Abusive when drinking

OY

Hey folks, this is not me who has the problem but I was wondering what people thought about this. First my little story...

About a week ago i was invited over to my brother in laws (Dave for the sake of the story!) house for a party. It was a Friday night and i was really looking forward to just having a few drinks and a bit of a laugh. it was not a huge party, a head count of about 11 people. A friend of his (Steve) was there. Now i had met this kid a few times and he is alright, but i knew that he has a bit of a temper on him.
Dave and his friends are kind of stupid when they are drunk, they like to wrestle, push eachother around a bit and generally act the idiots, which is fine. I am not particularly like that and prefer sitting and chatting when being social. So naturally enough as the night goes on i get the urge to leave. On my way out i say goodbye to Steve and just remember thinking "He looks p***ed about something!"
I heard it all the next day, the guy had a few too many drinks and lost it. Somebody put his hand on his wifes shoulder and he flipped, got very very violent and threatened to beat this guy. So Dave and all of his friends spend a good hour trying to clam Steve down and keep him away from this guy. In the end, Steve managed to bust his best friends lip, gave my brother in law a black eye, pushed his own wife to the floor (the most shocking part IMO) and proceeded to smash all of the bottles in the kitchen, tear a table off the wall and just trash the place.
Now remember all of these people are good friends. They are all on a softball team together and they have been friends for years.
My sister in law was about to call the cops when they finally calmed Steve down. The thing is when he was calm he had NO memory of what had happened. My brother in law told me that the guy started balling when he learned that he had pushed his wife and was just very upset.

Now, there was a night out again the other night and Steve was there but he was drinking Doctor Pepper all night which i was happy to hear about. Also happy that Dave and all of the guys are supporting him about this as i kind of expected a less mature reaction from them. One of them has just stopped drinking just so Steve does not feel left out!

I was just shocked by it all though and i wanted to know if anyone has any thoughts, stories of their own. I guess this is not alcoholism but is definately and alcohol problem. I have heard stories since that he was always a little rough when drunk, that he would take the wrestling matches a little seriously if you know what i mean.

I guess he is a mean drunk by definition but until now i have not been aware of them. So some people just have a bad reaction to alcohol? It just affects them chemically and increases levels of anger and frustration?

It was all a little shocking for me and i was glad i had left but at the same time really confused by it. I do not understand how a person can change 100% when under the influence.

Thoughts?

- OY

Esel

What is your personal issue here? It happened *after* you left; does that not make it 'After Hours'?

Shabadu

Mebbe Humanities rather than AH.

nesf

Alcohol does strange things to people.

Some people need to avoid it.

There are a few "violent drunks" in my family. They were "forced" sober by the rest of the family. For both their own sakes and the sakes of their wives/husbands.

It isn't just men that get aggressive after drink. It's ugly when you see a woman get like that.

One particularily nasty combination (as an aside..)

My aunt and her husband were both extremely violent when drunk. Also they both drank a lot.

It took 15 years of hospitalisations and injuries to convince them to get off the drink (they had divorced at this point). She is still off it, I have no idea about him, he burned his bridges with our family when he attacked 3 brothers in law when they came to get his wife out of the house and to a doctor.

jesus_thats_gre

nesf wrote:

There are a few "violent drunks" in my family. They were "forced" sober by the rest of the family. For both their own sakes and the sakes of their wives/husbands.

It isn't just men that get aggressive after drink. It's ugly when you see a woman get like that.

How do you force an adult to give up drink?

Emmo

you cant. You have to persuade them to do it.

Ba_barbaraAnne

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

How do you force an adult to give up drink?

emmo wrote:

you cant. You have to persuade them to do it.

They will only give up drink when [/I]they realise they have a problem and want to change thier behaviour themselves.

Beruthiel

OY
this is not a PI for you
please read the charter with regards to threads like this
moved to humanities
B

nesf

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

How do you force an adult to give up drink?

Rehab.

Karl Hungus

Your friend Steve sounds like a good man generally, so fair play to him for realising he has a problem, and double fair play to the other fellow who stopped drinking aswell. Your friends really did the right thing, I can tell you that, they could've easily ostracized him, and left him to his self-destructive ways, but they didn't.

Quantum

OY wrote:

It was all a little shocking for me and i was glad i had left but at the same time really confused by it. I do not understand how a person can change 100% when under the influence.

Alcohol has the same affect on everyone. It lowers our inhibitions across the board. That's what alcohol does. The trouble is that this lowering then releases underlying issues and neurosis that are surpressed when we are not drinking. This guy to whom you refer obviously has a lot of personality issues that are released by his drinking. Many people don't have these kinds of peronality neurosis and quite normally become relaxed and good humoured.

nesf

Quantum wrote:

Alcohol has the same affect on everyone. It lowers our inhibitions across the board. That's what alcohol does. The trouble is that this lowering then releases underlying issues and neurosis that are surpressed when we are not drinking. This guy to whom you refer obviously has a lot of personality issues that are released by his drinking. Many people don't have these kinds of peronality neurosis and quite normally become relaxed and good humoured.

Pop psychology doesn't have a place on a humanities board.

Quantum

nesf wrote:

Pop psychology doesn't have a place on a humanities board.

Huh !! Don't you know anything about the affects of Alcohol ? what's your explanation then ?

nesf

Quantum wrote:

Huh !! Don't you know anything about the affects of Alcohol ? what's your explanation then ?

It was your total lack of understand of the terms you used that I was reffering to.

Do a little research on the difference between an inherent neurosis and the effects of drugs such as alcohol and then you can PM me to thank me for helping you realise the error of your ways.

KdjaCL

OY wrote:

The thing is when he was calm he had NO memory of what had happened. My brother in law told me that the guy started balling when he learned that he had pushed his wife and was just very upset.

Complete bollix, he knows full what he did but stupid embarassment makes him create that excuse, i have seen this many many times and the no memory thing is total crap. Simple fix is to stop drinking or drink only lager some beers make people mental, my particular mental drink is whiskey havent drank it in 9 years and wont again.

But if he aware of the problem its up to him to fix it.

kdjac

Sangre

KdjaC wrote:

Complete bollix, he knows full what he did but stupid embarassment makes him create that excuse, i have seen this many many times and the no memory thing is total crap. Simple fix is to stop drinking or drink only lager some beers make people mental, my particular mental drink is whiskey havent drank it in 9 years and wont again.

But if he aware of the problem its up to him to fix it.

kdjac

Of course people can completely forget what they've done

nesf

Sangre wrote:

Of course people can completely forget what they've done

Blackouts are a worrying thing in themselves. They should be regarded as a sign that the person is abusing alcohol and "on the track" to alcoholism if they aren't careful.

And a person is responsible for their actions, being in a voluntarily induced state of drunkenness does not violate this.

If he is violent while drunk then he should moderate his drinking so that he doesn't get violent. Drinking is often used as an "excuse" for violence, and some people seem to believe that things done while drunk do not count because they "weren't in control".

If you choose to get drunk, you have to accept all consequences of this. Be they violence or infidelity or whatever.

Karl Hungus

KdjaC wrote:

Complete bollix, he knows full what he did but stupid embarassment makes him create that excuse, i have seen this many many times and the no memory thing is total crap. Simple fix is to stop drinking or drink only lager some beers make people mental, my particular mental drink is whiskey havent drank it in 9 years and wont again.

But if he aware of the problem its up to him to fix it.

kdjac

Donkeys! At a certain UK Heavy Metal event, I got myself absolutely smashed, and it honestly took me 2 days to remember what the hell happened. I don't believe it's an excuse at all.

Quantum

nesf wrote:

It was your total lack of understand of the terms you used that I was reffering to.

Do a little research on the difference between an inherent neurosis and the effects of drugs such as alcohol and then you can PM me to thank me for helping you realise the error of your ways.

My usage was correct and I stand by it.

nesf

Quantum wrote:

My usage was correct and I stand by it.

We do this the hard way then.

First a definition of neurosis:

From: here

A broad term once used for mental disorders whose primary symptoms are anxiety or what seem to be defenses against anxiety. Since the adoption of DSM-III, the term has been dropped as a broad diagnostic label, and what were once considered the various subcategories of neurosis (eg, phobia, anxiety, conversion and dissociative disorders) are now classified as separate disorders.

So. First off you are using a term that no longer has any real meaning with regard to psychology. Mistake no. 1.


Want me to continue? You won't like it if I do. I'm calling you up for "pop-psychology bull****" that you posted. You don't seem to grasp this.


(DSM-III is the third edition of the basic diagnostic guidelines that are used in modern psychology. (I think it's on the fourth at the moment) They can be considered to be authoritive with regard to the usage of terms within psychology. Just like here.)

The concept of a neurosis is a leftover from Freudian psychology btw. Modern psychology is very different.

Quantum

nesf wrote:

Want me to continue? You won't like it if I do. I'm calling you up for "pop-psychology bull****" that you posted. You don't seem to grasp this.

The concept of a neurosis is a leftover from Freudian psychology btw. Modern psychology is very different.

I'm not interested in psycho-babble or in arguing about politically correct psychological technical terms in a humanities thread.

I stand by what I said as correct:

The trouble is that this lowering (of inhibitions) then releases underlying issues and neurosis that are surpressed when we are not drinking.

nesf

Quantum wrote:

I'm not interested in psycho-babble or in arguing about politically correct psychological technical terms in a humanities thread.

Politically correct???

What are you smoking? You should share.....

Sangre

nesf wrote:

Blackouts are a worrying thing in themselves. They should be regarded as a sign that the person is abusing alcohol and "on the track" to alcoholism if they aren't careful.

And a person is responsible for their actions, being in a voluntarily induced state of drunkenness does not violate this.

If he is violent while drunk then he should moderate his drinking so that he doesn't get violent. Drinking is often used as an "excuse" for violence, and some people seem to believe that things done while drunk do not count because they "weren't in control".

If you choose to get drunk, you have to accept all consequences of this. Be they violence or infidelity or whatever.

Oh I agree completey but I was just disagreeing with Kdjac who said 'i can't remember' is an excuse.