College Times

Issue date: 2/21/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Photos.com

Longtime readers of College Times might remember a weekly feature we used to run called "Drunk Dial." The premise was simple: we invented a stereotypical Irish pub dweller named Seamus McGillicuddy and invited readers to call him at the end of a long night of partying.

One of my earliest tasks as an intern here was transcribing the drunken musings of you, our loyal readers. It was simultaneously entertaining and frustrating. There were certainly many hilarious calls, but transcribing the oft-incoherent mumblings of drunken, half-awake college students was no easy task.

It's pretty surprising what some people will say under the cloak of anonymity and with some prodding from "liquid courage." There were calls with more f-bombs than a Tommy Lasorda press conference. There were calls that contained enough racial epithets to make a Klansman blush. There were calls that were so sexually explicit that I felt like I should be paying $3.99 a minute to listen to them. There was the guy who thought Seamus was a leprechaun who would bring him a pet hippopotamus. There were weird calls, creepy calls, disturbing calls and calls that might've been better suited to a suicide prevention hotline.

So what is it about alcohol that lowers inhibitions and makes us say and do things we normally wouldn't? Surprisingly, the answer isn't as clear as one might expect. Alcohol is a depressant that stimulates areas of the brain that control pleasure seeking. But in the admittedly limited research I did for this column, I couldn't find any studies that explored exactly why alcohol lowers inhibitions. In fact, some studies have suggested that the effect is simply contextual.

In one study, subjects were asked to push a button when prompted by a computer, but not push the button when a red light also appeared. The intoxicated subjects were initially more likely to push the button in spite of the red light, but when offered a small reward, they performed on par with the sober subjects. In other words, people are able to control their behavior when they're drunk if they really want to.

Maybe people just use alcohol as an excuse to do "socially unacceptable" things, knowing that they have the "I was drunk" excuse to fall back on. To be totally honest, I've made regrettable decisions when drunk, and I'm pretty sure I knew they were bad decisions even in my drunken haze. Maybe we all just need to get certain things out of our system at times, and alcohol has become our collective "fall guy," shouldering the blame for many of our questionable decisions. I guess I can drink to that.

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