Oh alcohol. While it makes some of us cry, some of us punch walls, and some of us cheat, another side effect of way too much wine is trapping someone you just met in the corner of the room and sounding off about how much you hate your one mutual friend. Who is, quite possibly, also in the same corner of the room. Behind you. Crying.
'The guilt I feel when I wake up after a heavy night isn't because I'm terrified about what I've done, but what I've said,' Yasmin, from London, says. She once ruined a two-year relationship by coming in drunk and revealing everything she disliked about her then-boyfriend, who she lived with. A week later, they weren't living together (they'd broken up, in case you aren't following). 'I can't control myself when I've had too much to drink, I spill everything. To the extent where people don't really tell me stuff any more, in case I get drunk and ruin it.'
When I get drunk I also blab stuff, except I only spill my innermost secrets half the time – the other half, I just lie my tits off. From telling friends that my family has a villa in Spain (we don't), to saying I rejected a place at Oxford University (I had to keep this one up for a while before slowly fading it out because apparently I'd been yelling it to everyone during Freshers' Week), to professing that I used to be a gymnast and was able to do two backflips in a row, there's nothing I won't lie about. And, the weird thing is, they're all lies I wouldn't ever tell when sober because a) there's usually no point to them and b) they don't make any sense. For example, I have no interest in being a gymnast and never have done.
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Whether truth-spouting or shit-spouting, what's making us talk like mad people after a few glasses of Chardonnay (it's the cheapest, yeah)? Why is it that I – along with many others – wake up the next morning with a headache and a vague recollection of telling my best mate I hate her boyfriend? Especially when I don't?!
'When the concentration of alcohol is too high in someone's blood, the brain is functioning differently to normal,' explains Dr. Abigael San, a chartered clinical psychologist specialising in addictions. 'The areas of the brain that usually allow you to plan what you're going to say, and to screen information before it comes out of your mouth are incredibly slow to react – and, if you're black-out drunk, not working properly at all.' So you end up talking without monitoring yourself, which can obviously lead to problems. It's also dependent on the individual – as I said before, it makes some of us cry, punch, and cheat – but there's (scarily) no way of telling which 'drunk person' you are. No matter how many Buzzfeed quizzes you subject yourself to.
'While it does differ from person to person, there are no hard and fast rules to predict how you'll react to an excess of alcohol. However, if you're naturally inclined to speak about things, and open up to people, then you're quite likely to end up being the sort of person who tells everyone your innermost secrets,' says Dr. San. 'The more trusting you are, the more likely that this aspect of your personality will be exaggerated.' It's not an exact science though, so if you're quite an aggressive person naturally, that doesn't mean to say you'll become The Incredible Hulk after some gin. In fact, it might soften you up, depending on what mood you're in that evening. 'Some people are happier when they're drunk, or angrier when they're drunk, but the content of what they say usually reflects an emotional tone,' she adds.
While Yasmin finds that vodka is the real problem drink when it comes to saying exactly what she's thinking, it turns out that it's not about the type of tipple you're, er, tippling, but the amount you drink. 'People often attach various characteristics to different types of alcohol, but it doesn't actually make a difference. The only thing that makes a definite difference is the amount of alcohol in your bloodstream,' Dr. San explains. So, people who can drink G&Ts like water will knock back loads more alcohol than if they were drinking, say, red wine. Then they become less inhibited, start shouting about how lonely they are, and blame it on the G&Ts rather than on the fact they drank 12 of them.
But why do I sometimes tell people I used to be fluent in French (I got a B)? Once you've lost your conscious mind, the environment around you basically becomes a dreamlike scenario, where logic goes out of the window and what you're saying becomes a mixture of the truth and total bullshit. 'The point is, it doesn't really matter what you're saying because you're not consciously aware of it. You could be declaring your deepest secrets or getting into a random argument about rubbish – you're not in control of any of it when you drink to the point of blackout,' says Dr. San. 'There's no way of knowing which way it'll go, you could end up talking about real things or you could end up talking rubbish.'
The side effects of spouting crazytalk can be brutal, as Yasmin can testify to. But, despite this, she keeps drinking. 'For some reason it hasn't stopped me going out and have a good time – while I'm more aware of it than I was before, I still make an idiot of myself a couple of times a month,' she says. This is because of a natty little thing called Totally Forgetting What A Tit You've Been (the scientific term). 'Initially, you wouldn't drink for a little while, but time makes you forget how bad it was, and you only remember the fun parts. Next time you go out, you might convince yourself that you won't get drunk to that level again, but that rarely works out,' says Dr. San. Preach.
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So how do we combat this, apart from 'stop drinking' which I'm not prepared to do because I bloody love wine? The old advice is the best advice if you want to prevent your secrets (or lies) from leaking out of your facehole. 'Limiting what you drink will work – it's important to recognise that the half-life of alcohol is quite short. When you have a drink, make sure you don't have another one straight away because it takes half an hour for your liver to process it, and you won't have felt the effects of the first drink yet,' Dr. San advises. Alternate with a soft drink or, if you want to lessen the hangover, a good ole pint of water.
On top of that, if you're really worried about your behaviour and it just keeps happening, then she suggests you get a friend to film you. 'You won't remember what you've been doing, but having it on record should probably make you think twice about getting that drunk again,' she says.
As someone who, two days ago, got shown a video of herself dancing on a table to Missy Elliot's Get Your Freak On, while people stood around and looked concerned, I can attest to the strength of this method. Failing that, you can always use the following template for next day apology texts:
Hey [insert name] I'm so sorry for telling you about [xxx xxxx]. I've never even been to [xxxxx] and haven't ever [xxxxxxxx]. Read this Debrief article [link to this article] for the reasons behind my madness and let's catch up soon over a soft drink. [insert some sort of in-joke about the evening to pull the focus away from you being a drunk mess. For example: 'Wasn't it great when Brian dropkicked Lauren across the room during Beyoncé Drunk In Love?! etc].
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.