Code sober, get things done drunk

I don't find alcohol helps me at all; it takes an edge off me for several days. I very rarely drink, almost only at special occasions and then matched wines with meals and that kind of thing.

But I do find that being somewhat tired helps me get into a certain kind of "getting things done" zone: when the creative planning is not necessary, and mostly the grunt work of pushing things through to implementation remains.

I'm having trouble understanding your comments. The article doesn't talk about "entirely different people", we're talking about drunk people. No matter how drunk you are, you don't become an "entirely different person", but you lose the social inhibitions that prevent you from writing the types of emails that offend customers.

And I'm not sure where 2-3 drinks comes from, either. 2-3 drinks get some people drunk, but not large people or regular drinkers. That's not really relevant, because even large people or regular drinkers start to lose those social inhibitions after 3 quick drinks even if they aren't yet 'drunk'.

"We Brits believe that alcohol has magical powers – that it causes us to shed our inhibitions and become aggressive, promiscuous, disorderly and even violent.

But we are wrong. In high doses, alcohol impairs our reaction times, muscle control, co-ordination, short-term memory, perceptual field, cognitive abilities and ability to speak clearly. But it does not cause us selectively to break specific social rules. It does not cause us to say, “Oi, what you lookin’ at?” and start punching each other. Nor does it cause us to say, “Hey babe, fancy a shag?” and start groping each other.

The effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol. There is enormous cross-cultural variation in the way people behave when they drink alcohol. … In … the vast majority of cultures, … drinking is not associated with these undesirable behaviours … Alcohol is just a morally neutral, normal, integral part of ordinary, everyday life – about on a par with, say, coffee or tea. …

This variation cannot be attributed to different levels of consumption. … Instead the variation is clearly related to different cultural beliefs about alcohol. … This basic fact has been proved time and again … in carefully controlled scientific experiments – double-blind, placebos and all. To put it very simply, the experiments show that when people think they are drinking alcohol, they behave according to their cultural beliefs about the behavioural effects of alcohol. …

Those who most strongly believe that alcohol causes aggression are the most likely to become aggressive when they think that they have consumed alcohol. … These experiments show that even when people are very drunk, if they are given an incentive (either financial reward or even just social approval) they are perfectly capable of remaining in complete control of their behaviour – of behaving as though they were totally sober. …

If I were given total power, I could very easily engineer a nation in which coffee would become a huge social problem. … I would restrict access to coffee, thus immediately giving it highly desirable forbidden-fruit status. Then I would issue lots of dire warnings about the dangerously disinhibiting effects of coffee. I would make sure everyone knew that even a mere three cups (six “units”) of coffee “can lead to anti-social, aggressive and violent behaviour”, and sexual promiscuity, thus instantly giving young people a powerful motive to binge-drink double espressos, and a perfect excuse to behave very badly after doing so."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15265317

That's exactly my experience, as well, only I think I'm pretty good at creative stuff when I'm tired, in addition to accomplishing any grunt work I have...

I think the subtext of my comment was pretty straightforward: after 2-3 drinks, you're not going to send radically different emails to customers; you're certainly not likely to torch relationships.

If anything, over the last several years, what I've found is that stress is far more likely to hurt relationships than intoxication. After a frustrating day, I'm way more likely to be clipped, snippy, abrupt, or unhelpful. That's the stuff that clients and customers remember.

I drink pretty regularly and can't think of a single time that intoxication has harmed a business relationship (indeed, I routinely take clients out for beers, like most other businesspeople do --- if alcohol and "loss of inhibition" was such a force for chaos, one assumes this would be less of a time-honored tradition).

On the other hand, I can think of many times where stress has damaged relationships, sometimes permanently.

I picked 2-3 drinks out of a hat. I know the guy who wrote this post drank 4 glasses of gin before getting on a plane (I'd throw up if I did that; alcohol and air travel don't mix with me), but 2-3 seems like a pretty reasonable casual evening of answering emails.