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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28108 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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Not sure I agree. I can imagine a scenario where it would be sensible to describe A as having gotten B drunk, or drugged them with alcohol. An obvious example would be A adding some more potent alcohol to B's drink without B's knowledge or consent.

North by Northwest features a good example of what I would describe as the minimum necessary for me to say A(really A1, A2, and A3) has gotten B drunk. I would not describe someone making strong cocktails as having gotten the other party drunk. Not when martinis are often made with often far less less than a splash of Vermouth everywhere.

I don't agree. To more fully lay out a theory of when I think it's appropriate to say something like "A got B drunk" I think of A taking some action that overcomes B's own intentions about how drunk to get to cause B to become much more intoxicated than they intended. The scene in North by Northwest you link obviously involves overcoming someone's intentions by force but I think it can also be done by fraud. Sure, if your martini has an extra shot worth of Vermouth in it or whatever I wouldn't call that enough by itself. But I think spiking an otherwise non-alcoholic drink or mixing less alcoholic drinks (like beer) with more alcoholic ones (like whiskey) without the knowledge or consent of the subject can rise to a similar level.

Sure, if your martini has an extra shot worth of Vermouth in it or whatever I wouldn't call that enough by itself. But I think spiking an otherwise non-alcoholic drink or mixing less alcoholic drinks (like beer) with more alcoholic ones (like whiskey) without the knowledge or consent of the subject can rise to a similar level.

Not to condescend, but are you familiar with the beverages in question from firsthand experience? I ask because these couple sentences include three things that seem very odd to me:

  • That's not how martinis work, no one would ever add an extra shot of vermouth.
  • Getting drunk on beverages that are ostensibly non-alcoholic would only be possible for someone that simultaneously has almost zero alcohol tolerance and doesn't notice the taste of booze, which is an uncommon combination.
  • Boilermakers are very obvious beverages. No one expecting a PBR is going to fail to notice that it has a shot of Wild Turkey in it.

Yes, I drink quite frequently myself. I intend them as a kind of illustrative example, not necessarily to be taken literally. They are the pointing finger, not the moon.

I have to imagine that all but the least experienced drinker could tell a boilermaker (beer with whisky) from a beer by taste alone.

I can imagine edge cases where this is true, but to say that they're noncentral is putting it lightly. If we're talking about someone that's coerced in some fashion or has so little experience with alcohol that they don't know what to expect, OK, I get it, that's not literally impossible. More broadly though, I think adults can pretty well tell if a cocktail is pretty stiff and if they make a mistake and wind up drunker than they were expecting, they should take some degree of responsibility for monitoring their own intake. If someone hands you an old fashioned, you can pretty well guess that there are roughly two standard drinks worth of bourbon in there. If you get a gin and tonic, you can take a sip and have a reasonable guess at how strong you think it is. If you're at a party where you really don't know people that well, sticking with things that you can count is probably a good idea in general.

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