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Personality Change From Getting Drunk

A Completely Different Person

Neal Hemphill
3 min readSep 12, 2023
Image via Photoplay (Feb — Jun 1921)/Wikimedia Commons https://tinyurl.com/35s277z5

I grew up with a kid named George, and we were friends through grade school and junior high.

We loved to throw a football in his idyllic, leaf-covered yard in the autumn. We’d do it for hours, mimicking our heroes of the NFL.

We listened to his older siblings’ rock and roll records.

We were kids in the suburbs. We always hung out just the two of us, because George was very shy and didn’t want to be around many people.

George’s family had money and ambitions. They sent him to a private high school not far away.

I didn’t see him during the school years, but he’d turn up at parties during summer.

He was still shy.

But now drinking was part of our lives.

George would come into a party, low-key, not much eye contact or talk. I’d see him and say hey, and he would fade into the woodwork.

And then, the change would happen.

After being on the fringes for a while, George would get enough alcohol in him that a seismic change took place. Suddenly he was front and center at the party with a huge smile and a big glow. He was joking, teasing, flirting, match-making, ring-leading, and…

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Neal Hemphill
Neal Hemphill

Written by Neal Hemphill

Writes about Sobriety/Recovery from Lived Experience of 35+ years. Filmmaker telling stories about the struggles of addiction/recovery @ straightaheadfilms.com

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