So I’m realizing a lot of things I used to associate with disinhibition – confused thinking and narrower scoping, wild overconfidence in predicting outcomes – are really co-effects of alcohol intoxication no more inherently connected than slurred speech or stumbling.

Like, imagine someone realizing (or thinking, of even a reasonable chance that) they’re going to die and opening up about secrets – that they’ve always loved you, that they killed this person or had that secret child, that they’ve always known about X, etc. Sober it kind of works like that.

Except in totally casual and unpredicted moments, so as someone reasonably cynical who fancies himself clever enough to infer the things the personalities around me are guarding, let me tell you that could get pretty interesting while I learned to navigate the new personality. The old me would’ve been mortified at several points but luckily coming along with the massive anxiety reduction it just rolled off me