"How do stimulants such as alcohol and drugs affect a woman's level of sexuality? One woman says, 'If I'm tense, all I need is a drink or a little grass to put me at ease. Actually, for me, it's the grass that really does it. The great thing about grass is it makes you totally interested in what you're doing. You're totally aware of every nuance of sensation.'."
— Michael Morganstern, How To Make Love To A Woman
One of the most well-known effects of alcohol and other recreational drugs are to loosen inhibitions, and if a specific inhibition is having sex with someone, that other person can use alcohol or other drugs just for that; the other person could also be drinking or doing drugs so that he or she will be less self-conscious about having sex.
Anyway, this trope is fairly common in fiction, but usually parodied nowadays, and is quickly entering Dead Horse territory due to increased awareness that intoxicated people cannot consent to sex.
Subtrope of Liquid Courage. Compare In Vino Veritas, Kissing Under the Influence, Beer Goggles, Drugs Are Good.
May be invoked to fuel Alcohol-Induced Bisexuality, or raise the issue of Questionable Consent.
Contrast Above the Influence, Slipping a Mickey, Drugs Are Bad.
Yes, this is likely done in Real Life, but depending on the jurisdiction and level of intoxication, it may qualify legally and/or morally as rape. The full quote is "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker."
Examples:
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Advertising
- Get high, get stupid, get AIDS
has a man showering and woman waking up in bed panicking over the realization that they probably have AIDS due to having intoxicated sex the previous night. They both calm down after remembering that they're just cartoon characters and not real people.
- This anti-drug P.S.A links drinking and drug use to risky sexual activity by showing marijuana use resulting in a teenager getting pregnant.
Anime & Manga
- In Monster, Eva's unflattering flashbacks of Roberto heavily imply that the only reason she had slept with him was thorough inebriation. Whether he supplied the alcohol is, however, unclear.
- In a Digging Yourself Deeper moment early in the Air TV anime, Yukito frantically tries to tell Hijiri that he did not do this to Kano.
- An extra chapter of Strawberry Shake Sweet revolves around Julia and Kaoru trying this on their respective love interests. In both cases, it ends up spectacularly backfiring.
- In My Dear Marie, this is tough-girl Hibiki's approach to seducing the loser protagonist once she gets him home, though he immediately passes out and it never goes anywhere.
- One flashback in the movie of Revolutionary Girl Utena shows Akio and Anthy having an encounter after champagne is consumed. Worse, said champagne is obviously drugged. Long story short, he thought she was unconscious and proceeded to rape her, only to realize later that she was awake the entire time. He responds by stabbing her, and then falling out the window to his death. Moreover it's heavily implied that he somehow ended up with her drink by accident.
- In Maka-Maka, Nene initiates sex with Jun while the latter is very drunk. But don't worry, it's consensual.
- At Tsubame's Christmas party in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Iino ends up getting drunk by eating alcoholic chocolate bonbons. A boy who'd been paying a lot of attention to her throughout the night offers to take her somewhere more comfortable... and then gets her to lie down on the sofa and sleep off the alcohol, while the other partygoers remark that Iino should never go to a bar or else this sort of thing will happen to her for real.
Comic Books
- Zigzagged in Alan Ford: volume 443 ends with a Swedish bifauxnen stewardess offering all the passengers champagne and flirting with the heroine Minuette before inviting her to join the "Mile-High Club" with her later. The variation is that she didn't spike Minuette's drink, but rather everyone else's, so that in an hour they'll be asleep and leave them privacy.
Fan Works
- Bait and Switch: Used somewhat — it's pretty obvious both Eleya and Gaarra are pretty drunk the second time they sleep together. In this case the inhibition being overcome is the fact that Eleya is Gaarra's direct superior (they didn't know this the first time) and thus them sleeping together is against regulations (they're still sober enough to remember but drunk enough not to particularly care).
- Cabin Fever: Parting Shot (a Cabin Fever fic): Drunk people do a lot of mating. But the example that probably stands out most is how Bert persists in making moves on Marcy as her inhibitions weaken. However, when she firmly rebuffs him, he wastes little time in taking advantage of Karen, who is just as drunk.
- Core: Mandark tries this with Dee Dee, continuously filling up her champagne glass on their date, calculating her BMI, and asking to come into her apartment later.
- Cup of Tea: Deconstructed. When Phoenix drinks too much wine during a romantic dinner with Edgeworth he becomes too drunk to get physically aroused, killing the romantic mood.
- Fluttershy's Night Out: Fluttershy is very unused to alcohol, and she gets drunk. This is partially Nosey's fault, partially Fluttershy's own naïveté about the likely consequences of drinking too much. It's about half of the reason why she's willing to sleep with Nosey on a single night's acquaintance.
- Heirverse (a Bleach fanfic series): In "Game", Gin and Aizen's first date sees them returning home with Gin having gotten very drunk, and is afraid the next morning that he and Aizen (who's in the same bed) slept together while he was drunk. His zanpakuto spirit quickly assures him that Aizen took off his shoes before getting him into bed and nothing more.
- HERZ: Kurumi got Shinji drunk before sleeping with him, and he's been avoiding her ever since.
- Mother Fluffer: Discussed when Twilight is explaining how both her parents are gay but she and Shining are still their biological children. Applejack asks Twilight, "If yer folks aren't attracted to each other, then how are they able ta... you know... get the motor runnin'?" While Twilight tries to think of a tactful way to put it, Spike yells from the other room: "How do you think most ponies do it?! They got drunk!" Though embarrassed by his words, and his subsequent adding that that's what Velvet said, Twilight ends up confirming that "a bottle or two of wine may have been involved when Shining and I were conceived."
- Must Love Ned Flanders (a The Simpsons fanfic): Implied — everybody gets drunk at Naomi and Ned's wedding party except for Ned, who "carried [Naomi] to [their] room where [they]... ahem, you know."
- The One I Love Is..., Asuka gets into a drinking challenge with Shinji before sharing his tent and trying to get him to have sex with her. Shinji is angry, not because of the use of alcohol, but because he assumed Asuka just wanted him as a trophy to hold over Rei's head.
- Queens of Mewni: In this artwork for the fic, it's implied that Hekatia and Edmund need a bottle of wine each to even consider having sex. This makes more sense when you learn they're more Platonic Life-Partners than romantic partners, Hekatia is aroace, and the unfortunate necessity of conceiving Hekatia's heir.
- Reflected in Shadow: Shen Qingqiu drinks himself stupid right before letting his kidnapper having non-penetrative sex with him. Fortunately, said captor is so disturbed by his newfound homosexual leanings that he flees the bedroom right after the first kiss.
- The Seventh Player: An initially downplayed, then subverted example — Adaine gets the titular seventh player, Machaira Mekhit, drunk for the sake of making it easier for the wizard to confess her feelings to her. However, she ends up getting carried away and nearly ends up having sex with her while she's drunk, although thankfully, the two only kiss erotically for a little bit before a slip of the tongue on Adaine's end creates a situation where Adaine can't bring herself to go through with it any further.
Film
- The 40-Year-Old Virgin: Andy's friends try invoking this in order to get him laid. The drunken bachelorette he goes home with crashes her car and pukes on him. Great idea, guys. After she crashes the car and pukes all over Andy, she offers to have sex with him if he's still interested. He declines, as nearly being killed and then being thrown up on is a bit of a mood-killer.
- Subverted in 50 First Dates: one of the male lead's seduction techniques involves plying his dates with non-alcoholic beverages but telling them they're alcoholic for a placebo effect. This lets the women lower their inhibitions without reducing cognitive function, so nobody has to feel guilty.
- One of the guys in Animal House is tempted to do this with Clorette, the mayor's daughter (who lied about her age to get into the frat party). He listens to the good angel and does not actually sleep with her, although everyone in town believes he did.
- Referenced but not actually shown (as the characters involved quickly have more important things to worry about) in Avalanche Sharks after Jenna refers to Randy as an Abhorrent Admirer Carol comments that after a few drinks he might not seem that bad.
- Blade Runner 2049. Officer K's human superior in the LAPD helps herself to a drink in his apartment, and muses what might happen if she stays to finish the bottle. K pretends not to notice the hint and she leaves quickly.
- The Eagle: Catherine the Great is trying to get Vladimir the handsome cavalryman drunk, for sex. He figures it out though and employs Discreet Drink Disposal.
- Easy Money: Monty mentions that his wife got drunk to loosen up for sex on their honeymoon.
- In Female, one of Allison's standard moves when having men over for sex is summoning the butler with vodka to loosen them up. She is shocked when Jim, the engineer she's set her sights on as her next conquest, downs seven vodka shots and still wants to talk about the gearshift he's designing.
Allison: Doesn't vodka affect you at all?
- Used for drama with Bonasera's daughter in the opening of The Godfather. A boyfriend and his friend made her drink whiskey with the intent of taking advantage of her, but when she resisted, they viciously beat her to the point that the undertaker says that "she will never be beautiful again." Bonasera's reason for coming to Don Corleone was to avenge this horrible wrong after the courts did not provide him with the justice he sought.
- Mastizaade: The two main characters fake being alcohol and sex addicts in order to scout for "easy girls" in rehab clinics. At least one scene involves them tempting a few of the girls with alcohol.
- Neighbors (2014): While trying to break up the frat, Kelly gets Pete and Brooke drunk (while employing Discreet Drink Disposal with her own shots) to get them into bed together.
- Shall We Play?: Matt gets Stacy drunk, then tries to have sex with her when she's half out of it. He at first stops when Stacy says no. Then however he takes photos of her when she passes out and invites buddies of his over to look when he has left her in her underwear. All three write out Slut on her belly, taking photos of it.
- In Tamara, Patrick specifically invites two freshman girls to the party specifically intending to ply them with booze and take advantage of them. It is implied that the drinks might also be drugged.
- The ending of Superbad is all about this trope; it's set at a high school senior party where everyone is wasted. The idea is discussed by several characters, most of whom believe that taking advantage of someone drunk is ok as long as you get drunk yourself.
- Is quoted in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory by Wonka himself when explaining why there's alcohol (specifically "butter scotch" and "butter gin") in his chocolate factory.
Literature
- In Beauty Queens Duff seduces Adina while she's drunk.
- A sleazy character plies an innocent young woman with booze and marijuana cigarettes for this purpose in Young Dr. Kildare. It turns out she's a little too innocent, overdoses and passes out badly. The sleazeball panics, dumps her on the nearest bed and calls a doctor. She wakes up, clothing disarranged and lying on a bed in an obvious love nest, assumes the worst, and freaks out, running away. Sleazeball comes back to find her gone, and decides she's not his problem anymore; he's wrong...
- In Rainbow Six (novel, not video game), a Casanova picking up girls in bars by getting them drunk turns out to be employed by the evil Animal Wrongs Group to abduct people to conduct bioweapon experiments on. If there's An Aesop there, it's rather heavy-handed, Mr. Clancy.
- In The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, regimental doctor Diana Alsever tries some moonshine cooked up by, well, the regimental cook. She gets so plastered that she has no qualms about putting moves on the unit's commander, Major Mandella. Since this is a No Heterosexual Sex Allowed future — the major is the only member of the regiment old enough to be hetero — Diana must be really drunk. She passes out completely before anything interesting can happen, but Mandella makes a mental note to buy some good booze and get her alone if they ever make it back to civilization.
- In the Book of Genesis, Lot's daughters get him drunk to have sex with him while he is unaware of it in Genesis 19:31-36, making this Older Than Feudalism.
- In one of the Company Z novels by J.T. Edson, one of the villains Company Z take vengeance on is a rapist who plied a teenage girl with alcohol-laced lemonade.
- In The Stone Prince, the prince is very reluctantly preparing for an Arranged Marriage, gets drunk with his bride-to-be, and they have sex. She remembers, he doesn't. Later, after they're married and he's inherited the throne, he's totally flabbergasted when she announces she's pregnant and furiously tells him off while both their Companions are watching.
- In Colby Rodowsky's Lucy Peale the title character was given a Pepsi with unspecified alcohol in it, and the combination of blurred reflexes and the seatbelt prevented her from physically resisting being raped in the backseat.
- Murder for the Modern Girl: At a hotel party, Rex Blanchot gets Maggie Stowe drunk, brings her to his hotel room, strips her naked and takes pictures of her in the nude without her consent.
- Self-inflicted version occurs in Heart In Hand. Darryl drinks vodka to work up the courage and lower his inhibitions before sleeping with Alex.
- One of the George and Azazel stories by Isaac Asimov is about a girl who was raised by a very strict mother, and so cannot interact with the opposite gender properly. In addition, her metabolism is extremely sensitive to alcohol, so sensitive that the narrator calls for the titular demon in order to remake her metabolism and make the trope possible. Unfortunately, the demon did too good a job — the girl acquired a real taste for alcohol, and the new metabolism processed it all into fat.
- Inverted in John Ringo's Council Wars. Bast's approach to rape counseling is getting the victim drunk enough to trust her.
- In Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, the final step in Harry's preparations for seducing Angela is mixing "two drinks—for himself a weak one so he could stay alert; for Angela a double so she could not."
- "Love" potions are essentially this trope in Harry Potter. They provide a powerful attraction and infatuation that lasts for a brief while. The sixth book reveals that Voldemort was born from usage of these.
- The end of The Firm by John Grisham has this happen. Entirely justified, as A. The two people involved are married, and B. They are totally sober, and deliberately making the choice to become drunk so that the sex will be more fun and/or less inhibited.
- Harrow the Ninth: When Harrowhark needs to take care of something and asks Augustine to keep the God-Emperor distracted, he delivers by getting an entire dinner party thoroughly drunk and dragging the Emperor into a threesome. Harrowhark beats a hasty retreat, wishing for Brain Bleach.
Live-Action TV
- Massive case of Values Dissonance is On the Buses. Upon seeing that the homemade brew they've put together has caused Stan's sister and brother-in-law, who normally don't get along, to become so out if it they actually forget they forget they hate each other and start having sex, Stan and Jack decide to brew some more and get some women round, with the plan to trick them into becoming so inebriated they don't know what they're doing so will have sex with them. This is depicted as harmless fun as opposed to sexual abuse.
- In Smallville, Clark is immune to the effects of alcohol just like all other earthly toxins, but he has his own personal replacement: red kryptonite. In Rush and Unsafe, he has some heavy making out with Chloe and Alicia respectively, but the red kryptonite is luckily (or unfortunately, if you prefer the relevant characters with Clark) removed before he does any irreparable damage.
- A more literal version in Fortune when everyone got drunk on enchanted alcohol, although most of what happened is left to the imagination. Other than Tess and Emil's Home Porn Movie.
- From some of the bad dating advice Dave is giving Quentin in Grace Under Fire.
- Used by the doctor in Picket Fences. His date did try to sue him for rape, but the judge threw it out, noting what the guy did was stupid, but not illegal (in that jurisdiction.)
- Kennedy, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, describing the lesbian dating scene in "The Killer in Me":
"It's like flirting in code, it's using body language, and laughing at the right jokes. And looking into her eyes and knowing she's still whispering to you, even though she's not saying a word. And that sense that if you can just touch her, just once, everything will be okay. For both of you... [suddenly flippant] Or, if she's really hot, you get her drunk and see if she comes on to you."
- From The Inbetweeners:
Jay: If we're in charge of the alcohol, then we get our pick of the birds! The DRUNK birds!
Will: That sounded just a little bit rapey. - In an episode of Chuck, a suave Bond-like spy attempts to teach nerdy Chuck how to seduce women as part of his spy training. A mission requires Chuck to seduce a very dangerous Russian woman. His first attempt is botched when he attempts to buy her a drink (as per the spy's instructions), only to find out that she doesn't drink. This prompts the spy to exclaim, "How is he supposed to seduce her without alcohol?" This either indicates his low faith in Chuck's charm or a limitation of his own seduction skills.
- In Community, the ill-advised decision is made to serve alcohol at an STD fair offering free condoms, leading to the expected consequence of a lot of horny, drunk young people planning on having sex with each other and with plenty of contraceptives available which, unfortunately, turn out to be faulty. Dean Pelton is apparently unaware that alcohol can remove inhibitions: "It makes me sleepy!"
- In Glee, Quinn gives her reason for sleeping with Puck as "[he] got me drunk on wine coolers and I felt fat that day." Getting her drunk in order to have sex with her was definitely Puck's intention.
- Has happened many times on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, sometimes in combination with date-rape drugs
- On My Name Is Earl:
- Joy (six months pregnant, with no idea who the father is It's Earl) is out with her friends at a bar, worried about how she's going to survive without a man since her parents kicked her out of the house. Joy then notices Earl, and knowing that he probably won't go for a pregnant lady on his own, she conspires with her friends to get him wasted, which they do. Then they introduce Earl to Joy. The next morning, Earl wakes up in a hotel room in Las Vegas, completely naked, with Joy...and a new wedding ring.
- Also subverted in the episode where Earl and some friends form a garage band and try to have sex with some groupies after the show. The woman Earl was trying to score with was passed out from the alcohol, so Earl didn't bother with her. He did however, sleep with his bandmate's mother ("She wasn't young, but she was conscious.")
- In another episode, we have the following exchange:
Randy: "Are you drunk enough to go home with me?"
Woman at the Bar: takes a look at Randy and then gulps down the remainder of her beer Yep.
- How I Met Your Mother often portrays drunken hook-ups. In particular, in "Shelter Island" Barney sets out to get Robin drunk at Ted's wedding so that she'll sleep with him again. When he finds out the wedding only serves non-alcoholic beverages, he freaks out.
Barney: "Berry Blaster Brain Revitalizer"? My God, some of these drinks can make a girl smarter. What sort of hell has Ted brought us to?
- Implied in the pilot of Forever (2014) when Jo is introduced leaving a one-night stand in the morning and Henry diagnoses her as hung over shortly after.
- Monica and Chandler's first hookup on Friends lampshades this trope to perfection:
Chandler: How drunk are you?
Monica: Drunk enough that I know I wanna do this. Not so drunk you should feel guilty for taking advantage.
Chandler: [beat] Well, that's the perfect amount! - Unsurprisingly shows up in Game of Thrones:
- When Tyrion Lannister is forced to marry Sansa Stark. He's so disgusted at the prospect of having to bed a girl who hates him and his evil family that he gets himself supremely wasted just to get through it. Even then, he can't bring himself to do it, plus he ends up being so trashed that he passes out.
- Sansa Stark herself chugs down some wine before going to undress for Tyrion.
- Jaime and Brienne finally give in to years of slow-burning UST between them the night after the Battle for the Dawn, having been playing a drinking game beforehand — though in this case it's made fairly obvious that the only thing the liquor did was help them get over their own inhibitions, and that it likely would've happened sooner or later anyway.
- When Tyrion Lannister is forced to marry Sansa Stark. He's so disgusted at the prospect of having to bed a girl who hates him and his evil family that he gets himself supremely wasted just to get through it. Even then, he can't bring himself to do it, plus he ends up being so trashed that he passes out.
- In the Supernatural episode "Devil May Care" (S09, Ep02), a couple of Navy sailors plan to utilize this strategy on Jamie, a person they are meeting at a bar on their weekend pass. "So, you just start buying shots, then you can thank me in the morning."
- In Enemy at the Door, set in German-occupied Guernsey during World War II, the episode "After the Ball" revolves around a ball held by the Germans to promote good relations with the locals. One of the local girls meets a charming young German soldier, and spends most of the evening with him, drinking and dancing. While he's walking her home, he initiates a drunken makeout session and then takes it too far. It's left ambiguous whether he deliberately got her plastered to lower her resistance, but the possibility is one of the things that counts against him at his court-martial.
- This happened on Change Of Heart during Jesse and Kathy's date after the wine tasting back at his place.
- Person of Interest. John Dillinger (Reese's predecessor as The Man in the Suit vigilante) is introduced saving a Damsel in Distress just as she's about to be murdered, then telling her, "You've had a very traumatic experience. You probably shouldn't be on your own right now. I don't know about you, but I could use a drink." Cut to her waking up in his bed the next day. The scene establishes Dillinger as a more sleazy and less moral character than John Reese.
- Life on Mars (2006). When Chris goes on a date, his police colleagues advise him to get her drunk. He ends up drinking too much himself and throws up all over her.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In "The Circle", Kira is surprised when the Ferengi bartender Quark turns up with a free bottle of synthale to wish her goodbye after she's Kicked Upstairs. He's implied to have other motives for lending his booze and a sympathetic ear..."You'll be surprised how often that works with women!" In fairness to Quark, you can't get really drunk on synthale.
- The Young and the Restless Cane has drinks with a co-worker. The next scene is of him waking up naked in bed with absolutely no memory of what happened. When his co-worker later tells him that they did in fact have sex, he's horrified and disgusted with himself for having cheated on his wife, and even moreso when the woman files a sexual harassment complaint against him. But the fact that she was seen repeatedly pouring out drinks for him, not to mention that she initially lied and denied that they'd even had sex, then claimed that it was consensual, means that if anyone was sexually assaulted, it was him.
- This is a major component of most soaps Double Standard Rape: Female on Male stories—the woman deliberately gets the man intoxicated or outright drugs him so as to have sex with him. Unfortunately, the man is always angry at himself for having supposedly cheated on his wife/girlfriend, while the wife/girlfriend herself is also infuriates about his infidelity. No one ever seems to regard the man as a victim.
- Lampshaded in Battlestar Galactica (2003) when Kara Thrace is plying Samuel Anders with booze, with him joking that it's not necessary as he's entirely willing to sleep with her.
- In the 2019 South African series Shadow, a New Old Flame who works as a bartender tries to get the title character to have a drink with her, but he refuses until she points out it's her birthday, so he's required to join her for a drinking contest that ends up with him waking up in her bed. However when he peeks under the covers she's still dressed, so it's implied they just passed out in the same bed and didn't have sex.
- Let the Blood Run Free. One character's "friends" are trying to corrupt him before his wedding night. After all else fails they resort to a glass of PURE ALCOHOL! (portrayed as an ominously bubbling glass). He takes a swig, immediately declares that he's going to get his rocks off with a nearby prostitute, then collapses unconscious.
- Legends of Tomorrow. Sara Lance brags that many men have tried to get into her pants this way, but she always drinks them under the table. Mick Rory promptly challenges her to a Drinking Contest and loses.
- Interview with the Vampire (2022): Because Louis de Pointe du Lac was a Closet Gay when he was mortal, he could only overcome his internalized homophobia by getting drunk before having sex with men (he refers to this as "floating-on-a-sea-of-vodka type encounters").
Music
- The Flanders and Swann song "Madeira, M'Dear" is about a sly old man who attempts to get a young maiden drunk to sleep with him.
Unaware of the wiles of the snake in the grass,
Of the fate of the maiden who topes,
She lowered her standards by raising her glass,
Her courage, her eyes, and his hopes. - A gender reversed version of this is in KISS' "Cold Gin."
- Donna's drinking in order to disinhibit herself in "Horizontal Bop" by Bob Seger:
And Donna's gettin' loose
They're passin' round the bottle
And they're getting good and juiced - The female character in "Hey Bobby" by K.T. Oslin suggests that she and Bobby smoke pot and then have sex:
- "Drinkin' and Druggin' and Watchin' T.V." by Bobby Bare:
So you bring the chemicals, I bring the wine
I fiddle with yours and you diddle with mine
Then drunked and drugged we fall on our backs
Naturally performing unnatural acts- Also, "Quaaludes Again".
- Also, "Quaaludes Again"
- The Cindy Margolis song "Sexy Soda Pop" is about the joys of snorting cocaine before having sex.
- The Jimmy Buffett song "Why Don't We Get Drunk":
Why don't we get drunk and screw
I just bought a waterbed filled up for me and you
They say you're a snuff queen, honey, I don't think that's true
So why don't we get drunk and screw - Implied in Joe Nichols' "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off".
- "Weed Instead Of Roses" by Ashley Monroe.
- Cheryl Ladd sings about how smoking pot makes her horny (judging from both her lustful cooing and dance moves) when she performs this cover of the pro-pot Beatles song "Got To Get You Into My Life".
- In "Cindy C.", Prince is trying to get Cindy Crawford drunk so she'll sleep with him.
- Done by the narrator in "No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross" by Sufjan Stevens:
Like a champion, get drunk to get laid.
- The video for Alestorm's "Drink" portrays the pirates' four Damsel in Distress victims becoming uninhibited as they're forced to join their captors in drinking, culminating in table-dancing in corsets and knickers and Girl on Girl Is Hot.
- Name-dropped by Marina Diamandis in E.V.O.L.
Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.
Every kiss you give me makes me sicker. - One verse of the Ian Dury and The Blockheads song "Billericay Dickie" has the titular character boast that he was able to bed a woman named Sandy by giving her eight glasses of brandy.
- One verse of the song "Poor Little Angeline" brings up that the squire planning to rape Angeline buys her "gin to make her sin".
Poetry
- The trope naming Ogden Nash poem 'Reflections On Icebreaking' is simply the following:
Candy
Is Dandy
But liquor
Is quicker. - "Batpoem" by Adrian Henri contains
All those damsels in distress
Half-undressed or even less
The Batpill makes 'em all say Yes
Batman - A skewering of Nash reads "Candy is dandy but sex won't rot your teeth."
Theatre
- The Bad Idea Bears in Avenue Q:
"Take her home! She's wasted!"
- In Guys and Dolls, Sky takes Sarah to Havana and gets her drunk. Since Sarah is a missionary who gives sermons on drunkenness, Sky needs to use a little finesse:
Sarah: Dulce de Leche... What's in it, besides milk?
Sky: Oh, sugar, and—sort of native flavoring.
Sarah: What's the name of the flavoring?
Sky: Bacardi.
Sarah: It's very good. I think I'll have another one.
(several drinks later)
Sarah: Doesn't Bacardi have alcohol in it?
Sky: Only enough to act as a preservative. - In La Ronde, the married gentleman seduces the young girl with wine. There may be something else in there too.
- Many productions of Les Misérables have Fantine swallow some booze before she goes with her first john.
Video Games
- In Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, as Larry Loveage, your overall goal is to score with as many women on the college campus as possible. With several girls, especially Luba, this is done by getting them drunk via one or more minigames. However, it notably fails to work each time, because Larry is a Casanova Wannabe and has no luck whatsoever.
- A Dance with Rogues requires your character to be at least a little drunk to get into bed with Pia. Then again, the entire scene was staged for your "benefit"...
- In The Sims and its sequels, you can give a drink to a Sim your Sim is interested in. Said drink makes it more likely the target will accept certain social interactions that would be rejected sober. Giving more drinks increases receptiveness.
- In the Mass Effect 3 Citadel DLC Shepard can resort to this to romance Vega.
- In the Story mode of BlazBlue: Chronophantasma, Kagura offers Noel a trip to his room with a brief mention of alcohol. Whether the audience thinks this trope or not, Makoto connects the implications and punches him out before he gets an answer.
- In HuniePop, alcohol makes the girls you date get more friendly towards you, which results in more Hunie Points when you get questions right and more Affection Points when you play the Match Three dating game.
- Stardew Valley update 1.1 added Shane to the possible love interests. Buying Shane beer at the bar is one of the fastest ways to get a partner for the first Flower Dance. Shane's storyline is about how his alcoholism is ruining his life. Oops.
- In Brave Soul, Rudy tries to get Alicia drunk - not exactly to get into bed with her, but to see her naked somehow (and check whether she has the birthmark like the girl in his dreams). It backfires, because, it turns out, Alicia's alcohol tolerance is unbelievably high - much higher than Rudy's.
- In Elona, you can ask any NPC with the "drunk" status effect to have sex with you, which they'll always accept. You'll gain a bit of gold and some experience points for your Charisma stat, but also lose a point of Karma and some Sanity.
Visual Novels
- In Tick! Tack! if you choose to get up instead of futilely attempting to sleep, Rin stumbles across Ai in the middle of quietly Drowning Her Sorrows. Since she's slightly drunk and attempting to let go of her fiancee, she ends up kissing Rin. Following this path eventually leads to a Relationship Upgrade of sorts.
Web Animation
- hbi2k's running gag of "Barry White and jello shots".
- Manga Soprano: Asako gets Alto blackout drunk at the barbecue place they went to brainwash him into dumping Kanade.
- MoniRobo:In "The one piece of information that changed all the wrong doings in my workplace…" [sic], it's eventually revealed that the reason Ms. Yabami and her feminist group ruled the office with an iron fist was because she took a hammered Executive Yakamashi (and it's implied she was the one who got him that drunk in the first place) and slept with him before taking photos of the deed to use as blackmail.
- Yuri tried to get Momoko drunk in Wedding Peach Abridged.
- Ultra Fast Pony. In "Pirate Shipping", the cutie mark crusaders want Cheerilee and Big Mac to hook up. To this end, they brew a "love potion" which turns out to just be alcohol. After a single drink, Cheerilee and Big Mac fall in love, get married, and consummate their union (all night long) before regaining sobriety.
Webcomics
- In Bob and George, the Author, drunk, sets out in search of a female.
- In 8-Bit Theater, Black Mage attempts to further loosen-up the already confused White Mage with liquor. He ends up having to settle for paint thinner. The Black Comedy that might have ensued is only barely avoided by White Mage's Heel–Face Turn.
- June pretty much uses this method to take advantage of Pembroke in Femmegasm
- A recurring incident in Girls with Slingshots is Hazel and Jamie getting wasted. Naturally, at one point it ends with Hazel seducing the bouncer, and Jamie waking up in bed with the (female) bartender. This leads into the storyline of Jamie exploring her possible bisexuality.
- In Groovy, Kinda, when she's closest to being sober (a relative term), Edison Lighthouse calls to mind a 1950s television housewife. As her day and her drinking progress, she begins to lose both her buttons and her inhibitions.
- Ménage à 3 periodically depicts the inhibition-reducing effects of alcohol, though characters don’t usually set out to get each other drunk for purposes of seduction:
- Zii gets Erik and Adrien into bed for a threesome after a night's mutual drowning of sorrows over DiDi. She probably didn’t plan it, but Zii is highly opportunistic.
- Sonya sets out to get Erik drunk for seduction purposes (actually so she can break him up with Zii). But he proves to have a much higher tolerance for alcohol than her, so that goes the way of many of Sonya's bright ideas.
- However, later that evening, Sonya and Zii collide while both are drunk. Zii initially tries to refuse Sonya's attempts at seduction (not for the first time), but then Sonya suggests that Zii breaks up with Erik by text, accepts Sonya's offer, then makes up with Erik in the morning. Zii is drunk enough to think that this is a good idea. Again, Sonya didn’t get Zii drunk, but she was quick to exploit the opportunity.
- It is later revealed in an extended flashback that Gary, while on a private jet to Europe with Senna and suffering from extreme nervousness (this being his first-ever flight), accepted her suggestion that he have a drink or three. (He didn't pay attention to what he was drinking, she didn't pay attention to his requests for something non-alcoholic.) By the end of the flight, Gary had joined the Mile-High Club, which might well not have happened had he been sober, given his nervousness about Senna's gender status. Senna probably just assumed that this was her innate sex appeal at work, though.
- Out There: In a slight tweaking of the trope, Rod gets falling-down drunk while attempting to seduce Miriam, who is spending a rare evening abstaining from alcohol. Miriam doesn't want Rod to attempt to drive in his condition, so she insists he come home with her. Not wanting to be tempted, she gives him her bed while she sleeps with Sherry. It is not until the morning, when both Miriam and Rod are completely sober, that she succumbs to his advances.
- May have caused a Broken Base for Sailor Sun when the much-debated origin of the gender-bent heroine's Kid from the Future was finally revealed as "Got drunk, woke up pregnant".
- Chydossa tricks Graham into getting completely trashed in Wizard School with the line: "My God. I get so horny when a man has money and I drink lots of alcohol." (Bear in mind, she didn't exactly have to force him...)
- Played for Laughs in L's Empire. Pix's birth was a result of his parents getting drunk on lint blood (which was previously established to be alcoholic). This was used less as an excuse to get them hooked up and more as a Hand Wave as to why they can't explain how a dark god and a woman in an artificial 2D body had sex.
- Sticky Dilly Buns: Booze leads Jerzy to bad decisions here. He'd been fending Angel off for a long time before this. However, it doesn’t seem that Angel deliberately got him drunk for the purpose, so this is a borderline case.
- Meanwhile in Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, Kria Soulstealer wants to get herself drunk enough to flirt with a good-looking Undead without it being too weird.
Web Original
- The Nostalgia Chick was once far too happy about Todd in the Shadows getting himself wasted (i.e there was more chance of sleeping with him) on a date that she'd forced him to take her on.
- Played with in Campaign 1 of Critical Role. The night before fighting the ancient red dragon Thordak, Percy shows up to Vex's room with a bag containing several bottles of alcohol, but he brought them to share, as this was the culmination of them having revealing their mutual feelings to each other. The supertrope is even referenced, as one of the drinks is simply called "Courage" (and is the one they intentionally start with).
Western Animation
- Quagmire of Family Guy is always trying to get the girls he meets drunk, though in general that also involves other date rape drugs. His favourite bar serves roofie coladas specifically for him.
- Futurama: It's implied that Zapp Brannigan intended to do this to Leela when he was trying to seduce her during his first appearance, though she poured out the champagne in a pot. He succeeds in sleeping with her though after he invokes her sympathy and she has sex with him out of pity.
- Phil from Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law was in the court isle during the episode "Death By Chocolate", in which charges are pressed against Boo Boo Bear. He says to a bunch of monks, "You know what I always say. Gandhi is dandy, but liquor is quicker. Ha ha HA! ...Quicker." The monks then begin to ponder on the subject.
- On Clone High USA, Abe and Gandhi want to provide the beer for a party to loosen up Cleopatra. But, because they are underage, they are only able to get nonalcoholic near beer and lie to everyone.
- Archer
- Dr. Krieger often cheerfully drugs people for various unsavory reasons, sex and dating among them.
Pam: And that's the reason I never have sex with my coworkers. That, and...nobody lets me.Krieger: I've had good results with ether.
- In a later episode, he has this to add:
Cheryl: Trust me, you can't control a person's heart.
Krieger: You can with a little something I like to call a deep cycle marine battery. [Beat] Or LSD.
Cheryl: IS THAT WHAT YOU'VE BEEN GIVING ME?!
Krieger: Yes? Point is, emotions like love don't come from the heart, they come from—
Archer: (Gasps) The brain!
Krieger: Yeah. [Beat] Or LSD.
- Dr. Krieger often cheerfully drugs people for various unsavory reasons, sex and dating among them.
- Somewhat subverted in South Park. The boys try to mate Cartman's pet pig with Kyle's pet elephant (long story). They initially try by just getting them drunk. While the animals do end up getting pretty drunk, nothing seems to be happening. Chef explains to them that it isn't enough, and proceeds to sing to get them in the mood... with a little help from Elton John.
- The Amazing World of Gumball
Gumball: Can kids buy potions?
Carrie: What do you mean?
Gumball: You know, some kind of Love Potion that tricks you into thinking everyone is beautiful.
Carrie: That sounds more like a mistake potion, and we need a fake I.D. to buy one.
