Drunk Messages
What does a drunk text say about desire and self-restraint?
*listen to the voiceover to read along with me :)
Often the risk of attachment taken in its throes manifests an intelligence beyond rational calculation.
-Lauren Berlant, “Desire/Love”
Sending a drunk text, whether it feels like it or not, is a reach towards attachment, it’s fueled with desire and is beyond any rational calculation. “Desire describes a state of attachment to something or someone, and the cloud of possibility that is generated by the gap between an object’s specificity and the needs and promises projected onto it.”1 A drunk text reaches toward the cloud of possibility and projected promises. Sending a drunk text is like bungee jumping: there’s the element of risk but you're strapped to a vodka-based safety rope. So why do we encounter the urge to send a text message, a DM2, or even a “like” to a social media post when we’re intoxicated, and why do we tend to suppress this urge?
Is the drunk text a symptom of a larger epidemic of moral dysregulation, highlighting a low point in the romantic tide and a high point in alcoholism, or is it a candid sonnet uninhibited by fear and fueled by grain-based alcohol?
American lawmakers enacted the 18th amendment, the prohibition of alcohol, in large part to curb “immoral actions” by a flagrantly intoxicated society. Some may say, in defense of drinking (or in offense) that “drinking symbolizes freedom and release from work (and perhaps home), and from the self-discipline needed in carrying out one's duties.”3 The government’s attempt to regulate immoral actions failed and thus there went the amendment. But if you were to categorize sending the occasional drunk text as constitutionally immoral then we’d have to re-amend the amendment. The government cannot just wave its wand, pass an amendment, and think that culture will change. Pro-prohibitionists promoted the 18th Amendment as a holy war in the name of god and humanity. Some unholy messages are awaiting me in my Instagram DM requests but I don’t think that’s solely due to alcohol.
In Desire and Craving: A Cultural Theory of Alcoholism, author Pertti Alasuutari focuses on a pub community of dart players in Finland. Alasuutari looks at the duality of the pub regulars. I’d like to take Alasuutari’s analysis of the pubgoers and apply it (somewhat humorously) as an aphorism to the drunk texter who has pressed send on their sonnet:
On the one hand there is a sense of fateful submission, an awareness on the part of the [sender] that they could lead their lives in a completely different way — and perhaps with less pain and suffering — but that it is too late to change. They have made their choice; all they can do now is put up with it and live the life they have selected, accepting the drinking and the inconveniences it causes. On the other hand the [senders] have a high regard for their own ability to carry the weightiest of burdens, their boldness in tackling the problems that destiny brings their way.4
The alcohol serves as a flame retardant blanket from the firey choices that might be considered as “poor” by those who do not partake in the freeing spirit of a drunk text. Once the text has been sent you must resign to submission and accept the consequences. The consequences are not always bad there is always a chance that destiny has more in store for the sender, and some receivers may welcome the occasional drunk text (me). Some would say, specifically the authors of the research article “Texting Under the Influence: Emotional Regulation as a Moderator of the Association Between Binge Drinking and Drunk Texting”, that the perceived benefits of sending a risky text are increased when intoxicated. In their research authors Trub, Leora, & Starks sampled 211 young adult women to analyze the relationship between drunk texting and binge drinking. They found that intoxication “decreases perceptions of risk by undermining the ability to cognitively process inhibitory cues, which tend to be removed and abstract in comparison to the immediate, concrete, and permissive nature of instigatory consent cues.”5
Their research is appreciated, especially considering the lack of coverage on this topic. Still, their findings are more than apparent if you’ve been a person who’s 4 drinks deep and feeling a bit saucy. Nevertheless, their research speaks to the point I’d like to expand on: that factors, such as societal “inhibitory cues”, keep our desire-based wants constrained. Their research would also conclude that “[t]he significant association between drunk texting and both sexual behavior and risky sexual behavior with men supports previous research suggesting that initiation of sex is a primary motivator of drunk dialing.”6
Sure, okay. Yeah....I guess that’s why people send drunk texts.... So we could just stop there....
But I find it more interesting to look at it less analytically and more philosophically and sociologically. So we’ll continue on.
The urge to send a drunk text comes from a naturalistic desire-based need that we end up suppressing with conventional and socially acceptable civilized notions and norms. What we fail to look at closely is how under the influence of alcohol we lose the inhibitions that keep us conforming to social norms & regulated ideals of “self-control”. Expressions that deviate from conventional social standards highlight our true desires. “In many situations and for many individuals, we take the everyday life frame for granted and barely recognize the way ‘desire’ shapes our understandings and interpretations.”7 Desire imposes itself upon our everyday actions, from dessert after lunch or sending a like to a cutie’s Instagram story.
Letting our guard down and acting on our desires is natural, and the drunk text is the closest thing we have to an honest modern love letter (unfortunately). According to Freud, society puts constraints on an individual's natural instincts, and because of the constraints there is a constant tension between the “superego” and “libido”. The ego is a necessary portion of our psyche, but can get too big for its britches when unchecked. Pyschoanlayisists associate desire with libido not particularly in a straight-up sexual sense, but in association with sexual autonomy as it relates to society and the world. Within an alcohol-constructed message, we get a concoction of “superego” and “libido” working in tandem to produce a raw honest pronounced vulnerable reach for attachment, wrapped up in a little blue bubble. (only the iPhone way of sending a text message is recognized here, sorry there will be no other representation). “Super ego” and “libido” are not inherently bad things, they are parts of our psyche that we have to recognize and acknowledge in order to understand and manage them. Your natural-drunk-text-instincts could be as primal as “Come overrrrr.” or as idyllic as “I’m in love with you”. Whatever the message may be…, the truth lies in an unconstrained message.
Norbert Elias further explains this Freuiden point of view. “In Elias's theory,[Western societal norms ensure] that outer constraints are internalized into self-restraint, and original drives are — by feelings of shame — pushed from the consciousness into the unconscious.”8 This is to say that society has ensured that you are your own policer, your own overseer —using shame to self-mandate restraint. And if you don’t shame yourself, then some loser online with way too much time on their hands and way too little self-awareness surely will. The drunk text IS a part of our original drive, and we should not stray away from it due to shame or retribution. Plus, the drunk text could be responded to with a drunk reply if you’re lucky.
To Freud and Elias these “original drives” would be considered an aspect of naturalism, but Gilles Deleuze (a strong supporter of Palestinian freedom) and Felix Guattari’s book Anti Oedipus (1977), based on Jacques Lacan's reading of Freud, are critical of positioning this as simply naturalistic urges. Deleuze and Guattari argue that this positioning interprets desire as a nondirectional flux with no determinate goal. Although, ironically, whenever we speak of our desires, we identify them and give them goal-oriented directions. Deleuze and Guattari approach desire as it relates to the “socius”— a Latin noun used to describe a bond or friendliness between two parties, the root of the English word “society”. For them, the socius aims to “codify the flows of desire, to inscribe them, to record them, to see to it that no flow exists that is not properly dammed up, channeled, [and] regulated."9 When our desires exist in a societal system that requires self-policing and the preservation of the status quo, they become repressed. Deleuze and Guattari “argue that desire does not confront [the] external institutions which inhibit it; desire inhibits itself through its self-made institutions”10. One could argue (me) that in the United States, the culture with the dominant voice aims to maintain the status quo and regulate “cringey” actions by public shaming or doxxing online. Here —within the retention of regulation— is where desire and the socius are in tension, the authors claim that desire “responds [with] attempts to fly and escape”, rejecting codification.11 Our repressed desires scramble around inside of us looking for a suitable outlet, which sometimes manifests itself through a drunk message. Ultimately the two views —Freud and Elias versus Deleuze, and Guatarri— are similar, they presuppose that desire is a malleable force imposed upon and modified by social life.
But the drunk text is a tricky thing to navigate, you could be blocked, or worse have your deepest desires mockingly posted on the internet.
The thought of sending a drunk text alone can keep someone from bringing their phone to the bar (me). This fear is understandable, in Discipline and Punish Michel Foucault discusses the mindset of those who are “conscious of constant but unverifiable surveillance” and fear the possibility of punishment.
In other words, it was freedom, coupled with the awareness of the possibility of surveillance and punishment, that made the human subjects adopt the viewpoint of their overseers; that made desires strange to the desiring subjects themselves. Allured by external freedom, individuals began to ‘take responsibility’ for their actions — that is, to become their own controls, and to reunite their self with the motives and objectives of their overseers, generalized as pure reason.12
We become our own punishers, cracking the whip on ourselves whenever we pull out our phones after the 6th beer or third espresso martini. Because getting drunk and Facetiming whoever is “not okay,” because drunk texting “i love you so much” with 30 o’s is “not okay”, because liking every IG story on your feed is apparently “not okay”. None of it is “okay” because controlling these urges has been deemed as rational, but we fail to recognize how “rationality” constrains the inherent recalcitrant attributes of desire. As if we needed more external limitations on our desires, we take part in constraining ourselves to rationality even though desire alone is never rational.
Alasuutari suggests that the fact that a social norm exists requires it to be held to some portion of legitimacy. This is true; I don’t want the drunk text that is completely incomprehensible, nor should it be sent. Drunk texts of any harassment shape or form are also unacceptable. And I’m not suggesting that you blow up someone’s phone with incoherent messages or unsolicited dick pics. There is legitimacy in sending the drunk text and not sending the drunk text. The drunk sender, naturally, will either “comply with [the] normative rule, and resist the temptation to [send the text], or they repeatedly break [the] social norm [and send a drunk text] but reproduce it in social interaction by saying that they themselves or others ‘should’ do otherwise.”13 It’s the presence of alcohol that blurs the defining line of the normative rule, subdues the presence of shame, and reveals the truth behind our desires.
When the sun comes up, and the sound of the Advil shaking out of the bottle is damn near torturous as you try to alleviate the hangover-induced migraine, there’s a chance the drunk text you sent doesn’t read as eloquent as it did at 2 am when everything was blurry. In a 2011 study researchers found that “almost half (43.6%) of college students report having sent a text while drinking that they later regretted”.14 In the light of day, we become risk-averse yet again and chain up our desires until we have the excuse to get drunk again and let them lose.
What the research suggests is that the best way to avoid sending the drunk text is through moral regulation, I would reframe it as understanding your desires and not being afraid of them. Unwanted actions stem from a place of unmet desire or need, so if you hate yourself for sending —or not sending the drunk text, maybe there’s an unmet desire that has to be understood and resolved. Whether we like it or not, or recognize it or not, a drunk text is a bid for attachment, sourced from desire but undercut by the uncouth properties of drunkness. & Maybe —just maybe— if we took heed of our desires and did not fear rejection and failure, we wouldn’t need to send a drunk text; the recipient would be right there with us at the bar, enjoying each other’s company.
Berlant, Lauren Gail, and Project Muse. Desire/Love. Baltimore, Maryland: Project Muse, 2020. Page 6
Direct Message
Alasuutari, Pertti. 1992. Desire and Craving : A Cultural Theory of Alcoholism. Albany: SUNY Press. Page 2
Alasuutari, Pertti. 1992. Desire and Craving : A Cultural Theory of Alcoholism. Albany: SUNY Press. Page 41
Trub, Leora & Starks, Tyrel. (2016). Texting Under the Influence: Emotional Regulation as a Moderator of the Association Between Binge Drinking and Drunk Texting. Cyberpsychology, behavior, and social networking. 2010.1089/cyber.2016.0468. Page 6
Trub, Leora & Starks, Tyrel Page 7
Alasuutari, Pertti. 1992. Desire and Craving : A Cultural Theory of Alcoholism. Page 4
Alasuutari, Pertti. 1992. Desire and Craving : A Cultural Theory of Alcoholism. Page 172
Deleuze and Guattari, Anti Oedipus 1977. Page 33
Alasuutari, Pertti. 1992. Desire and Craving : A Cultural Theory of Alcoholism. Page 173
Alasuutari, Pertti. 1992. Desire and Craving : A Cultural Theory of Alcoholism. Page 173
^ Page 174
^Page 179
Hollenbaugh EE, Ferris AL. (2011) ‘‘I Love You, Man’’: drunk dialing motives and their impact on social cohesion. In Ling R, Campbell SW, eds. Mobile communication: bringing us together and tearing us apart. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, pp. 293–323.