Does an alcoholic still act irrational even when they aren't drinking?

Growing up my best friend’s dad was alcoholic. He got off work at 3 and walked in the back door at 3:10, picked up a big bottle of bourbon and a glass, set his lunch pail on the counter, and sat down at on the sofa in the living room. He said not a word and everyone knew not to talk to him. Once he started drinking he was a wild card. Some times he would talk to us four girls in the house and his wife plus his mother lived with them. But sometimes he just drank and stared at the TV, even talking to it sometimes. Dinner was at 6:30 after the news. Not 6:31. I was there one night for dinner and the mom was still putting the food on the table at 6:30 and he started throwing the bowls of food on the wall. So he was not rational sober or drunk during the years he was drinking. After I was grown he almost died from something, I don’t remember exactly what it was, but he didn’t start drinking again when he got home. I had married and left the neighborhood at that time but I was told that his hands were shaky but he was a really sweet old man. He did die a few years before his wife and until the day she died she never regretted staying with him. She said eventually she got her husband back. I just mention because we don’t hear of that too much anymore. Commitment through good and bad, sickness and health, is harder than it sounds.

Alas, I strayed. Sorry. ;)

@Sagacious…that was a sad story. Thanks for sharing.

@Dutchess_lll Sad to us, but to his family the end was happy. I was sorry I never visited much after I moved out of the area.

No more or less than most people. Most people act irrationally at times.

An alcoholic who does not drink, but is not actively working on a positive recovery is often said to be on a “dry drunk”; full of anger and resentment with no positive way to process the emotions. That behavior may appear as irrational to others.

I was very close to someone who drank for I think about ten years and then he quit smoking cigarettes and drinking. I didn’t know him before he stopped. I didn’t find him irrational, but that’s really my only experience of being close to an ex-drinker. I don’t like to hear people call someone a drunk. I know you didn’t do that. I’m just mentioning it. @zenvelo

Thanks @zenvelo. That’s what I think I deal with with my little sister, what I sometimes dealt with my mom…but she’s dead. But.. she was still irrational after she quit drinking and left us.
And my sister is certain that she’s on some esoterical plane that none of us mere mortals can comprehend.

And…my sister (and my Mom) used to gear up like jet engines getting ready to blast us. Hard. And then we got 5 minutes of screaming hell. Invariably we failed in the conversation.
Of course we walked on egg shells when we were having a normal, neutral conversation to try and not upset them.

I worked in a Psych hospital while in college, we had a patient with something like this Wernicke-Korsakoff disorder.

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Some may have self-medicated for mental illness, too, thus without the alcohol they are still sometimes irrational.

I always felt that drinking, brought out one’s true personality. So. If one is irrational when drunk, they are an irrational person. They just hide it better, when sober…

I can be irrational, when I’m sober, or rational, when drunk.

Rationality, is a subjective word though, and is a human construct. Therefore, it cannot be clearly defined, like say, a mathematical truth. Example, 2+2=4.

Rationale, falls into the category of morality. Was is moral to one, may be immoral to another.

I’m thinking “Which comes first, the natural irrationality or irrationality through drinking?”

I’m an occasional drinker these days but when I was in my 20s and drank more I seem to recall I had moments of rationality while drunk more than when I was sober.

It is called a “dry drunk” My husband hasn’t drank in 15 years but I don’t think he likes himself as he is not very pleasing to be around anymore and says more negative than positive things. The last 10 years of our 32 year marriage have been hard…much of it is financial and farming is not very productive these days. I have no experience to get a decent paying job now. We are unsure of what to do.