Drinking alcohol makes some characters nicer than sobriety, often with large doses of melancholy. Large doses of maudlin sentimentality are common and may lead to declarations of "I love you guys," or tears.
Also termed a "happy drunk" (though drunkenness can also induce sadness) or "friendly drunk" as opposed to the "mean drunk" or "nasty drunk."
Sub Trope of In Vino Veritas. Can be Truth in Television because alcohol lowers inhibitions.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Kaoru from I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying gets more affectionate with her husband when she's drunk. A lot more affectionate.
Kaoru: I love you! I'm drunk so I'll keep saying it! I love you! I love you lots!
- Rachnera from Monster Musume becomes a lot more honest about her feelings for Kimihito after she gets drunk on coffee.
- Getting any amount of alcohol in his system causes the normally violently Tsundere Hori from Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun to endlessly ramble about how great he thinks Kashima is.
- One Piece: Kaido becomes one if his lackeys are lucky. However, say the wrong thing around him and it flips a switch over to violent drunk. He later displays the ability to weaponize his drunken mood swings while in combat (such as Laughing Drunk, Depressed Drunk, Crying Drunk, Angry Drunk, Flirty Drunk, Thieving Drunk and Slaughtering Drunk), making him incredibly unpredictable and deadly.
- In Patlabor, Noa technically Never Gets Drunk, but she does get happily tipsy during an outing — laughing, clapping, and roping Kanuka (who gets depressed when she drinks) into a drinking competition.
Comic Books
- Sage, one of the X-Men's token evil teammates, known for being stern, sardonic and cynical, becomes a lot more approachable, approaching, and jovial while drunk.
Fan Works
- The Fallen Miracle: First thing Vaggie does when she gets drunk is she starts flirting with Charlie.
- Guys Being Dudes: Card-Carrying Jerkass Arlo got reduced to sitting in Spark's lap and admitting to having followed him on Instagram back at Go Fest 2020 after only having 2 beers, according to Candela.
- Hope Comes to Brockton Bay: Hope gets the inaccurate impression that Armsmaster is a kind and warm-hearted man, because she first met him when he was loopy from some very strong painkillers after Mannequin's attack. Some time later, she encounters him again and finds him brusque to the point of rudeness — although he does eventually notice it and apologize, commenting that Dragon has been coaching him in recognizing that behavior in himself.
Hope watched as he constructed a smile on his face; it was less natural than the one he'd given her while under the influence of drugs, but at least he was trying.
- Mr and Mrs Gold: Rose is described as being a very “friendly” drunk, ranging from cuddling to trying to claw her husband’s pants off.
Film
- A character from Wayne's World acted like a happy drunk, going around saying, "I love you, man!" and hugging people.
- City Lights had a character who was exceedingly friendly and generous when drunk, but tight-fisted and mean when sober. The fact that he also tended to black out and not remember what had happened when he was drunk adds to the confusion.
- Vodka was the key for a couple of kisses in The Way He Looks. Upon learning this, Leonardo deliberately tries to get Gabriel drunk again. It also leads Leonardo to tell Giovana about his feelings for Gabriel.
- Another Round: All four teachers discover in their drinking experiment that getting drunk makes them nicer people, or at least more effective at being nice.
- Applied to hashish in Karate a Muerte en Torremolinos. Manolo likes Jess because he's the only one who treats him well. Due to this, Manolo tells Jess the legend of Jocántaro.
Literature
- The African Queen: When Charlie goes on his bender, he becomes maudlin and nostalgic about people and places he used to know.
He wept at his mother's memory, then he wept over the fate of Carrie... Then he mourned over his own expatriation, and he sobbed through his hiccups at the thought of his boyhood friends in London.
- In To Say Nothing of the Dog, Ned compares the sentimentality that time drops can cause to an Irishman in his cups, or a sober Victorian poet.
- In A Tangled Web (1931), Penny Dark gets drunk in order to convince Margaret to call off their engagement by repulsing her. Unfortunately for him, it makes him sentimental and convinced he really is in love with her. His actions convince her that she can't call it off.
- In the Hoka stories, one alien while drunk goes off in sentimental memories of his youth. Then he shifts to Mean Drunk on seeing a human — or primate, as he puts it.
- In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Slughorn and Hagrid get drunk together at Aragog's funeral. This puts Slughorn in a much more relaxed mood (as well as ensuring that he wouldn't remember anything Harry said to him) so that Harry can question him about the covered-up memory.
- InCryptid: Dominic accidentally gets high off swamp bromeliad pollen and becomes overly affectionate towards Verity, which would be nice if they weren't currently trying to rescue a kid from a Man-Eating Plant.
Dominic: You're beautiful. Did you know? You must know. You own so many lip glosses. No one would own that many lip glosses and not know. Do you want to dance?
- Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate becomes both more pleasant and more melancholic when he drinks.
Live Action TV
- In one episode of The King of Queens, Doug notices that Carrie is more friendly when drunk, and encourages her to go out drinking as much as possible.
- In a two-parter episode of Cheers, the minister to perform Woody and Kelly's wedding dies, so they (Sam et. al.) find a minister uncle to perform the ceremony. However, he's drunk, so they sober him up. Then he's not actually nasty, but he refuses to perform the ceremony because he hates marriage. So they get him drunk again.
- In a Friends episode, "Fun Bobby" was the life of the party (in an appropriate and functional way) when drunk, but was lethargic and boring when sober.
- Star Trek: Of all people, Seven of Nine was this. Until she learned to hold her synthehol.
Puppet Shows
- In one episode of Rechov Sumsum, Moishe Oofnik downs an entire bottle of wine during a Passover seder, becoming drunk and unusually affectionate.
Radio
- Our Miss Brooks: "Old Clothes for Party" sees a sentimental (and exceptionally annoying) drunk invades Miss Brooks' conversation when she tries to use the party line telephone. The drunk falsely thinks Miss Brooks is married to his best friend and starts wailing as she's making a date with Mr. Boynton. Later, the drunk starts crying about how he doesn't know where his father is.
Theatre
- In Pygmalion, Eliza claims that her mother used to send her father off with drinking money so he'd come back home "cheerful and loving-like." She then adds that a lot of women have to get their menfolk drunk to be able to live with them. Unfortunately, this is while she's trying to pass as an upper-class lady.
Video Games
- In Fields of Mistria, March is a standoffish tsundere type towards just about everyone, but gets a lot more cheerful and even bubbly towards other people after a few drinks at the tavern.
- In Shining Resonance, Captain Burroughs gets absolutely hammered to celebrate Sonia's promotion to full Dragoneer, and spends much of that drunkenness cheering about how proud of her he is.
- In adult Bara Genre Beat 'em Up Strange Flesh, the no-nonsense, dominant Bartender becomes a lot more smiley, affectionate, and willing to bottom when he's drunk.
Visual Novels
- Amnesia: Memories: Ikki admits more openly how much of a burden things are and how much he loves the heroine after drinking a little too much. Amnesia LATER also reveals that he becomes quite a cuddler when intoxicated.
- Ms. Walsh from Double Homework becomes more open about her failures and appreciative of him for tolerating them when the protagonist walks in on her drunk in the faculty room. She even offers him sex.
- In The Hayseed Knight, Sep has a lot of mixed feelings about gradually falling in romantic love for the first time with Ader. After a few cups of wine, the negative feelings go right out the window, and she gets downright mushy about him.
Webcomics
- Walkyverse: Mike is a total Jerkass when sober, but a swell guy when drunk; this has led people to keep him soused as much as possible.
- In Weak Hero, Naksung is usually pragmatic to be the point of being an asshole. However, it's revealed that he can't hold his drink and becomes much friendlier once he has some alcohol in him. Hwangmo takes advantage of this to get a favour out of him when they'd otherwise be at each other's throats.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons: At Duff Gardens, Bart and Milhouse go on a ride to make you feel like you're drunk, after which they're buddy-buddy, with lines such as "You're my best friend!" and "This guy...this is the guy..."
- Family Guy: Stewie acts like this after he drinks something Brian tells him is alcohol.
- Hazbin Hotel: If you take Mimzy's word to heart, all it takes is to get a few fingers of rye whiskey in Alastor to turn him into a big softie.
Real Life
- According to this article
from Cracked, Nikita Khrushchev might have prevented a war by being a friendly, sentimental drunk. Josip Broz Tito had gotten into a serious tiff with Josef Stalin, which led him to keep Yugoslavia outside the Soviet Bloc, and war between the Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavia seemed all but inevitable. Even after Stalin's death in 1953, tensions remained high; when the Soviet and Yugoslav governments arranged a summit meeting in Belgrade in May 1955, the Yugoslavs expected it to be a meaningless farce and set things up so that the Soviet delegation would get drunk in public and embarrass themselves. Get drunk in public they did...but embarrass themselves? On the contrary, Khrushchev got all lovey-dovey and started kissing everyone in sight, and heartily encouraged Tito and the Yugoslavs to get drunk with him at a lavish party at the Soviet embassy, at which Khrushchev kept telling Tito, "Josya, quit being so angry! What a thin-skinned one you are! Drink up and let bygones be bygones." The conference ended a huge success and Soviet-Yugoslav tensions were resolved (although Yugoslavia never did join the Pact, they were at least talked out of making a Bomb).
- A tragic example: King Alexander III of Scotland's death was caused by this trait. He was more or less an okay ruler, but his biggest mistake was when after celebrating his recent engagement, he drunkenly decided to pay his fiancee a visit in the middle of the night. Instead of getting to her, he fell off his horse in the dark and broke his neck, kickstarting the Wars of Scottish Independence.