Why are holidays and drunken behaviour associated?

Everybody's Getting Drunk at the Holiday Party - And Not Because It's Fun ... seen someone under the influence of alcohol at a company-sponsored event whose behavior crossed the line from embarrassing to inappropriate to downright dangerous. ... Related Story: True Tales From The Holiday Party Files. read more

And the clusters obviously don’t capture all the possible permutations of drunk behavior. (Let’s hear it for the sleepy drunks who effusively make impossible-to-keep brunch plans.) But it’s significant that the people who change the most and are the least fun to be around when drunk are also the most likely to have alcohol-related issues, like blackouts or fights. read more

A lack of executive control could also help to explain why adolescents and young adults are so frequently the perpetrators of violent behaviour when drunk. It has been shown that our brains continue to develop well into our 20s and that one of the last parts of the brain to develop is the prefrontal lobe, the region responsible for reigning in impulses through executive control. read more