It’s only a pre-commitment as far as the placebo effect causes you to engage in embarrassing behavior. There are some physical effects of alcohol, but your willingness to break social boundaries while intoxicated seems to depend only on how strongly you believe you are intoxicated.
It may be not the whole effect, although a major part of it. My coworker says that the only time when he consumed noticeable amount of alcohol he was surprised by the thinking becoming more difficult. I can say nothing from personal experience because I cannot tolerate the taste long enough for any effects to manifest themselves.
It’s only a pre-commitment as far as the placebo effect causes you to engage in embarrassing behavior. There are some physical effects of alcohol, but your willingness to break social boundaries while intoxicated seems to depend only on how strongly you believe you are intoxicated.
source on one study: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3035442.stm source seeming to indicate that even the physical effects can be placebo-related: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1403295/
It may be not the whole effect, although a major part of it. My coworker says that the only time when he consumed noticeable amount of alcohol he was surprised by the thinking becoming more difficult. I can say nothing from personal experience because I cannot tolerate the taste long enough for any effects to manifest themselves.