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Alcohol has a way of lowering people’s inhibitions and making them say or do things they’d usually keep in check. But when those moments end up hurting someone else, is it the drink to blame—or the person who chose to keep drinking?
One woman agreed to be the designated driver for her boyfriend and his friends during their night out. She didn’t mind at all—until she arrived to pick them up and her boyfriend started acting like a complete jerk. Hurt and uncomfortable, she quietly went home, leaving the group without a ride.
Once the guys realized what happened, a messy drama followed. Read the full story below.
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The woman agreed to be the designated driver for her boyfriend and his friends on their night out
Group of friends cheering and drinking while a drunk man acts like a jerk at a lively social gathering.
Alcohol can do a lot to a person, from lowering inhibitions and making them more impulsive, to clouding judgment and playing tricks on memory
Spend enough time at a bar and you will notice that alcohol does not do the same thing to everyone. Some people get looser, funnier, more willing to dance badly and laugh loudly. Others get flirtatious, their usual guard dropping with every round. And then there are those who get more withdrawn, almost melancholy. And others still who, somewhere around their fourth or fifth drink, start looking for an argument.
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Part of that comes down to what is actually in the glass. A 2017 study published in BMJ Open found that different types of alcohol tend to pull people in different emotional directions. Beer and wine drinkers were more likely to feel relaxed, while those on spirits were significantly more likely to report feeling energized and confident but also restless, aggressive and tearful.
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Whatever the drink though, the effects of alcohol on the brain tend to follow a pretty familiar pattern. According to rehabilitation clinic Ocean Recovery, alcohol lowers inhibitions, which is how things that would normally stay private end up being said out loud. It also makes people more impulsive and clouds judgment, making choices in the moment feel far more reasonable than they will seem in the morning.
And once that filter is gone, mood swings can come out of nowhere, turning someone warm and relaxed into someone irritable and confrontational within the space of an hour. Add in the way alcohol can interfere with memory, and it’s no surprise some people genuinely can’t account for parts of a night by the time they wake up.
But does that mean alcohol is really to blame when things go wrong?
Given all of that, it kind of makes sense that people believe alcohol strips away any real control over what they say or do. If it impacts the brain that much, it almost seems logical. The boyfriend in this story certainly seemed to believe he had done nothing wrong, insisting he had no memory of getting handsy with his girlfriend or saying anything hurtful. Maybe the alcohol really was to blame. But research tells a rather different story.
According to experts, alcohol does not actually make people unaware of what they are doing in the way most people assume. Dr. Bruce Bartholow of the University of Missouri studied how the brain handles mistakes and awareness under the influence of alcohol, and what he found is pretty telling.
People who are drunk still register when they are crossing a line. The awareness does not vanish. What changes is how much they care about it. As Bartholow told NBC News, intoxicated people “seem to be less bothered by the implications or consequences of their behavior than they normally would be.”
And it may go even deeper than that. Social anthropologist Kate Fox argues that the way people act while drunk often has less to do with alcohol itself and more to do with cultural conditioning. Writing for the BBC, she points to the fact that in countries like the UK, the US and Australia, where alcohol is widely believed to make people aggressive and disinhibited, that is exactly how people tend to behave when they drink.
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But in Mediterranean cultures, where alcohol is treated as an unremarkable part of everyday life, people simply do not act that way, because the expectation is not there. Controlled experiments even showed that people given non-alcoholic drinks, who only believed they had been drinking, started behaving in all the ways they expected alcohol to make them behave.
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What the woman in this story went through was painful, and made all the more so by the fact that it came from someone she trusted and built a life with. But if research tells us anything, it is that the alcohol was not really the culprit here. It may have loosened his tongue and dulled whatever guilt he might have otherwise felt, but the words themselves? Those came from somewhere else entirely.
Plenty of commenters said her response made sense given what happened
Comment discussing how alcohol reveals true thoughts behind a drunk boyfriend's jerky behavior in a relationship.
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Screenshot of a forum comment discussing a woman telling her drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk and his refusal.
Screenshot of an online comment discussing a woman telling her drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk.
Woman telling drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk while he refuses, confident he could go home with any woman.
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Screenshot of a woman confronting her drunk boyfriend about his disrespectful behavior at a social gathering.
Woman confronts drunk boyfriend acting like a jerk as he refuses to stop and boasts about other women.
Comment discussing a woman telling her drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk and his refusal to do so.
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Screenshot of an online comment advising a woman to dump her drunk boyfriend who refuses to stop acting like a jerk.
Woman confronting drunk boyfriend refusing to stop acting like a jerk, insisting he could go home with any woman.
Text conversation about a woman confronting her drunk boyfriend acting like a jerk and his refusal to change behavior.
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Text post showing a woman telling her drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk and his refusal to listen.
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Comment discussing a woman telling her drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk while he refuses and boasts confidently.
Alt text: Woman telling drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk while he refuses and boasts confidently at a social event
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Screenshot of a Reddit comment discussing a woman telling her drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk.
Screenshot of an online comment criticizing a 33-year-old drunk boyfriend acting like a jerk in public.
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Comment discussing a woman telling her drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk, highlighting his refusal.
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Screenshot of an online comment discussing a drunk boyfriend refusing to stop acting like a jerk.
Screenshot of a Reddit comment discussing a drunk boyfriend refusing to stop acting like a jerk in a relationship conflict.
Screenshot of a Reddit comment discussing a drunk boyfriend's immature behavior and refusal to grow up.
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Comment on woman telling drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk, highlighting relationship and refusal issues.
Screenshot of an online comment discussing a woman telling a drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk.
Screenshot of a forum comment discussing a woman telling her drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk and his refusal.
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Alt text: Screenshot of a Reddit comment discussing a drunk boyfriend refusing to stop unwanted behavior and a woman’s response.
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Comment explaining refusal to drive drunk boyfriend home after he acted disrespectful and could get an Uber instead.
Comment on forum discussing a woman telling her drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk and his refusal to listen.
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Comment discussing a woman telling her drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk and his refusal to change behavior.
Reddit comment about a woman telling a drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk and his refusal to change.
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But some felt it was a drunken moment she could’ve handled differently
Screenshot of a comment discussing a woman telling her drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk and his refusal.
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Commenter explains policy of sorting issues when sober and prioritizing getting everyone home safe over anger at a drunk boyfriend.
Screenshot of a Reddit comment discussing a woman confronting her drunk boyfriend about his jerk behavior.
Screenshot of a Reddit comment discussing a drunk boyfriend refusing to stop acting like a jerk despite a woman’s warning.
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Reddit comment discussing a woman telling a drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk at a party.
Reddit user comments on drunk boyfriend refusing to stop acting like a jerk and the impact of drinking behavior.
Not long after, the author came back with an update
Text expressing gratitude for responses and support from readers sharing their stories in a difficult relationship situation.
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Text excerpt discussing a woman reflecting on the decision to leave after her boyfriend acted like a jerk while drunk.
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Text excerpt discussing a woman reflecting on a relationship incident involving a drunk boyfriend acting like a jerk.
Text excerpt discussing a woman confronting her drunk boyfriend and his refusal to stop acting like a jerk.
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Woman and drunk boyfriend sitting at a table indoors, she looks upset as he drinks, tense relationship moment.
Alt text: Woman telling drunk boyfriend to stop acting like a jerk as he defiantly refuses and brags confidently.
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Comment expressing relief and support for a woman dealing with a drunk boyfriend refusing to change his jerk behavior.
Screenshot of a Reddit comment praising a woman for standing up to her drunk boyfriend acting like a jerk.
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Oleksandra is an experienced copywriter from Ukraine with a master’s degree in International Communication. Having covered everything from education, finance, and marketing to art, pop culture, and memes, she now brings her storytelling skills to Bored Panda. For the past six years, she’s been living and working in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Oleksandra is an experienced copywriter from Ukraine with a master’s degree in International Communication. Having covered everything from education, finance, and marketing to art, pop culture, and memes, she now brings her storytelling skills to Bored Panda. For the past six years, she’s been living and working in Vilnius, Lithuania.
I wonder if the proper reaction to gaslighting is turnabout. She could have claimed that she DID drive him home. And when he protested she should have replied "The only reason I would have left and not driven you home would have been if you said something deeply inappropriate and hurtful to me. You said you did not, which means that ergo I must have driven you home. It's not my fault you were too drunk to remember..."
I would have done the same as her. The fact these idiots couldn't work out how to order an Uber/taxi shows that they were way drunker than they thought they were. Thank the gods she moved on.
I wonder if the proper reaction to gaslighting is turnabout. She could have claimed that she DID drive him home. And when he protested she should have replied "The only reason I would have left and not driven you home would have been if you said something deeply inappropriate and hurtful to me. You said you did not, which means that ergo I must have driven you home. It's not my fault you were too drunk to remember..."
I would have done the same as her. The fact these idiots couldn't work out how to order an Uber/taxi shows that they were way drunker than they thought they were. Thank the gods she moved on.
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