It's not the alcohol, how your beliefs about 'booze' make you drunk

Uganda has been ranked 7th among the countries with the highest consumption of pure alcohol in 2022, after holding the 8th position in the past two years, with the male consuming about 75% and the women about 25%.

A long week

It appears that the increasing alcohol content of citizens is directly proportional to the experiences they expect to get after a drink or ten. David Robson says that people's beliefs about liquor have a stronger effect on how they behave when drunk than the physiological impact of the liquid.

This could also explain why some people act in a way that is opposite to their sober self, when under the influence. Some people enjoy a relaxed mood and others experience extroversion while others fall somewhere in the middle of the road or a fight.

The first round

However, scientists say that these effects are not caused by the biological effect of ethanol (the active ingredient in alcoholic beverages)

"In terms of its neurochemical properties, ethanol is a central nervous system depressant. But when people consume alcohol, they often experience stimulant effects. They become loud, boisterous, and even antagonistic, which is the opposite of what you might expect," says a psychologist, Andrew Lac of Colorado University

This mysterious effect when under the influence has been brought under study to show how beliefs create expectations from alcohol consumption. In some cases, the experiences that are associated with a drunken stupor might shape mindsets that are more intoxicating than the alcohol itself.

One for the road

Expectations are typically influential in results experienced from working out, reactions to new food, stress and life span. Expectations are also influential during the placebo effect where a patient's beliefs about a treatment bring about real benefits.

It is this almost 'miraculous healing' effect of expectations that breeds doubt about alcohol being the single causation of a spectrum of 'drunk personalities'.

In an experiment done by Laurent Begue at the University of Grenoble Alpes, to prove these claims, participants were divided into two groups.

Without knowing which each was getting, one group was given a set of alcohol-free cocktails while the other was given cocktails with either high or mild levels of alcohol. Therefore one would think they were getting high-alcohol content where they were getting none, and to stop them from guessing they were told that the mocktails would have the same taste as real cocktails.

With the participants' expectations of intoxication manipulated, Begue set out to test individual aggressive behaviour under the influence.

The morning after

The test was to have participants make a dish (potatoes and hot sauce) for one of them (an actor faking a hostile unimpressed personality) who would judge their preparations. As the actor deliberately insulted their dishes, it was found that the participants who believed they were drunk, but had actually had alcohol-free mocktails, that were more likely to increase hot sauce in the dish.

These expectations are suspected to begin early on in childhood. When a group of 7-year-olds were asked what would happen if they took alcohol, they said that it would make them abusive and violent.