September 2010

The Lush Chronicles: A Field Guide to Drunks

The happy drunk. The weepy drunk. The funny drunk. The angry drunk. These are all stereotypical reductions of human behavior under the influence of alcohol and none of them are particularly accurate. The truth is that we all feel the same range of emotions whether we're drunk or not. Some of us may be predisposed to one kind of behavior or another when drinking but there's no reason why an angry drunk can't have moments of kindness or a happy drunk can't suddenly have a turn for the melancholy. It's not the emotions we feel when drinking that are important, it's the way we get to them. Everyone has a behavioral pattern throughout the stages of ethanol metabolization. Being able to identify how those around you predictably change over the course of a night of drinking is a better use of energy than just noting how they feel at any given moment.