My husband once told me, "Drunks don't lie." What are your thoughts?

I’m loaded right now… Did I ever tell you about the time I beat up fifteen guys?

They lie. Trust me, they lie. But I get where the saying comes from as many drunks lose their inhibitions and thus could care less what they say, unfortunately that includes the truth and lies.

I’ve heard something similar: “Drunken words are sober thoughts.”

I’m sure there are cases where a drunk person would lie. If they tell you outright, as opposed to you asking, I think that might make a bit of difference when it comes to them being truthful.

Drunk people loosen up their social barriers, so in a way I concur. But nah, it’s not a truth serum. Otherwise Guantanamo would be one big keg party.

@Allie

The one I heard was “a drunken mind speaks a sober heart”.

It’s one of those things where I’m sure since it lowers inhibitions, it allows a person to speak freely about things they wouldn’t have otherwise spoken about, but it’s not a guarantee. I’m sure they lie plenty of times and don’t necessarily “tell all”. It just makes it easier to tell things that you might have been reluctant to tell. I know that when I get “boozed up”, I do tend to be a little more emotional, but most of the time, I’m just silly. For me, it’s more doing things that I wouldn’t otherwise do too often rather than spilling my deepest darkest secrets (of which I don’t really have any—but all those times I drank while hiding my homosexuality seemed to have worked out; I never gave it away, though I did hug plenty of guys, but they all did).

If you’re talking about the black out stage, then maybe, but nothing they say will be that coherent anyway. Usually I’m just worried about taking care of the person at that point, not trying to get secrets out of them. But I think they can still lie if they really want to.

I sometimes will tell something that I didn’t mean to, but it’s not usually the complete truth. If you ask me a yes or no question, I am likely to tell the truth. If your question is more complex though, it depends. How drunk am I? Tipsy is the best time to get the truth out of me. Once I’m really drunk I’m even more likely to embellish or flat-out make things up because they sound pretty in my head.

It may be true to a point, but that doesn’t mean that anything that comes out while you’re hammered is true. There have been times when I have been truly nasty to my husband- saying things that I not only wouldn’t say sober, but that I don’t even feel!

@ccrow I’ve done that too. It’s usually a reaction to some really serious frustration with him that I’ve been holding back…...

I don’t think it’s true. How many people get told ‘Of course I love yoooo baybee’ or ‘I’ll call you tomorrow’ by a drunk person? I think it’s enough to negate the saying.

@gemiwing GA! Of course that’s true…..glad I brought this up.

@Val123 thanks! glad you brought it up too

@Val123 , yeah, I tend to suppress anger, & I’m sure that plays its part. (He refers to those episodes as my ‘evil twin’!)

@ccrow Yeah….I hate it. I sure wish I could be more open with him about what’s on my mind, but….he gets defensive, takes everything the wrong way, turns stuff around, and we end up in a fight…so I just don’t say anything.

In vino veritas, or “in wine [there is the] truth”. Or drunk people can be a bit loose-lipped. I wouldn’t put 100% certainty on what a drunk person says, but once inhibitions are lowered, people will say and do a lot things they wouldn’t otherwise wouldn’t.

Drunk people tend to be more honest but I wouldn’t say that the statement “drunks dont lie” is 100% true.

he’s right. drunks do not lie. when the liquor is entrenched within, the real thoughts of the drunken mind surface. you say what you always wanted to say and it just turns out to be the truth. the listener hears it and cannot believe the words, separating filth and truth, but hey, “you said it.”

probably didn’t mean it to come out that way, but yeah, it was the truth.

But, @charliecompany34 If for example you have a person with extremely low self esteem, who lies in his or her everyday life about exploits that didn’t happen to make themselves appear more “important” (say, wars they’ve fought in, when they never served)—I can hear a person like that telling even more outrageous BS when they’re drunk! Or, maybe if they get beyond drunk they’d confess if pressured? IDK!

Eight or ten more beers and I’ll give you the real dirt on this topic.

the opposite for me. when i first started drinking, i’d start compulsively lying when i reached blackout stage. i told people that i was from nevada and going to school at u of colorado for geology, that i once had nineteen snakes… stuff like that.

now i just don’t black out :)

@ratboy Can’t read mumbling on a website!

@smack 19 snakes!!! ROFL!!!! I read that, started to go on, and it just hit me and I started laughing!!

I agree with your husband.

@smack NINETEEN SNAKES HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHA im laughing loudly

Actually, I really only lie when I’m drunk!

@deni Ya! Wouldn’t have been funny if she’d said, ” 5 snakes,” or “50 snakes.” But exactly 19? AHHHHHH!! Snakes on a Fluther!!

My father was an alcoholic, as are most of his siblings…They all lie. Period.

So here’s the thing. When I’m falling asleep and talking to you, I’ll keep talking but what I say will become bizarre and probably very, very untrue. Pretty obviously so. Upon occasion, I’ve said something so ludicrous that I, on some level, heard it and that woke me back up. I imagine this is what drunk-talk is like. You say what comes into your head—regardless of truth or sense.

Of course they do. They have something to hide. Serious drunks have a whole world of addiction to protect. There’s nobody they won’t lie to, including themselves.

@EmpressPixie My hubby does that (the sleep talking thing not the drunken thing, lol).

@Jeruba Great point.

@SpatzieLover Ahhh…...hugs, man.

@Jeruba But what if we’re not talking about “serious” drunks? What about the occasional imbiber who just goes too far one night?

Drunks lie all the time.

Oh, they lie. They’re just too drunk to know it.

Did I ever tell you that I was the mayor of Norway?

My father in law is an alcoholic. If it’s after two in the afternoon, he’s at some level of drunkenness. However, at family parties he really ties one on. By the end of the evening, he starts to hold forth about his experiences in WWII. He will then get into a discussion of politics, leaning heavily to the right. After that, he may describe his life as a soldier in Vietnam. That might turn into another political discussion in which he professes very liberal opinions, completely opposite of whatever he said earlier. He could also talk about working on a coffee farm, riding the rails during the Great Depression, or being in the crowd on the day Kennedy was shot. If you don’t know him and are bad at math and history you might think he’s led a truly fascinating life. He is very convincing, right up to the point where he starts snoring.

Of course, he’s never done anything other than lead a normal life, go to college, and sell insurance. He does watch too much Fox News, CNN, and the History Channel though. :)

@The_Compassionate_Heretic I understand that. Drunk people, and drunks who ARE drunks as a way of life, lie, whether they’ve been drinking or not, lie. But listen, I’m talking about when drunk people are past the stage of real coherence. Where they can’t….keep enough thoughts in their head to form a cohesive lie. Where they’ve become so “vulnerable” (a kind word to describe a disgusting condition) that all of their creativity is lost. I’m not talking about someone who’s had several beers or drinks.

@MissAusten OMG…the things I’m learning about folks here! My heart is aching….
But again, see my post above…..I don’t think the issue is about having a few, or even a several, drinks. If he was in a particular mood, probably with only one other person around (everyone else having left in disgust at that point) can you see him sobbing that he was making it all up?

And to another point, @MissAusten I’ve found that people who lie compulsively always, always blow their “cover” eventually, as people begin seeing inconsistencies in their stories sooner or later. But since most folks are too “polite” to point out the inconsistencies right to their face, the compulsive liar thinks they still have everyone fooled. I’ve tried to point that out to a couple of people in my life, my ex husband being one of them

@Val123 Ask a drunk how many drinks they’ve had. It’s rarely an honest answer.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic I understand what you’re saying. And….if I could re-write the Q I would. BUT if you asked a drunk who was beyond caring what he said, could the answer to “how many drinks have you had” be, “Oh…‘bout a million?”

they lie. I was proposed to and accepted. 6 weeks later [time to tell everyone] he said woah back

Drunks are the most convincing liars on earth because they believe themselves.

Gave you a GA on that, Dog and faye.

It depends on how drunk they are, but it is possible to lie, I have lied several times when being drunk just to not end up complicating things… It just depends on the person and the situation they are in.

@Val123 Most of the time, my father in law is fine. I remember when my husband and I hadn’t been dating very long and he told me his father was an alcoholic. I felt so terrible and sad for him, but he said, “Ah, my dad’s great.” My father in law isn’t the get-drunk-and-hurt-people kind of alcoholic, or even the shirk-your-responsibilities kind. He’s more of the, work’s-done-for-the-day, drink-a-lot-and-fall-asleep kind of drunk. He really is a great guy, very funny and entertaining, always more than willing to help with anything we need. Except babysitting, haha

Most of the time he’s very honest. I think the stories he tells when he’s been drinking are his way of being entertaining. He also tells those stories to telemarketers on the phone, just to mess with them.

@MissAusten Thank you for that! My husband’s dad is a lot the same way. Some of the BS he comes up with! Further, he actually raised the kids (my husband anyway) to believe some of those stories are true! Rick always told me that his Grandfather and Grandmother came here from Greece as 13 year old stow-aways on a ship. They got caught and had to work the passage off. Well, a couple of years ago I asked Rick’s dad to tell me the story. I said, “How did Grampa B get here?”
He said, “Well, like anyone else. On a ship”
I said, “What about him and Grandma stowing away?”
He just looked at me like I was nuts! Turns out, Grampa B was 18 when he came over, and hadn’t met Gramma B at that point because SHE wasn’t from Greece! She was born and bred in Kansas! You could tell it was totally news to Rick! But I would NOT put it past Rick’s Dad to have spun that tale to the boys since they were little, and have it not occur to him to ever actually set the record straight….Rick kind of does the same thing. Tells these fanciful tales, which, surprisingly enough, sometimes turn out to be verifiable! I have a crazy family in law.