@E: I do have agree that you’ve taken a lot of this out of context. As I have seen you come out of the box with The Drink, I don’t think you can particularly hold yourself to a higher moral authority. I don’t think there is too much faking when drinking except for people like AMG [inside story] who liked to work the boundaries of her extroversion with not even the hint of a buzz. That’s fake. But that shade of drunk in which you realize, hey there’s something sublime here that I don’t achieve sitting in the corner making snide remarks about illiterate state of my car passengers. It’s not for everyone, but maybe I take this push to see the other side. I also think it’s a way to own, in words and action, what you might not normally be able to.

@Josh: It was. And then we took one down and passed it around and there was belligerency and now we have to get that point where grown men cry, hug, and hold each other’s hair while praying to forces outside themselves.

I think we need hugs.

All I was saying with the alcohol part of it is that it showed me what I was missing. The best analogy I can think of at this hour is training wheels. I needed them at first, to get me going and to help me learn. Now I’ve taken them off and I can still go.

I’ll give you the “ridiculous people” and “idiots” comments as it would probably be hard for someone who doesn’t know me to understand that. My apologies. When I say that about who I am saying it about, I mean it as a term of endearment.

Josh: Someone who likes to “get out there and mix it up” as they say, does not necessarily equal someone with no mind of their own who only cares about celebrity news. I want to see what a person is about. I want to know what makes them tick and why, but I don’t want to wait for a good excuse to do it. So I jump in and find them. I chat up homeless people as I’m walking around because they usually have some really good stories.

Once again, what I enjoy obviously isn’t for everyone. I’m not, by any means, trying to say you’re doing it wrong. I can appreciate your approach, as I lived it, but I’ve discovered that I like the other side more.

Color me unimpressed.

That being said I love now just getting in the mix. It goes hand in hand with my “Jump in an figure out the details later” way I’ve become recently.

@ Comrade bug eater: I do enjoy that very fine line with booze where you can suddenly go from awesome x6 to that one guy at a party everyone hates.

Since the adjunct of alcohol into my life, I’m certainly more able to handle myself at party or large situation. But there is a drop off on the chart where the increase of alcohol, once being directly proportional to my ability to socialize, now becoming directly proportional to my ability to act like an ass. A fine line, I say.

More to the point, when I’m sober, I like a core group of friends, and the group I spend most my time with right now, is full of a mix of introvert and extroverted people. One likes to host all sorts of parties, one has friends all over the place, the rest of us are observers. And we click well.

That said, I’m a doer. I want to be doing something, so when it comes to going out, I’m one of the ones involved in the planning. Yet still, I come home, hide my phone, and hole up before the glow of my computer monitor. So warm…

Has anyone here read Party for One?

Both introverts, he thought that he’s become less introverted over time and with practice. I said that I’ve become, with time and practice, more out-going while at the core I’m still an introvert.

I’m doubting the fact that this changes. You can learn to play the game, but this doesn’t really mean that you want to.