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Topic : Re: How to creatively handle intoxication when you yourself haven't experienced such a thing? Now I wouldn't call myself a true writer. I'm about 14 now and I'm currently preparing for my IGCSEs - selfpublishingguru.com

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Remember that researching an issue or experience you don't have experience with doesn't just mean "reading up" on it. A time-honoured research approach is to find people with the experience you're lacking, and interview them.

Is there a family member who might have experience with alcohol or marijuana (two of the most common intoxicants)? Or, if not, is there a trusted member of your family or community who could arrange for you to meet someone with this experience (and, preferably, accompany you)?

When interviewing the person, it's important to have prepared some questions in advance, and to have considered how the interviewee might be similar to - and different from - the character you're writing about. Don't be afraid to ask naïve questions; in fact, you have a special advantage in being able to do so, that an older and more experienced person lacks!

If your character is having their first exposure to intoxication, make sure you ask the interviewee about their first experience, since this will be very different from the experience of a regular user getting intoxicated.

Regarding your example, as you've guessed, it's not very realistic. Light intoxication with alcohol usually makes the person more confident, garrulous and adventurous. Greater intoxication leads to a "warm buzz", but also impaired judgement (revealing confidences, or misunderstanding things), increased emotionality (more prone to crying or anger), diminished coordination and motor skills (slurring of words, knocking a glass over, unable to walk a straight line) and sleepiness or unconsciousness.

An inexperienced drinker won't need to drink very much at all - say, two glasses of wine - to feel intoxicated, and this can be followed by nausea and vomiting (perhaps accompanied by the visual colours and whirling sensation you describe), whereas for an experienced drinker, two glasses of wine won't have any observable effect.

Each kind of drug has a different psychotropic (mind-altering) effect, so my description of the above would not necessarily apply to marijuana or other intoxicants.


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