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"You need more mana! Drink more booze!"

In Real Life people drink alcohol. One could fill several essays with discussion of the biochemical and sociological reasons for this, but the main reason is simple: Because it's fun.

We run into a problem when we try to depict this in video games, however. Namely, a realistic depiction of intoxication would have the player character stumbling around with reduced motor skills for a while, and possibly waking up the next day with a splitting headache. Or in other words, not fun.

So what are game designers to do if they want to include booze in their games, but still want the players to actually use it? Simple. Make it a power up!

While it may not be entirely realistic to have alcohol increase one's fighting ability, the only other options are to not include it at all, or to relegate it to the status of Shop Fodder or Poison Mushroom. Most commonly, it increases damage done while penalising armour and other defenses.

When drunkenness is included, it is usually exaggerated and short-lived, sometimes with vision blurring of Mushroom Samba proportions lasting for only a few seconds.

Someone in fiction who gains such powers is a Drunken Master. See also Addiction-Powered.

Compare Double-Edged Buff, which may include this trope if the buff has both a positive and negative effect.

The Opposite Trope is Intoxication Mechanic, although it's possible for the two to overlap (if drinking alcohol temporarily buffs the player character's abilities, but also causes an Interface Screw).


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Action Adventure Games 
  • Bastion treats alcohol as equipment rather than consumable items, meaning the bonuses he gets from them are permanent until you change them. The higher the protagonist's level, the more kinds of alcohol he can equip at once, meaning that the more crap he goes through, the more he has to drink to cope with it.
  • In Catherine, the more Vincent drinks at the bar, the faster he moves in the Nightmare stages. And since ordering drinks doesn't subtract any time from the Bar stages, there's no reason not to fill up on every available liquor and unlock the trivias as well.
  • In the Beat 'em Up Charlie Murder, beer has some of the best and somewhat easily obtainable stat-increasing and health-recovering items in the game, especially early on, although it will randomize your controls and limit your movement for a limited time.
  • In the Wild West Wide-Open Sandbox game GUN, the player character heals by drinking out of the flask of whiskey he keeps with him. Justified in that it's not actually healing you, it's just dulling the pain so that you can keep fighting.
  • Inverted in Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude: drinking makes the protagonist clumsier, increases his need to urinate and makes him more likely to say something inappropriate in conversation. Truth in Television, anyone?
  • Listen To The Wind allows you to restore health and your attack meter by drinking from wine gourds.
  • Done in Ōkami and its sequel Ōkamiden. Even the great god Amaterasu likes to quaff some Steel Fist sake before laying the celestial smack down. It's also inverted in the boss fight with Orochi, who is completely invulnerable... until you use hydrokinesis to force-feed him the best sake in the entire world, thus getting him so drunk that he becomes vulnerable to your attacks.
  • In Overlord Minions and Dwarves fight better when drunk.

    Audio Games 
  • The main character in Termite Torpedo will move in the opposite direction of the arrow keys after eating peppers.

    Beat 'em Up 
  • Skull & Crossbones have you playing as a pirate, who battles enemy pirates and assorted enemies. Naturally, drinking rum will increase your Life Meter.

    Card Games 
  • Touhou Lost Branch Of Legend: The Beer Common Exhibit. Flavor Text: "People love it." Effect:
    At the start of combat, gain 3 Temporary Firepower and add 1 Tipsy (Gain 3 Temporary Firepower) to the hand.

    Fighting Game 
  • The King of Fighters
    • Chin Gentsai has a move where he takes a sip of his booze to increase his attack power and power-up some of his moves; a few of them are only performable after he drinks enough times.
    • Hwa Jai in XIII has a super move where he takes out a bottle of alcohol and drinks it, powering up his offense for a short time.
  • Street Fighter 6
    • While described as an "herbal tea" by Capcom to keep things PG, Jamie's fighting style is pretty obviously based on overpowering his opponent by getting absolutely wasted. His damage increases every drink level he gets, alongside unlocking additional moves to improve his toolkit.
  • Virtua Fighter
    • Shun Di Has several maneuvers that allow him to sneak a drink from his gourd while fighting. His damage increases (and his face reddens) in proportion to how much he drinks, in addition to unlocking more powerful moves after set amounts of booze.

    First-Person Shooter 
  • In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, you can use Moonstone to buy special drinks at Moxxi's bar in Concordia. These "Moxxtails" grant passive buffs to a character's abilities such as ammo regeneration or damage resistance, though only one drink can be had at any time. On the upside, the drinks are fairly cheap (a flat 10 moonstone each, which is easy enough to farm) and the buff lasts for 30 real-time minutes.
  • In Bulletstorm, drinking alcohol will cause your character's aim to go awry, and his vision to blur, but to counterbalance it, every kill you score while intoxicated will net you a score bonus. Drinking 20 bottles (that must be found throughout the game) gives you an achievement/trophy. On the other hand, inversely, just shooting the bottle gives you some immediate points without having to mess your vision up, and shooting 20 also gives you an achievement/trophy.
  • In Condemned 2: Bloodshot, Ethan is suffering from alcohol withdrawal, and if the player doesn't make Ethan regularly consume alcohol, his vision blurs and his aim becomes unsteady.
  • Deep Rock Galactic: All drinks under "Today's Special" will grant a buff for the next mission, be it increased mineral yields, better digging capacity, fighting skill, or added resistances; all depends on which one of the eight options is available for that particular round. Drinks in other categories may have strange effects that won't follow you into missions, and all will get you tanked at varying speeds (except the Leaf Lover's Special, which will get you un-tanked).
  • Deus Ex: In the vanilla game, any alcohol drink would give you two points of health, at the cost of blurred vision for roughly about a minute or so. Justified as the player character's nanites would instantly metabolize any product consumed.
    • Deus Ex: Invisible War: Averted. Alcohol takes away health.
    • Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Alcohol will blur your vision again and give you health, like in the original game, but this time, your health will be pushed beyond the normal limit, giving you extra health. This health won't be recovered through the game's regenerating health though.
  • Drinking beer in Duke Nukem Forever slightly blurs your vision, but Duke takes much less damage from enemy attacks.
  • In Fistful of Frags, bottles of whiskey replace more conventional health pickups like bandages. The curative effects are minor, and the player's aiming begins drifting. There's an achievement for fragging other players while intoxicated: Dutch Courage.
  • In PAYDAY 2, the Stoic perk replaces your throwable with a flask and causes you to take gradual damage from all damage source. Using the flask halts the damage from ticking and with enough upgrades lets you regain a percentage of health lost.
  • Redneck Rampage has booze restore health and, in the right amount, give Leonard a modicum of Damage Reduction. Don't drink past the green zone, however: if Leonard gets too shitfaced his vision will blur, he won't walk in a straight line, and going further past that makes his sight turn fixedly to the left and blur even more. Fortunately at this point you can pee to eliminate the alcohol to just above the green-orange threshold, and you can wait or eat something like Cow Pienote  to bring it back down to the optimal zone.
  • In the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, vodka cures radiation poisoning, at the cost of blurry, swimming vision for a considerable length of time. It's worse if you drink several bottles at once. In Call of Pripyat, vodka also increases hunger.
  • In System Shock 2 and BioShock, you can drink any booze you find lying around to restore your Health. This comes at a penalty to your PSI/EVE, however. In Bioshock, you get the opposite effect from tobacco.
    • As realistic as it is that drinking and smoking cancel each other out (since nicotine is a stimulant and alcohol is a depressant), it's worse, because they give you more than they take away, meaning that doing both in equal amounts is good for you. In BioShock 2 there is a Call-Back to this: a patent medicine can be found that restores both health and EVE. The player can find where it's made, and discover its production process: hard liquor steeped through tobacco leaves in gas cans.
    • Drinking booze too fast does mess up your aim and vision, just not for very long.
    • You can equip the Booze Hound tonic, which inverts the EVE loss into a gain, making alcohol a purely beneficial consumable aside from the minor vision and aiming penalties.
  • Vermintide II: In the anniversary event "A Quiet Drink", ale grants a stacking boost to attack speed and power, Critical Hit chance, and cooldown regeneration, but the bonuses turn to penalties if you go too long without drinking, and you fall over if you drink too much at once.

    Hack and Slash 
  • In Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, and Warriors Orochi, giant (as in, large enough for a grown man to take a bath in) clay pots of alcohol fill your Limit Break meter. They're said to be unrefined, so it's no wonder they only fill you the said meter and not both your health bar and LB meter at the same time (like the "ointment/elixir" does).
    • Zhang Fei's new EX Attack as of 8: Xtreme Legends involves him giving himself a temporary status buff from drinking his ever-so-present wine jug.
  • Similarly, sake gourds in Sengoku Basara fills your Basara Gauge. At least two characters, Maeda Keiji and Shimazu Yoshihiro, have attacks that explicitly involves imbibing alcohol.

    MMORPG 
  • In Age Of Wushu you get a 45-second boost to your evasion score after drinking alcohol, and better alcohols give higher boosts. Drink too much and you get an "Under the Weather" status that leaves you stumbling and blurs your screen, while drinking even more makes you drunk and puking (and very vulnerable). Chefs can also craft wines and other drinks that give boosts, but don't have the same risk of intoxication. Finally, the Beggars' Sect class can learn a Drunken Master style martial art that requires getting tanked and can get others drunk. You even have an alcohol tolerance score that improves by drinking without getting drunk.
  • Dofus and its concurrent sequel, Wakfu, have the Pandawa class. They summon a barrel of fermented bamboo milk and use it to manipulate the cycle of being drunk, hungover, and sober, each status granting specific buffs and debuffs. They also put "dizzy" stacks on enemies and allies alike, implied to be the inebriating effect of their alcohol-based magical attacks.
  • Fallout 76 has dozens of liquors to cause various status effects, but almost all work out to a buff of some kind. The most infamous is Nukashine which not only has a powerful interface screw but also will cause the character to "black out" and be teleported to a random spot on the map. The game also has the "Professional Drinker" perk card which negates the chance of addiction drawback.
  • In Final Fantasy XI, most fruit-based drinks cause MP to regenerate (adding milk to it makes it regenerate HP). The one made from decayed grapes is the strongest. In two senses of the word.
  • In Guild Wars, there are three Player Versus Environment-only Eye of the North skills that can benefited while you are drunk. Of course, the sucky part of this is that your screen is blurry while you are drunk, but that can be turned off with your interface options.
  • In HoboWars, many of the mixed drinks give the player a temporary status effect that gives them special abilities. Having a high BAC level also allows the player to dodge some blows, as well as hit the opponent in a "very sensitive" area, doing additional damage. It also increases the chance at which skills are fired.
  • In Kingdom of Loathing, booze is one of the main ways of gaining more adventures per day.
    • Note that if you drink too much, you enter drunken stupor: a set of adventures, all producing negative (abet minor) effects. So drink in moderation, or binge and wait until tomorrow.
    • There also exist several drinks which, in addition to providing adventures, also provide actual buffs. Also, absinthe, which strangely doesn't get you drunker, instead temporarily opening a new set of zones to adventure in.
    • Sneaky Pete's day. Drink in moderation, it's the same as normal. Go into a stupor, still the same. Get completely blasted, you get a new area.
    • Although not a buff, having more "drunkness" increases the power of the Way of the Surprising Fist attack "Drunken Baby Style". (Yes, it really is called that)
  • In The Lord of the Rings Online, consuming too much beer or wine will progressively blur your vision, depending on how much, until eventually you're basically seeing quintuple.
  • In Lusternia, drinking can dull damage. Certain races (particularly dwarves - natch) can handle their beer way better than others. And Brewmeisters (a trade) can handle it better still, in addition to brewing their own magical draughts. Consequently, a drunken dwarf Brewmeister is a force to be feared.
  • Mabinogi has whiskey and gin as consumable food items, and if you know how to cook, you can use them to mix up cocktails. Consuming any of the alcoholic drinks gives a strong Health and Strength buff, but also leaves you with an Intelligence and Dexterity nerf to emulate the drunken state of the consumer.
  • In some MUDs, being drunk boosts your healing rate. At least one had a sword that made you drunk when you used it.
  • Booze in Nexus Clash always heals a few hit points and grants greater damage in melee combat while reducing accuracy. Thanks to the Stat Grinding system inherent to Nexus games, drinking enough of it (or doing enough of just about any action) can also unlock greater powers, and characters trying to do just that can frequently be found passed out in bars.
  • In Nodiatis, the "Alcoholic" class gets increasing protection from Status Effects by being "buzzed".
  • In Onigiri, there are items called "Sakes", they have variants. A sake can increase the player's parameter temporarily, but remember don't drink it too frequently, otherwise the accuracy will decrease because the player was drunk...
  • In RuneScape a variety of ales can be brewed via the Cooking skill. These provide temporary boosts to specific skills when drunk. However, alcohol of all types reduces your chance to hit in close combat and, unlike most booze-based buffs, tends to sap their physical Strength as well. In addition, while the benefits of drinking multiple of the same beverage do not stack, the downsides do (in addition to typically lasting longer than the buffs)— to the point where excessive use can actually temporarily leave even a high-level player's combat skills weaker than someone just starting out.
  • Torn City has bottles of beer and expensive champaign that will restore a single point to the nerve bar when drunk.
  • In Urban Dead, cans of beer and bottles of wine both increase your health by one, but because drinking either one takes a whole turn, it's usually better to just search for a medkit.
  • In World of Warcraft, alcohol will blur your vision, make your character walk crooked, and make you misjudge enemies' levels if you drink enough of it, but some of it increases your stats temporarily. The chat box displays your intoxication level as feeling tipsy, drunk, etc (along with an Alcohol Hic or two). When you get to "completely smashed" you start to have hallucinations and your characters performs a drunken vomit.
    • It also causes you to "slur" some words by randomly adding an 'h' after some 's'es, leading to one early patch note reassuring people that they would no longer accidentally talk about excrement while try to sit.
    • Inverted in Warcraft 3 (and Defense of the Ancients), where the Pandaren Brewmaster can cause a negative buff on enemies by using the Drunken Haze ability. It also helps if he should decide to set the enemy on fire.
    • In one Wildhammer Dwarf daily quest in the Twilight Highlands in Cataclysm, using the kegs of beer gives you a significant and stacking bonus to your attack.
    • Stat-enhancing alcohol is in the game, but most of it is only available during the Brewfest world event.
    • Brewmaster monks are this as a whole class type. They turn the normally squishy monk class into a Stone Wall with the Stagger passive, which converts a portion of the damage they take into an easy-to-heal Damage Over Time, and is implied to be the Brewmaster getting so drunk they can't feel pain.
    • Several scenarios in Mists Of Pandaria involve using booze, though two of them are offensive skills rather than buffs.

    Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas 
  • Brewmaster, a Defense of the Ancients hero, has the ability to go into a stupor, granting him a chance to dodge attacks and deal critical strikes from being too inebriated to walk or strike correctly, and his movespeed goes up and down like a stumbling drunk. He can also apply a booze-based debuff at enemy heroes, which is strong enough slow them and make most of their attacks miss. A rework changed the booze to be less blinding, but a lot more flammable. Then in 7.31, he can now drink his own booze without the negative effects and triple the bonuses granted by his new Stance System.
    When Mangix won his title as the Brewmaster of the Order of Oyo, he also claimed his place in the mastery of inebriation.
    • Also in Dota is Admiral Kunkka, whose ultimate coats allies in Kunkka's Rum, increasing movement speed and damage resistance, although they will feel the pain afterwards.
  • Heroes of Newerth has Drunken Master, whose skills are more effective if he is sufficiently drunk enough. The effect itself went through multiple major reworks. Originally, he had to channel to drink to enhance his abilities, then it was changed to gaining charges passively (and from enemy hero deaths, for some reason) and letting him chug down his stored drinks to restore health, then it was changed to not enhancing his abilities at all and was just used to heal up. Then the hero went through a period where the drinking aspect wasn't part of his skillset, but now back to like how it used to be but with a little bit of every previous versions mashed together: He now drinks to reduce the cooldown of his abilities and gain drunk charges, which grant evasion and debuff resistance and can be used to enhance his abilities, and it heals a bit of health whenever a charge is used.
  • Heroes of the Storm:
    • Chen Stormstout, with his Fortifying Brew Trait, can drink from his keg for a temporary shield for as long as he is drinking and a few seconds after he's done, while refilling his brew meter for his abilities. Talents can add other benefits, like Enough to Share, which shields allies, or Brewmaster's Balance, which gives him extra bonuses based on how much brew he has (IE, how drunk he is).
    • Chen's niece Li Li can toss brew to allies, which heals them. One of her heroics involves her summoning a massive jug that rapidly distributes brew to the lowest-health ally in range. It's zig-zagged with her though, since the game has equal hints implying her brew is alcoholic as it does implying it's actually just tea.
  • Gragas, a champion in League of Legends, is based entirely around being a fat guy who brews and drinks magical wines and ales. Every time he uses an ability, he takes a drink to restore a portion of his maximum health, and he can guzzle down a whole cask of brew to gain back mana, temporarily increase his attack damage, and decrease all damage taken temporarily.
    • Inverted with Gangplank, whose Grog-Soaked Blade slows and damages enemies he hits over time. He gets you too drunk to walk properly and kills you.
  • Smite has Bacchus, a perpetual drunkard who carries around a jug of wine he can drink from to heal himself and provide a temporary boost to his power and defenses. His abilities also gain additional effects based on how drunk he is, with his basic damaging abilities gaining a slow and stun when drunk and his ultimate increasing his damage output when he's completely smashed. Very fitting for the Roman God of Wine. To a lesser extent, having Baron Samedi on a team gives them access to Baron's Brew, which provides slight HP and MP regeneration when drunk.

    Platform Games 
  • In Conker's Bad Fur Day, drinking beer gives Conker the power to push around heavy objects with powerful streams of urine. It's that kind of game.
  • In the Amiga game Flood, a cocktails will fully restore your health and oxygen, and a pint of Guinness is an extra life.

    Roguelike 
  • In Ancient Domains of Mystery, drinking potions of booze confuses the player for a few turns. On the other hand, they also have two beneficial uses - dipping a wand in a potion of booze recharges it, and Yggaz the Fool in Terinyo will give the player a random potion (including the rarest ones, like the potion of gain attributes) when given a potion of booze.
  • Bounty of One: The Tequila Bottle item increases your character's firing rate by 30%, but it also makes every alternate shot deviate from the usual trajectory, essentially cutting your accuracy.
  • Dungeons of Dredmor uses food to recover health and beverages to recover mana and gain temporary buffs... and excluding mod-added items, the latter are all alcoholic. Oddly enough, this also extends to NPCs, as you can see when you break into a wizard's pocket dimension and find the floor littered with bottles. Unusually for this trope, you also gain progressively worse status ailments (that replace each other, and go in reverse when you start sobering up) if you drink too much at once.
  • For the King: Rum and Hildebrant's Reserve wine both confuse the player character for a few turns but give huge short-term buffs to armor and damage, respectively. However, PCs can gain immunity to Confusion from other sources, so they can enjoy the benefits without having their actions randomized for the duration.

    Role-Playing Games 
  • 7.62 High Calibre has several medical items, including bottles of wine. Drinking wine will lower the character's adrenaline (making them slower but more accurate), so a shot of liquid courage can help them steady their nerves in battle.
  • Atelier Judie: The Alchemist of Gramnad has enemy bears that will feed you wine, which makes your accuracy drop dramatically.
  • In the first four Avernum games (Avernum 1-3 and Blades of Avernum), most alcoholic beverages simply impart the "drunk" status, making it very difficult to hit things, but Gremlin Wine (magic wine made by gremlins, not out of gremlins) also confers a high enough level of the "blessed" status (increases physical damage and accuracy) to more than counteract it.
  • The PS2 and XBox release of The Bard's Tale give the player the option of temporarily increasing (or, in some cases, decreasing) some of the eponymous Bard's stats by buying a drink from any of the several taverns he comes across in his quest. The barkeeps even go to the trouble of describing the taste and quality of the selected brew when you take a look at them.
  • In Baten Kaitos Japanese Rice Wine actually revives the player, and beer/red wine/sweet wine can heal. Even a certain Mini-Boss will use "Rough 'em up drink," which increases defense.
  • Disco Elysium: The Player Character is an alcoholic amnesiac. They can drink alcohol for a temporary physique bonus, at a cost of morale damage and a volition (i.e. willpower) debuff. Embracing fascism increases the buff further, and internalizing the "Opioid Receptor Antagonist" thought removes the morale damage. However, if the player swears off alcohol by internalizing the "Waste Land of Reality" thought instead, they only get the negatives from alcohol.
  • Divinity: Original Sin II: Characters who drink enough beer or wine gain the Drunk status effect, which penalizes several status but grants a bonus to Dodging and Lucky Charm. The latter boosts the chance of randomly finding valuable loot in containers.
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, alcoholic beverages are Ogrin the dwarven Berserker's favorite gift. Also, in the Feastday Gifts DLC his gift is the Beard Flask, which provides him with a small buff whenever he uses it.
  • Being drunk is how the magic works in Dubloon.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • In Arena and Daggerfall, you can throw back drinks to gain minor, temporary buffs... but not only do you get blurry vision, if you drink enough, it could kill you on the spot from alcohol poisoning.
    • In Morrowind and Oblivion:
      • Cheap drinks will generally buff one attribute while draining another, or restore your stamina. It is possible, however, to negate such attribute drains by casting a recovery spell. Expensive, quality liquors like Flin or Cyrodilic Brandy don't have any adverse effects. Since different drinks diminish different attributes, it is possible to drink two or three, and have the penalty end up on a non-combat stat, such as Personality.
      • An extreme example is the drink Sujamma from Morrowind. It massively boosts Strength while dropping Intelligence. And the effects stack. Great when one needs titanic strength for a short time and doesn't mind the penalty to their spellcasting abilities.
      • In Oblivion, most of the positive effects are negligible (beer, for example, restores a tiny amount of Fatigue, which regenerates quickly anyway) so the majority of alcoholic drinks are Shop Fodder. There are a few exceptions, such as some of the better wines.
    • Skyrim:
      • Booze generally restores a bit of Stamina while slowing down your Stamina regeneration. Different drinks provide different levels of respective buff/debuff, but in general you'd be better off going for an easily bought or crafted Stamina potion.
      • Battlehorn Castle has a series of liquors designed to provide some useful buffs provided you have the right ingredients.
  • Epic Battle Fantasy: Beer, introduced in the third game, provides a drastic boost to a character's attack when drunk (70% in EBF3 and EBF4, 60% in EBF5).
  • Fallout: Multiple:
    • Fallout 2 took this to another level. In addition to booze, there were 4-5 street drugs which would give you stat bonuses, at the cost of minuses to other stats and a chance of addiction. A bug allowed you to gain unimaginable agility by constantly using Jet until you were addicted, then drinking a little alcohol (which canceled the addicted status and made the agility gain permanent).
    • Fallout 3: Multiple:
      • Alcohol gives you a small boost to Strength and Charisma, at the expense of intellect and with a chance of addiction.
      • All the previous games' alcohol did was reduce perception by 1, for a very short time. Additionally, you could use it on other targets besides yourself. This led to the interesting development of a player walking up to the last boss in 2 with a 12-pack of beer...
    • In Fallout: New Vegas, one of your Companions, Cass, gives you the 'Whiskey Rose' perk. This makes Whiskey give a moderate boost in damage threshold, in addition to its usual effects, and removes the adverse effects of alcohol addiction, making her the preferred partner of many Unarmed and Melee based characters. You can also make your own wasteland alcohol, the Large Wasteland Tequila, one type has a possible intelligence penalty of -6. If you have average intelligence (5) this can take you into Improbably Low I.Q. territory unless Cass is with you.
  • Auron from Final Fantasy X has two Overdrives that use his sake barrel. The first has him spit a mouthful onto his sword to cast debuffs, and the second involves throwing the barrel at a tornado, catching it on fire somehow.
  • Jade Empire has Drunken Master style, only usable if Henpecked Hou is in your party. Booze is used to boost your health, but slows your reflexes. This is used to hilarious effect in one of the final battles where you team Hou up with Ax-Crazy Black Whirlwind, who is over the moon with delight over being able to drink and fight (his two favorite things in the world) at the same time!
  • Kingdom Come: Deliverance: Many alchemy potions in the game use spirits as their base liquid. Getting drunk on potions, beer, or wine can help with speechcraft, lockpicking, and archery, but will also mess with the camera POV, make you loud and boorish (uncharismatic), and the hangover will make you useless.
  • In Koudelka, drinking bottles of listel will restore some of your MP.
  • During the Wild West chapter of Live A Live (the original game), booze and smokes are your primary healing items. They all drop your stats when used, however.
  • In the Might and Magic series, drunk heroes have increased Luck, and possibly Personality depending on the game in question, but all other stats go down, so it's probably not worth it. Also, they will wake up with a hangover, i. e. weak.
  • In Odin Sphere, Lord Brigan gains buffs from drinking his own alcohol, but when he pours it onto the PC's face, it makes him/her dizzy. Somewhat justified by the fact that Brigan is 10 times the size of playable characters.
  • In Orcs & Elves for cell phones and the DS, you can drink ale to increase your stats but decrease accuracy. Additionally, the screen slowly sways back and forth the more drunk you are.
  • In Phantasy Star Universe and related games the Photon Art "Ikk Hikk" involves drinking alcohol, beating up your opponent, breathing fire, passing out, and then flailing your arms and legs.
  • Project Zomboid: Alcohol can serve as a poor man's substitute for drugs, at the cost of lost coordination and energy.
  • Used by Zegram in Rogue Galaxy — "Drunken Burst," in which a swig of grog increases the attack power of all allies.
  • Starfield has three types of booze, with the exact effects differing by brand:
    • Beer buffs carrying capacity.
    • Wine buffs your Persuasion stat.
    • Spirits buff damage resistance.
  • In The Witcher, drinking makes the screen wobble and blur, makes Geralt stagger around and reduces fighting ability, but several talents can be taken that only activate when intoxicated. In addition, strong, quality alcohol is used as a base for most potions.

    Shoot Em Ups 

    Simulation Games 
  • Dead In Vinland actually has an enemy class called Drunkard which is built on this. Additionally, having your Player Party members drink together will reduce their Depression. Using booze items on a character will randomly either reduce their Depression and add the buff Excited, reduce their Depression dramatically and add the debuff Drunk, or just increase their Sickness somewhat and add the debuff Vomiting. Depression-prone characters like Eirik and Moira are likely to do a lot of drowning their sorrows.
  • In Dwarf Fortress all dwarves — even babies — are alcoholics, and going a significant amount of time without alcohol will cause efficiency and happiness to plummet. Alcohol also gives happiness boosts, especially if it's a kind the dwarf likes. Of course, alcohol poisoning is an implemented syndrome, so too much of a good thing means your dwarves will pass out drunk and drown in their own vomit. Alcohol-Induced Idiocy is averted, or at least you can't really tell it from normal dwarven idiocy.
  • In FrontierVille, you can get drinks from the Saloon such as Loyal Pioneer, which lets you do 10 actions at a neighbour's homestead instead of 5 and Quick Draw Quaff which lets you do 5 actions using only 1 energy.
  • In Roots of Pacha, you can brew various wines and beer, and they restore your stamina just like the other food products you make.
  • In The Sims Medieval, Sims get a positive buff from drinking, and an extra one if the drink actually tastes good. Those with the "Drunkard" Flaw get a negative buff from not drinking, but don't get any more positive effects from drinking than those without the flaw.

    Survival Horror 
  • Edward Carnby from the Alone in the Dark series drinks from various hip flasks scattered about to gain health.
  • Dead Island has the Alcohol item. It's useless when drunk, only giving you a severe case of Interface Screw, unless you're playing as Logan, who, once you get the appropriate skills, can get increased strength and/or regenerating health when drunk.
  • Dead Rising: Both Frank and the gun store owner drink wine by the bottle to replenish health.
    • In the sequel, Chuck downs an entire bottle of Whiskey (the same you can make a molotov with, holy crap!) in a few seconds. Although the risk of getting sick to your stomach arises when consuming more than one alcoholic item shortly after another (which results in vomiting uncontrollably).
    • Done again by Frank in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. He can take a swig of alcohol, allowing him to take more pictures and grow levels quicker. However, after a while he'll hunch over and groan in pain allowing the other player to attack.
  • Die2Nite currently has 3 alcohol based items that restore a player's AP, but gives them a hangover the next day. Of course, this is justified as it is specifically mentioned that the items are really potent. (One is 85% proof!)
  • In Eternal Darkness, Edward carries a flask of "liquid courage"; drinking it restores sanity. There must be something to it, since Edward is one of the few characters who doesn't wind up dead or insane after his adventure. (Well, not immediately after, but that's beside the point.)
  • In Prey (2017), drinking alcohol will give you a temporary boost to melee damage and immunity to Fear. It also causes tipsiness, but there's a chipset that negates the downsides.
  • Bottles of hard liquor such as Hot Sake or Tequila serve as healing items in Shadows of the Damned. It's justified by the fact that in the Underworld alcohol heals you rather than destroys your liver.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In the card game Bang!, taking a drink (by playing a Beer card) heals damage.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The Drunken Master Prestige Class can drink alcohol to provide bonuses to Strength or Constitution at a penalty to Wisdom and Intelligence. At higher levels Drunken Masters can heal themselves by hitting the booze, or set the alcohol inside them on fire and spray it as a Breath Weapon.
    • The 1st edition Dungeon Masters Guide included an intoxication table that gave similar bonuses to bravery, morale, and hit points to drunkards of all classes (and similar penalties to almost every other ability score).
    • In the Baldur's Gate series, over imbibing would only cause the character to become drunk at penalties to attack and armor. A moderate consumption would give you a slight morale boost. Still not worth it, though.
    • Issue #334 of Dragon has an article called "Drunkards & Flagons" which is all about this and contains several magical buff-giving drinks. Special mention goes to the orc-made Drowned Man Stout, which is pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • In Exalted, there is a Martial Arts school which teaches the Orgiastic Fugitive Style which increases your ability in the art in line with how debilitatingly inebriated your character is. This, by the way is a Celestial level martial art meaning that its inventor was either a God or one of the 700 Celestial Exalted.
    • There's also Celestial Wine, which heals health levels, cures diseases and neutralises poison. Drinking a whole bottle of it will make you immune to disease and poisons for a year.
  • Feng Shui has the fu path of the Empty Bottle, which caters to Drunken Master types such as those played by Jackie Chan.
  • Games Workshop games:
    • Mordheim:
      • Bugman's Ale is a rare item available to any Warband lucky enough to find one in the marketplace. A Warband that drinks a barrel of Bugman's Ale will be fearless for the following battle.
      • Being a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Russia, Kislevite Warbands are able to purchase Vodka. A Kislevite Hero who drank a bottle of this harsh alcohol before a battle fights with great courage at the cost of their coordination and reaction time. In game this was represented by a bonus to his Leadership and a possible deduction to his Initiative.
    • Centigors in Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar have this as their entire shtick.
      • In Fantasy 6th Edition, they gain either Frenzy, pairing an extra attack per turn with the chance to charge off randomly after the nearest enemy; Stupidity, causing them to randomly stumble around in a stupor; or no particular effect. Both specific states also render them too inebriated to recognize obvious danger, making them immune to fear effects.
      • In Fantasy 7th Edition, they have an equal chance of being sober, giving them a bonus to their Initative score; horribly hungover, giving them a bonus to melee combat at the cost of a malus to movement; or drunk out of their tiny minds, giving them a bonus to morale checks.
      • In Age of Sigmar it's something of a Death or Glory Attack: drinking gives the Centigor unit +1 to their hit rolls, but their enemies also get +1 to hit against them.
    • 1st and 2nd Edition Necromunda has Wild Snake, a rare and potent moonshine that can install "Snake Courage" in a gang that drinks it before a battle, giving them +1 to their Leadership. The resulting drunkenness will result in a -2 to their Initiative however.
  • GURPS addresses this. The Drunk and Tipsy conditions temporarily reduce DX and IQ but make it easier to resist the Cowardice and Shyness disadvantages.
    • From Martial Arts the Drunken Fighting perk plays this straight.
    • The drunkenness rules were originally written for the Source Book of Callahan's Crosstime Saloon.
    • The Dungeon Fantasy supplement Taverns gives details on several special drinks that can give you minor benefits.
  • In Hell MOO alcohol will reduce your reflexes, make you vomit, cause you to slur your speech and pass out, but will also increase brawn and with the correct mutations heal wounds.
  • Hong Kong Action Theatre has Joi Kuen (Drunken Boxing) as a "substyle" of kung fu which can be added to any style, which adds Dodge and Nerve Strike as additional maneuvers to any existing style. In addition, there's the "Drunk" Signature Move from the To Live and Die in HK supplement which allows a character with the signature to ignore all damage penalties for three combat turns if he or she can take a good swig during a fight, as well as adding a + 1 bonus to Dodges and Nerve Strikes due to their Joi Kuen.
  • Munchkin card "Dwarf Beer" gives positive bonuses if you're a dwarf. Everyone else just gets drunk.
  • Drunkenness in a typical New World of Darkness game confides a small bonus to all Social actions, but a corresponding penalty to Initiative, Wits, and Defense.
  • One of the archetypes for the alchemist class in Pathfinder is called the moonshiner. It replaces the alchemist's normal mutagen ability with something called "moonshine stupor"; essentially, it functions the same as the mutagen, except has a reduced duration, with the trade-off that it can be triggered by any alcoholic beverage. At higher levels, the archetype gains additional alcohol-based abilities, such as mixing booze with extracts and even bombs; becoming a social drinker, which increases Charisma; and suppressing a variety of status effects.
  • The boardgame Red November (where you play an all-gnome crew on a VERY disaster-prone submarine) has the Grog item, which provides a + 3 bonus to any one task, and allows you to enter burning rooms even if you don't have an extinguisher. However, every time you do that, you have an increasing risk of passing out for ten minutes. As the game takes place over less than sixty minutes, this could be very dangerous. Even moreso if the room you're in springs a leak, or catches on fire...
  • Unknown Armies has Dipsomancy as one of its magical paths. Followers must be inebriated in order to gain magical charges, and sobering up removes all of their current power.
  • The Unofficial Hollow Knight RPG: Alcohol is mechanically considered a type of Potion, and each kind of alcoholic beverage comes with its own effects. They all come with the drawback of lowering the user's Grace, Insight, or both, but restore the drinker's Belly as well as granting a benefit specific to each kind of drink.

    Third-Person Shooter 

    Turn-Based Strategy 

    Wide Open Sandbox 
  • In the Like a Dragon series, the more drunk you are, the faster you can fill the Heat gauge, and some passive abilities only work if you are drunk. The only downside is that being drunk can attract more enemies.
    • In the prequel Yakuza 0, several style abilities kick in if Kiryu and Majima are drunk. Kiryu's Brawler style has quite a few of these.
    • Judgment and its sequel has a move that can only be executed if Yagami is drunk, though using it causes him to immediately sober up.
  • In Saints Row and Saints Row 2, you can drink 40 oz's to gain more powerful unarmed attacks at the expense of a slightly blurred vision. You can drink several at once, and your blurriness and damage increase proportionally (in the first game, the Playa will occasionally stop to puke if he's had too much). You also revive fallen teammates from a Non-Lethal K.O. by literally pouring a 40 oz for (or rather, on) your homies — though, thankfully, this action does not consume an item from your supply, nor do you actually have to keep a bottle in reserve for this.
  • In Terraria, you can drink ale (made from a tap) or saké (bought from the Travelling Merchant), which lowers your defense, but increases your speed, power, and Critical Hit chance with melee weapons. Later in the game the armor debuff is negligible, but the bonuses scale with your weapon's power, making it a desirable combat boost.

    Non-Video Game Examples 
Anime & Manga
  • Inverted with Fujisawa-sensei's superpower in El-Hazard: The Magnificent World. It's being sober that empowers his strength, whilst drinking alcohol reduces him to mere mortal limitations.

Films — Animated

  • In Sausage Party, the Big Bad Douche becomes stronger with each bottle or can of alcohol he drinks.

Films — Live-Action

  • Drunken Master portrays Jackie Chan being a better fighter while drunk (with the reasoning of increased pain tolerance and improved flexibility. Also, real-life Drunken Boxing is pure Confusion Fu: Jackie Chan's movie and video game series regarding being a Drunken Master thus assumes it's easier to execute it when actually drunk). He quits booze at one point in the plot, but in the final fight, he recovers from a hopeless fight by drinking pure grain alcohol.

Web Comics

  • In El Goonish Shive, while playing Fallout: New Vegas, Grace passes a speech check with the assistance of booze.
  • Problem Sleuth: Getting drunk boosts your Imagination stat, which is required to use abilities in the Realm of Imagination. Alcohol made of candy is the most potent of all drinks, allowing the imbibed to use crazy amounts of power and practically ascend to godhood.

Web Video

Western Animation

Real Life

  • For a possible real life example, look at Buckfast Tonic Wine. At 30 proofnote  and containing more caffeine per volume than Red Bull, its considered by many to be the source of a great deal of Scotland's violent drinking woes, due to the obvious problems that come with drunken, violent, disaffected youth hopped up on enough caffeine to kill a horse with the glass bottle it comes in. True or not, it has earned some rather entertaining nicknames, such as "Commotion Lotion" and "Wreck the Hoose Juice."
  • Many long-term alcoholics work better after a smaller glass of booze — their body has become accustomed to alcohol and the lack of it brings very unpleasant things, even before true delirium tremens appears: shaking hands, fatigue, stumbling etc.
  • Being drunk actually does increase the odds of survival in falls and vehicle accidents. A drunk person's body is often more relaxed, which means they either fall flat (spreading out impact) or unconsciously tumble (sparing head injuries) in a fall, whereas a sober person falling will often freeze up falling headfirst. Similarly, with vehicle accidents, a sober person might freeze up, leading to worse injury depending on the type of accident. Unfortunately, this occasionally makes the Drunk Driver a Karma Houdini - when he or she is the survivor of a fatal crash. That said, it's not reliable — Do Not Try This at Home!
  • While being drunk generally makes people more likely to be victims of crime, for obvious reasons, a sufficiently violent or crazy drunk can escape/prevent some criminal attacks a sober person would not, via Confusion Fu and by being so unpredictable and dangerous that someone who might have robbed or assaulted a sober person or unconscious drunk may well say Screw This, I'm Outta Here. Like the above, Do Not Try This at Home, for obvious reasons.
  • Charles Joughin, chief baker of the Titanic, is believed to have survived the ship's sinking this way, rescued after floating for over two hours in the freezing water with minimal health effects. This is in spite of the fact that alcohol makes consumers more susceptible to hypothermia; rather than any physical effects, Joughin's remarkable survival has been attributed in large part to the alcohol making him more mentally relaxed about the entire situation.

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