet – I had stopped drinking for fun, and had by that point just been drinking as a crutch for mental pain. But that’s its own story.

I cannot say I’ve been black out drunk. I’ve never been so drunk as to not be able to remember at least some of what happened while I was intoxicated. I’ve also never drank besides with friends or at home, or been so drunk as to be unable to get home – if I was, I waited until I was sober enough to drive. My first “really drunk” episode was with friends, all of whom had higher tolerance than I, so it wasn’t an overly negative experience. We were playing a strategy board game called Twilight Imperium, in which you command different alien races to victory through a variety of means. At one point, I began impersonating my chosen species, which were religiously fanatical militaristic mantis people fighting for their queen-mother-goddess, in a desperate last stand against another player, whose chosen race were “pacifist” scientists who had begun a campaign of mass-genocide :))).

But the general experience of being drunk can be roughly divided into two categories: “Happy Drunk” and “Bad Drunk”

In Happy Drunk, I felt like I had a quicker wit; I was more impulsive, but I felt funnier, able to make others laugh with my antics and my repartee. And as long as I drank enough water afterwards, I usually wouldn’t have too much of a headache, would be able to sleep well enough, and wouldn’t feel too bad of a hangover the next day (which is mostly a result of not drinking enough water / peeing out the alcohol before you go to sleep).

Bad Drunk encompasses a lot of other situations. In depressive states, everything weighed on me like a ton of bricks – but the alcohol gave me a layer of apathy. I was aware that I was unhappy, that everything seemed terrible and I needed to do something about it – but I didn’t want to, or care enough to try to change things. It became easier to just numb myself with alcohol than to actually have to deal with the problem and the associated stress.

Being drunk in general makes you more impulsive, less inhibited – “in vino veritas”, as the Romans said. “In wine there is truth” – drunk people tend to say what they’re thinking without as much regard for whether they SHOULD. When people say stupid things while drunk, they are speaking from their inner thoughts. They might regret saying those things afterwards and make excuses, but they are often unfortunately honest, for better and usually for worse. The same applies to dumb decisions, like fighting the bouncer, kissing a fire hydrant, or other activities which are inadvisable even while sober.

Being drunk also severely impairs your coordination. It really is hard to walk in a straight line. Every physical movement becomes very thoughtful – mostly because you’re aware that if you don’t carefully plan every movement, you’re going to trip on yourself or knock something over. Your body tends to recruit more muscle power than it needs for every action, and is slow to stop or start – your reaction times slow, and your peripheral vision just kind of gets ignored. You can’t see or perceive as much – it becomes figuratively hazy; although your vision doesn’t actually change, your brain’s ability to process information declines significantly.