Alcohol generally is pretty naff… I used to drink a fair amount of Stella (do they not call it “wife beater” in Edinburgh?). Didn’t make me overly surly or violent, just ill eventually, and a bit of a tosser….:alcoholic:toxic::sick::sick::sick:

Some (fermentation by products possibly?) do turn nice people into complete w^n*”rs though – go into any town centre on a saturday night, and wander around for a bit if you want first hand experience of this.

Doesn’t seem to be the alcohol that causes the full on surly grunting behaviour – although one of the effects of alcohol is the release of Testosterone into the system, which is countered later on by excess release of Oestrogen to balance it. This is one of the reasons male alcoholics usually develop “beer belly” – Excess Oestrogen causes the body to think it’s pregnant, and so store fat around the stomach and hips to prepare for having the extra body to feed….

I know people who can drink brandy, or whisky all night and just get more cheerful though, but if you feed them vodka, they end up with no pals in the morning. Total removal of all social filters, and general surly bastard behaviour. And I know several people who drink vodka all the time, but if you give them whisky they’ll fight the world (and end up getting nicked for spending half an hour trying to kick f%$k out of a lamp post, cos it “pushed me when I was walking past it”…:you_crazy:you_crazy:laugh_at::crazy_diz. Tends to be Scotsmen, or Paddies that have this reaction (which is obviously why they brew it a lot!?) – probably some chemical fireworks in the genetic code of people of Pictish/Celt, or Scotii extraction and the various poisons that give whisky it’s mellow smoky taste… The ancient Pict and Scot tribes liked nothing so much as a good fight, and if they could do it while pissed, so much the better :lol_crash:lol_crash:lol_crash

But back to the original point – like I said, I used to drink a fair bit, and it changed me for a while (I’m not a terribly violent person, and never stooped to that depth, but I did get argumentative about stupid things, and generally behaved like a bit of a tosser once or twice…:bad_idea:- I’m just lucky the missus does really love me, and will tell me in terms that leave no doubts as to meaning that I need to stop being a git :shy:).

I’m definetly with uncle Bill on this one – there are better drugs, and better drugs for you. Fact. Alcohol is just legal, and like tobacco there are people with power who have that power because they make a lot of money from dealing drugs – something people who get offended about “druggies” often conveniently forget. The only difference is that someone else is telling them what they can and can’t think, and can and can’t put in their body, so they think they have some sort of moral high ground… :rolleyes::you_crazy

Which leads me to the last point about alcohol that I noticed – it makes you very stupid. You become argumentative about things that you (often) know nothing about, and your IQ drops by about 40% (IMO) if you drink a lot. My total wake up call was playing countdown one day, and not being able to come up with a single word of more than 5 letters – I also became incapable of adding up which scared me, as I have always been very good at mental arithmetic (I didn’t get my first calculator until we started calculus at school, so haven’t ever relied on one).

Now I don’t drink again, I’m back to my usual average, and can do multi syllable words again – and it is definetly the alcohol, because I haven’t slowed down on any of my other vices one bit…:wink:

I don’t think it’s necessarily the “chemical” beers, or spirits (after all, single malt scotch is hardly chemically mixed), just some groups of poisons mix badly for some people. Life is experienced “chemically” by humans after all – every experience you have, and change in your life experience causes a chemical change in your body. Every breath is a chemical reaction. Every muscle movement is a complex interplay of chemical reactions, everything you eat, smell, feel, taste, and hear is the result of your environment changing the balance of chemicals in your body in some way….

Just because something has been mixed by human hand doesn’t make it inferior, or more dangerous than “natural” things. I always find it rather bizzarre when I meet people who shun man made things, and have this curious but unshakable belief that anything “herbal” is good for you, and generally safe. Try telling that to the medieval monks who accidentally OD’d while taking Aconite, or Monkshood (which was used as a medicine, but is lethal if too much is taken). Or someone who’s eaten a foxglove flower because it looks edible only to discover it’s other name is “Deadly Nightshade”. Dame Nature is plenty capable of stitching us humans right up, and has had a lot more practice (evolution is after all, a competition, and poisons have always been a valid way of protecting yourself from getting eaten.:hopeless:)

Me – I dont drink anymore as I dont like the person I become when I do. I find it amazing that the most consumed drugs in the world are amongst the worst and most addictive ones out there [thats alcohol and tobacco just so we are clear on this] and the cynical side of me says this is because the side effects of them make it easier to control society at large……

I am lucky that drinking does not make me aggressive or violent…

TBH I can get completely rat-arsed and still look (and act) fairly normal – also with all substances the more mashed I get I tend to compensate more by thinking about what I am doing/saying so as not to make too much an idiot of myself or get into fights etc….

but it still has a physical toll on my body and co-ordination……..