Alcohol = Smart

The Christmas chaos has come and gone in pretty much the usual fashion. Every day leading up to Christmas day was sunny and warm; Christmas day was cold and overcast.
It didn’t last long though – I already have my inevitable and very painful Christmas sunburn – a kind of painful reminder that too many years sitting inside at my desk job every day without a window has left me freakishly prone to burning despite an olive complexion that should make burning more difficult.

Today is the first day since Christmas that I’ve had a moment to myself and it’s really kind of nice. The last week has been an utterly chaotic race to catch up with every family member and friend that I haven’t seen in the last year. It all starts again tonight and goes until the end of this week, but then at least it will all be done and I can start to relax.


Christmas Day this year saw me going a bit heavy on the Christmas Spirits (as anticipated) and it brought something kind of odd to my attention.
When I’ve had a few drinks, I get kind of oddly smarter, while also stupider in the way that can only be induced by alcohol. Let me explain.

I read a lot. By a lot, I mean a ridiculous amount. I’ll read pretty much anything you give me – I’m not picky. If I have nothing to read, I’ll just read the same books over and over.
I prefer fiction and although I did say I wasn’t picky, I absolutely refuse to read anything political – fictional or not. But that’s a whole other story and I’m getting off track. Christmas holidays does that to me.

Anyway....The point I’m trying to make here is that if you read a lot it means that you tend to know more words than people who don’t read a lot. I’m talking more about synonyms for regular words rather than knowing entirely new words - ways of phrasing things that regular people don’t use in every day conversation.

Sometimes, when I’m talking to someone and am trying to phrase what I want to say, a much more obscure than necessary word will pop into my head and my brain will filter it so that I don’t use it, but instead use the word that will be understood by more people. I have enough trouble with basic social situations without being the chick that uses odd words and always has to explain what she’s on about.

What I’ve noticed is that once I’ve had a few drinks, the filter that gets rid of all these unnecessary words shuts down. My brain is suddenly on its own in the vocabulary department. So suddenly, I become this blubbering drunk who, given my special kind of social retardation, says really stupid things but manages to sound kind of brainy (and pompous) while doing it.

It’s a very weird phenomenon that I’ve never noticed before – probably because I’m usually too drunk to realise that people don’t understand what I’m saying. Or maybe I just think that it’s the alcohol that makes me indecipherable rather than the words I’m using.

This would make me ideal to be the loner in the bar who listens to your problem, and then gives you wise drunken advice – the kind that you completely ignore, but that makes you feel better because at least you’re not the drunken thesaurus hanging out in a bar all alone.

Now if only I could get the hang of texting while drunk, I could really have it all.