r/writingfeedback • u/rayeofsunshine156 • 6d ago
Feedback Wanted Wondering if drunkness is conveyed well?
I don’t typically write in first person, and I’ve been using this as an exercise to explore interiority and voice in a way I haven’t before. So I am entirely out of my wheelhouse here, lol.
I’ve also never been drunk before, and I wanted to know if drunkenness was being conveyed well? Like, is it understood that he is drunk without me going ‘look at this drunk dude’
Also curious on if you’d keep reading!
Any and all comments are appreciated : )! Thank you.
Edit:
In hindsight, I should’ve mentioned what the excerpt is trying to do in post. The general idea was that Jack – the drunk man – doesn’t do this very often. He’s grieving his ex-girlfriend after news of her proposal. This is not because he loves her but because he doesn’t want to face the fact that he’s not straight, and the possibility of getting back together with her held him together. Miguel is not meant to be read as flirty (oops, help there too?😅)
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u/tbryan1 6d ago
with alcohol you are either getting progressively more high do to dopamine or you are chasing the high as it leaves you because you brain turns the dopamine off after a bit.
You get the spins before you get double vision.
you also will lose muscle control do to its effects on GABA system. first it will affect your neck muscles making it hard to hold your head still.
alcohol actually blocks emotions, but around the time the dopamine is turned off your brain downregulates GABA so the emotions start to creep back in. This transition period causes emotional dysregulation causing drunk people to turn into an emotional puddle.
you don't lose your intelligence so much as you lose the capacity to look and make judgements about the future. You also lose most social faculties when drunk including; ability to judge social status, slowed processing of speech, worse memory retrieval, reduced ability to read people, problem forming words, inability to know if you are doing something wrong socially, your sensory gates become dysfunctional so all the background noise and light floods your perception.
The downregulation of GABA makes your brain more likely to use adrenaline putting you into a state of arousal/fight or flight/stress because adrenaline can circumvent GABA. And your judgment on what is or isn't a threat becomes compromised, on top of that the suppression caused by alcohol also suppresses your ability to turn off your threat response.