kateyes said:
We have 2 other threads on this topic--see In Vino Veritas. I started one of the them because the whole Gibson thing brought to mind an issue within my family. My sister-in-law drinks and when she has had too much says remarkably hurtful things to other people in the family. Most of us have taken the view point it was just the alcohol taking. Lately though I have begun to wonder if that is true--or if the alcohol just gives her the courage to say the things she really thinks. I don't think alcohol suddently causes these negative thoughts to spring into someone's mind--I think the thoughts are there. I had a drinking problem--and can honestly say (I know because I went back and asked) I didn't say nasty hurtful things as a result of drinking--I attribute that to the fact I didn't think nasty hurtful things when I was sober.
I disagree. The effect of alcohol on an alcoholic is different than it is on a non-alcoholic. There is a bizarre exaggeration that takes place in the mind of an alcoholic when they drink. It's part of why they become addicted to it - it produces a very euphoric feeling that non-alcoholics do not experience. But it can also produce very negative feelings, too, that are equally twisted and exaggerated. Your sister-in-law is angry, and it comes out when she drinks, but the way that anger is expressed, and at whom, when she's drunk, has nothing to do with reality or with what she's really thinking and feeling as a sober person. Drunks can't generally accept their own conditions, yet they do have some sense of being "looked down on" for their behavior. So they very often respond to these feeling of inferiority (brought on by their excessive drinking) by lashing out at those they feel are looking down on them for having drunk too much. It's a kind of attack as a form of defense. And the things she says aren't things she really thinks or means, they are whatever comes to her mind that the can use to fend off her own sense of failure for not being able to drink like "normal people".
In a word, she attackes the "normal people" around her because she can't accept her own abnormality (her alcoholism). WHAT she says doesn't matter. She'll blurt out anything that "works" for her in that moment.
This would be my theory on it. And I've been there.
Then again, I don't know your sister-in-law.