Is Alcohol A Truth Serum?

[Quoth The Raven]

Pentothal (truth serum) gets people in a similar state to that of alcohol. The Soviet KGB would often use pure alcohol to do the same. Although the subjects often times mixed fact with fiction, picking up on the facts was of useful information. More then anything it was trying to get them in a particular "state". Alcohol can do this, but it looses it's effectiveness as soon as you get so drunk that you can't walk.

So I guess we disagree. I think this "state" does get people to talk more truth.

And was part of this method of truth extraction saucing them up, sending them out dancing with some blondes and then getting them really angry by arresting them for drunk driving? :sarcastic
'Sir, you're under arrest.'
'Yeah, well you stink...and your mother is a cabbage, your wife sleeps with budgies, and while we're at it, the double agents names are......'

Somehow I think it also takes some careful and thorough questioning.

 

[Quiddity]

And was part of this method of truth extraction saucing them up, sending them out dancing with some blondes and then getting them really angry by arresting them for drunk driving? :sarcastic
'Sir, you're under arrest.'
'Yeah, well you stink...and your mother is a cabbage, your wife sleeps with budgies, and while we're at it, the double agents names are......'

Somehow I think it also takes some careful and thorough questioning.

You think?

 

[kateyes]

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.

 

[Quiddity]

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.

.

Especially if your sister in law repeats hurtful comments. That atleast shows a hint of consciousness (she remembered) and not some dementia.

 

[kateyes]

.

Especially if your sister in law repeats hurtful comments. That atleast shows a hint of consciousness (she remembered) and not some dementia.

Yeah that's what I thought--for several years I thought it was just me--in the last year or so a few other family members have let slip being on the receiving end as well.

 

[Quiddity]

Yeah that's what I thought--for several years I thought it was just me--in the last year or so a few other family members have let slip being on the receiving end as well.

It would be best to confront her about it and discuss the issue in a civil manner.

 

[PureX]

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.

 

[Quoth The Raven]

You think?

Well, I use the term loosely.

 

[Booko]

Is Alcohol a truth Serum?

Only if you find great truth in snoring. :run:

 

[Booko]

Alcoholism seriously twists the mind and causes real dementia. Mel Gibson's diatribe about "the Jews" could very easily have been more the product of alcoholic paranoid delusions than anything he actually thought or felt as a sober man. And if he has been drinking regularly for some time, those delusions will have invaded his mind even in the few hours that he isn't drinking. Alcoholic dementia is a real condition, and if as Mr. Gibson claims, he had a relapse, after some time sober, such a dementia could return in spades very quickly. It's a strange phenomena of alcoholism that it's intensity never abates even after years of sobriety.

I have to second this. My bro-in-law is an alcoholic, and I've known him since he was 15. He's said some very very bizarre things when drunk that no way he believed, not even in some deep dark crevasse somewhere. He truly was just having paranoid delusions and was, yeah...demented.

He's been sober for a while now, and the delusions have gone as well.

 

[coberst]

Alcohol is not a truth serium.