[Coda]

It's hard to tell when I'm drunk. I had to intentionally try, because I'd never experienced it before and I wanted to get some subjective understanding of it.

Turns out... it's hard. >.> My tolerance is stupidly high. I had gone to a St. Patrick's Day party with Scott Ransoomair (my first celebrity encounter, actually) and I can't even remember how many drinks I'd had -- eight or nine, I'm sure -- and I didn't even get buzzed. It took being mildly sick when I was almost 30 years old to lower it enough to work.

It was only that first time that I got drunk enough to be unable to walk a straight line. At that level of inebriation, I'm a little bit loud when I talk, and my sense of humor gets even more random than it usually is... but other than that, I was still coherent enough that I was writing code that proved to still be up to my usual standards when reviewed after the fact. I only stopped because -- as I continued to push myself past "I'm not actually interested in alcohol anymore but this is supposed to be an educational experience" -- my manual dexterity got bad enough that I was having trouble typing. (I actually live-blogged the experience at the time, with my wife adding some notes and taking over once I couldn't type anymore.)

But since then... My tolerance has gotten a little weaker as I've gotten older, and that experience made it easier for me to recognize it, but from the outside you'd still have a hard time telling I'm at all intoxicated. From the inside, all I notice is a slight headache and that it's a little easier for standing up to make me lightheaded, and maybe I'll notice a slight lag between moving my body and getting the feedback that I've moved. If I like what I'm drinking enough to go past my usual "it was good but I'm not interested in having any more" level I might get a slight tingle in my face. But I'm still talking straight, walking straight, and thinking with impairment no worse than being low on sleep. (I know better than to try to drive even if I don't feel impaired, because ADHD is enough of a driving impairment on its own -- even a loss of reaction time small enough that I don't notice it is something I'm not going to risk.)