Can alcohol change personality, or does it just reveal what is there?

That's an interesting question.
The only tangible research I've read about alcoholism is this:

If you are a man and you have reached the age of 45 and you are not an alcoholic then you will never become one.

For women once you reach 65(!) you're free and clear of becoming an alcoholic.

I believe I read this in Journal of Alcohol Studies.

Odd....

I so bet that is changing.

I think heavy drinking used to be less common amongst young women, meaning that, perhaps, alcohol use increased in women over time, as life had its evil way with us.

Now, at least in Oz, and I think in a number of other countries, heavy binge drinking is much more common for women from adolescence through their early adulthood.

I know, but true. Go figure women get an extra 20 years added. I read about it because, surprise, there's alcoholism in my immediate family.

As for your question, I know a woman who is alcoholic and the more she drinks the more pleasant she becomes. She's the happiest drunk I've ever known. When sober, she's a bit on the anxious side.

I'd say she's unusual, as most alcholics I've known get broodier with every drink.

I'm sure that there are actual researches - I do know that there were researches when I wrote my thesis some ages ago.

The euphoria and/or depression which often is seen when someone drinks to much alcohol might be seen by bystanders as change of personality/character.


Certainly a long abuse of alcohol (aka alcoholism) changes the character/personalty (gamma alcoholism > polyneuropathy).


It's something not reported very often, but many partnerships break after an alcoholism therapy: because the now dry partner shows a totally different personality then his/her partner was used to live with for years ...

My stepfather may have been less obnoxious, sober. Hard to tell with that personality type. He did tell us once that : "When I'm drunk, that's when I'm sober." Meaning, I suppose, that he liked himself best as a drunk. His behavior bears that out, since I never saw him sober the last three years I knew him.

Side note: I once saw a t-shirt that read "Instant Asshole -- Just Add Alcohol"

I don't have any research references, but I believe that most annoying drunks
bring a personality disorder with them into their drinking sessions. The booze
and the latent personality dysfunction work hand-in-hand to produce the
obnoxious result.

I don't think that this can be verfied by data.
At least not in Europe.

(When I wrote my thesis, some clinics just opened special wards for seniors. And reading the patients anamnesis you could see that they only became alcoholics when getting older. (My "special friend" was an 78-years old lady ... who never was drunk until she retired.)

I missed your commentary and only saw the "odd" part. I'm not sure if it's changing, especially considering binge drinking is on the rise, but I think it has more to do with physical differences/brain chemistry of male/female rather than habits or leanings. I read the article about 15 years ago so they very well could have redone the studies.

Hmmm...well, the few really obnoxious drunks I have known who were way less obnoxious, or positively delightful, when sober were oddish. But I'd not have said personality disordered. That's a fairly heavy diagnosis.

But perhaps you don't mean that, just that they had strong aspects of their drunk personality present and accounted for before touching a drink?

you make a good point, alcoholics bring the depression or the illness with the drinking and the diseases get compounded.

I think it reveals what is there, but it can give substantially more weight to something that is normally not a major player in someone's personality. We had a local DA here get drunk at a bar and make racial slurs. Of course this cost him his job since you can't have a bigot for a DA, but the strange thing was that this guy had a twenty year history of bending over backwards to be fair to minorities in prosecutions. Being raised in the South in the 50's and 60's, he was certainly raised and exposed to bigoted behavior, so I'm sure it was in his background and the alcohol brought it out yet all the evidence showed that he spent his life fighting against that belief system. This woman I talked politics with felt this guy was evil incarnate for his racist views. I thought he was to be commended to doing his best to be better than he was likely raised to be.

I have known people to claim that different alcohol brings different results!

I swear good single malt scotch makes people feel warm and good!

I have a friend who always cries if she has too much gin!

True, I think.


I can imagine alcohol releasing stuff that we control in normal life.

I wonder if there was a tension for this guy in working so hard against his early raising?

Either way, that's a damn sad story.

I have too. My stepmother's third husband(can you follow that?) used to talk about how scotch made him feel warm and good. He was not an alcoholic, just a tried and true product of the 1950s cocktail hour crowd.

I like scotch myself, and come to think of it, it makes me fell warm and good when I have it too.

Gin and vodka do not produce that same warm contented feeling.

What a story. Was he forgiven at all?

This isn't alcohol related, but when Jerry Springer was mayor of Cincinnati, he paid for a call girl with a personal check and got caught. The voters forgave him. Could they do the same for the DA?

That's a good example of the trickiness of what one's "true" personality is, though.

I remember reading someplace -- maybe "Blink" or a critical review of it? -- that there are instant reactions we have that various scientists see as evidence of who we "really" are or what we "really" think, but it's not fair to weight this "really-ness" more heavily than what they actually DO. Like, if they show prejudice of some sort (easier association with negative things for example) towards black people, but in their everyday life actually are perfectly decent and nice and non-prejudiced people, which trumps what?

Though I guess engineer's example brings it 'round the other way -- it really does lurk and will come out when inhibitions are down. Hmmm.

Interesting question!

I think, and I've done a little field research over the yeras, that it depends on set and setting for one thing, like acid, but can also depend on what you're drinking.
Red wine and I get cuddly and affectionate. Tequila and I become the world's biggest womanizer. Goldschlager or Yager and I become the UNIVERSES biggest womanizer.

Beer and I become an over assertive ill tempered asshole which is why I do't drink beer.

I thnk alcohol just amplifies your basic personality. I'm the friendliest drunk on the planet until someone is confrontational and then I'll scrap with no thought of how narrow I am in the ass.... but I'm like that sober as well.... just a little more controlled when sober.... another reaason I don't get drunk anymore.

According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists "about a third of older people with drinking problems develop them for the first time in later life".

In Germany, according to data from the Deutsche Haupstelle für Suchtgefahren ("German Centre for Addiction Issues") the number seems to be a bit higher.

Oh, I know about the complexity of personality.

And I know you know you know.

And I know you know you know I know.

Now...there's a common alcohol effect....perseverance!!!! Only, I am stone cold sober.

That's exactly why I was wondering.

Does alcohol actually bring something, apart from disinhibition?