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Drunk on Milk

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It's always Sundae at Goofy Goober's!
"Milk... It's miiiilk... Can you get tipsy from something like milk?!? Hic!"

Wallowing in misery at a bar isn't exclusive to realist and noir works, even The Pollyanna in a Sugar Bowl can drown his sorrows... Thing is, though, he does it with milk, malts, root beer, soda or odder fare. Despite the beverage being non-alcoholic and in fact being loaded with sugar and stimulants, for some reason the drink makes him act drunk and melancholy rather than hyper. In the case of aliens and other nonhumans, this would be a case of Alien Catnip, and could be the result of Bizarre Alien Biology.

A Sub-Trope of G-Rated Drug. Supertrope to Alien Catnip. Related to I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!. Compare Heartbreak and Ice Cream. Can overlap with Lactose over Liquor.

If the drinker has had a tiny amount of actual alcohol, it's Can't Hold His Liquor. If the drinker thinks that he's drinking real alcohol and getting drunk on the placebo effect, it's Fake High. Not to be confused with Frothy Mugs of Water, a type of censorship where words and imagery pertaining to alcohol are edited out.

This trope is most prevalent in children's media, as a way to get past the censors that normally wouldn't allow characters getting drunk on screen.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Ah! My Goddess: Belldandy can guzzle down hard liquor like water without even getting tipsy, but one can of soda and she's plastered. What gets a goddess drunk varies for each goddess: Belldandy's sister Urd can only get drunk off of sakĂ©.
  • Akikan!'s Najimi gets drunk off something carbonated. She also gets a lot more honest and ends up Kissing Under the Influence.
  • Invoked in a Christmas-themed title page for CLAMP School Detectives, where Akira and Nokoru appear tipsy from "carbonated champagne" without alcohol.
  • In Dagashi Kashi, Hotaru manages to get absolutely hammered on "Namaiki Beer" (lit. "Audacious Beer"), a sort of non-alcoholic squash drink that resembles beer (the name is a pun on nama biiru, Japanese for draft beer). She even passes out on the floor. Lampshaded by Kokonotsu, who questions how this is even possible.
  • Misaki in Futaba-kun Change! drinks steins of honey: not mead (fermented honey), actual beer steins of honey. This plays into her inhuman Sweet Tooth — the girl eats so many sweets that the swim team she's a member of doesn't know how to swim in normal water, since the pool water she swims in turns to sugar water.
  • Kisaragi from GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class can even get drunk on grape soda if she hasn't had sugar in a while.
  • One amusing Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex's Tachikomatic Days has a Tachikoma somehow get so "drunk" off of natural oil (the impurities have a funny effect on them) that it has an out-of-body-experience.
  • Discussed by the narrator in the Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics episode "The Town Musicians Of Bremen", where the donkey starts acting silly and walking on his hind legs due to eating strange flowers. The narrator even says that people use some kinds of flowers to make wine, which explains his giddiness.
  • In the 80s anime and manga Gu Gu Ganmo, the title character (a chicken-like alien) wreaks havoc when he gets drunk on... coffee.
  • In one episode of Hanasaku Iroha, Ohana gets completely drunk from drinking soda.
  • In The Hating Girl, a side effect of the arrow through Asumi's head is that soft drinks cause her to get drunk, so she avoids them. Fortunately, belching undoes the effects. Unfortunately for her friend Ryouji in the chapter where this first happens, the belch comes after he's reacted to her rather lewd behavior changes from the soda, leading her to think he's been acting like a pervert with her and taking days of explaining from Ryouji to calm down from.
  • In one chapter of Heaven's Lost Property, Tomoki and Sohara hilariously get drunk on soda when Ikaros lies to them. Suguta mentions that they need to take care of themselves if they can get drunk on cola.
  • In Hitomi-chan Is Shy with Strangers, Hitomi comes to school one day having gotten little sleep, so Yuu gives her a can of energy drink. Initially, it effects her like a caffeinated beverage would, making her wired and alert. As the day goes on, though, she starts interacting with Yuu in an uncharacteristically pushy and flirty manner, which more closely resembles drunkenness.
  • Sharo in Is the Order a Rabbit? has no tolerance for caffeine and becomes incredibly hyper and cheerful, basically becoming a second Cocoa, after just one cup.
  • Sure, during Kaguya-sama: Love Is War Christmas party, Iino ate as many alcohol-flavored chocolates as she could, but Onodera finishes her by giving her a bottle of water, claiming that it's alcohol.
  • In Kogepan the breads get drunk off of milk.
  • Carbonated beverages get Mermaids drunk in the manga version of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch. This happens to Lucia while trying to take care of a sick Kaito. In the anime, it's replaced with a magic MacGuffin mood changer that goes haywire.
  • Ten year old Hatchin from Michiko & Hatchin manages to get drunk from juice while at a bar with Michiko. This was lampshaded by Michiko.
    Michiko: Are you actually getting drunk off of orange juice?
  • A justified case in Monster Musume. Rachnera is an arachne (spider-girl). Spiders get drunk on caffeine. Hilarity Ensues when Kimihito brings her a black coffee from Stertbooks.
  • Yui Takamura has a case of this in Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse, when after witnessing her love interest Yuuya prove to be quite the Chick Magnet, she drowns her sorrows in orange juice. Lampshaded by the bartender Natalie pointing out how impressive it is that she's gotten drunk off orange juice.
  • My Bride is a Mermaid: Akeno is tasked with giving Sun a special mermaid drink that would cause her to show her true feelings towards her situation with Nagasumi. Thanks to Maguro, Agitaro & Furiyo however, almost everyone, minus Nagasumi, takes a bottle and end up revealing their biggest desires in a plastered state as a result.
  • In Naruto (1997), Naruto manages to get drunk off of root beer.
  • Panyo Panyo Di Gi Charat has "Inspector Holic" who gets drunk on orange juice!
  • PokĂ©mon: The Series:
    • Team Rocket have been shown to get drunk on both orange juice and water. Yes, they were drunk in the original Japanese versions as well.
    • A Running Gag in PokĂ©mon the Series: Sun & Moon involves characters drinking Pinap Berry juice at a kid-friendly bar. In episode 39, an Officer Jenny and a Nurse Joy get drunk on berry juice, complete with Blush Stickers and walking funny. Mallow also acts like an angry drunk while venting to "bartender" Oranguru and later on Meowth also goes to the bar to drink after his teammates start focusing more on an Alolan Meowth.
  • Sailor Moon:
    • It happens in the Super S season, when Naru is manipulated into dating Tiger's Eye for three months after he claimed he was going to die, her boyfriend Umino goes on a drinking binge with fifteen WcDonald's milkshakes and acts drunken; Chibiusa is grossed out and comments on this, even pointing out that sake is the traditional beverage for Drowning My Sorrows.
    • In the S season, there's an episode where Usagi accidentally gets drunk while trying to learn English. However, in the Cloverway dub, they switched that for "having too much juice."
  • In So I'm a Spider, So What?, Shiraori ends up black-out drunk after a few swigs of coffee, which Sophia notes isn't unusual for spiders.
  • Spy X Family: Becky, a six-year-old with a Precocious Crush on Loid tries to claim that she's drunk as a "seduction" move because she's seen women in romance movies say that they're intoxicated just before the male protagonist falls for them. The slightly annoyed Loid notes that all she's been drinking is tea (and she's completely sober, just acting drunk because she thinks that's how a woman wins a man).
  • Vamp from Tentai Senshi Sunred drowns his sorrows in Coke. He's a mean 'drunk', too.
  • To Love Ru:
    • Plant Alien Celine gets drunk from drinking cola and when is drunk releases her pollen that instantly makes whoever smells it to be temporarily fall in love with Rito. Or in many cases, given the series, act more openly and aggressively on the love they already feel.
    • Haruna gets drunk from Devilukian cola Nana gives her. Rito got drunk from tea made from the same herbs.
  • Lum and Ten from Urusei Yatsura wreak havoc when they get extremely drunk on umeboshi (pickled plums, usually regarded as a hangover cure). It turns out that alcohol actually cures them of being drunk.
  • Yuki Yuna is a Hero: Fu and her sister Itsuki start acting drunk, complete with a Drunken Glow, after drinking a cup of non-alcoholic amazake on New Years.

    Asian Animation 
  • In Episode 47 of Jing Ma Zhan Shi, Meike somehow manages to get totally wasted on juice, complete with the host walking right behind her with his arms out as she stumbles merrily, her drunk dialing a total stranger (thinking that she's calling her mother) and not remembering anything that happened last night.
  • Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Wolffy and his uncle got drunk on "fruit juice" once. Strangely enough, since everyone usually gets drunk on actual liquor.

    Comic Books 
  • Asterix: Obelix sometimes drinks alcohol (Asterix and the Laurel Wreath, for example), but when he and Asterix disagree over the newcomer to the village who's opened a tavern in Asterix and Caesar's Gift, he heads straight to the tavern and orders a goat's milk. Cacofonix comments "If he's drowning his sorrows in goat's milk, he must have had a fight with Asterix." This is because Obelix is strong enough to throw elephants further than Romans can throw javelins, as well as a terrible drunk, and he probably doesn't want to hurt his friends on a drunken stupor, so he's mostly a teetotaler by choice.
  • Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire: Inverted in the second story:
    Woman from Galactic Temperance society: Surely you don't think I'll be letting you drink alcohol.
    Buck: It's milk.
    Woman from Galactic Temperance society: What do you take me... (sips from glass) Why, it is milk. (eyes dilate and she collapses)
    Buck: Vrang Beast milk?
    Al: Vrang Beast milk.
    Buck: 150 proof?
    Al: Only type I serve!
  • The protagonist of Alterna Comics' The Deadbeat is unaffected by alcohol but gets drunk on chocolate milk. His daughter getting aggressive after drinking it and punching her kindergarten teacher through a wall is the first sign she inherited his powers.
  • Disney Ducks Comic Universe: In Carl Barks' ten-page story "Bubbleweight Champion", Donald Duck is shown pretty depressed and physically weak thanks to excessive consum of "Gurgleurp", which is said to be a soda. He later has to go up against Boltan True, a fanatic of healthy products. Thanks to a coincidence True would drink Donald's Gurgleurp which leads to Donald easily defeating his weakend opponent. In the end, Donald and the nephews visit a bar to drink some Gurgelurp together. A lot of the subtext of the story seems to draw Donald's behaviour as that of an alcoholic.
  • Marvel Comics:
    • The Avengers: A non-Drowning My Sorrows Lampshading in one issue where Beast, Wonder Man, Scarlet Witch and Vision are having a night out together, and Beast declares they're going to get "good and sauced". When the waitress points out they've ordered virgin pina coladas, Hank replies "But we've got great imaginations!"
    • Iron Man: In #178, the opening story shows a kid cosplaying as the eponymous hero getting expelled from a group of kids pretending to be the Avengers, and subsequently drowning his sorrows on soda. It's a Breather Episode for the depressing "Tragic Tony Stark" storyline that was going on at the time. You can read it here.
    • Marvel 2099: In X-Nation 2099, the first issue plays this straight: the characters go to a milk bar, where patches of diodes cause milk to act as a Fantastic Drug.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW):
    • In one story, Rainbow Dash explains that her memory of the wedding from "A Canterlot Wedding" is hazy after having Pinkie's Tutti-Frutti Sherbet Sugar Punch. (It contains seven parts of sugar for every part of fruit!)
    • "All in Moderation", as part of the extended sugar-as-alcohol parody of Prohibition, sees Rainbow Dash get herself completely drunk, complete with bloodshot eyes, from drinking milkshakes.
  • PatoruzĂş: In one of the early, pre-Isodoro strips, PatoruzĂş goes with Julian de Monte Pio for a night in town, and passes out after only two glasses of champagne. Worse, Julian then reveals that the "champagne" was just apple soda.
  • In The Professor's Daughter, Imhotep IV gets giddy after a cup of tea. He blames it on his physical body not being used to any sort of stimulation.
    Imhotep: My corporeal shell has been deprived of everything for so long that the slightest stimulant inebriates it.
  • In Mark Millar's first comic, Saviour. A confused barman can't understand why an undercover Jesus can get drunk on tap water.

    Comic Strips 
  • Dennis in Beau Peep not only gets drunk by eating wine gums (a type of gumdrop which, despite the name, contains no wine), he gets a hangover afterwards.
  • In Over the Hedge, Verne once got drunk after one flaming virgin banana bonzai. Complete with blackout and hangover. A later arc had him getting high off catnip (despite being a turtle).
  • Peanuts:
    • Charlie Brown drowns his sorrows in haircuts. Subverted though, in that it's not so much haircuts generically as the fact that his father is a barber. When he's depressed, he goes to his dad's barber shop and, no matter how busy his dad is, he's always happy to see Charlie, and that cheers Charlie up. He's used this to shut up people (usually Violet) who are doing the "My dad is better than your dad at X" thing.
    • When Snoopy is the World War I flying ace, he sometimes drowns his sorrows in root beer.

    Fan Works 
  • Atlas in Rise of Empress Midnight gets drunk off of cake.
  • My Friend Is An Alien (derived from the Niklas and Friends universe): Due to Bizarre Alien Biology, Jahv becomes drunk on orange juice in the "Party" episode.
  • In Button's Adventures: Bar Buddies, Button Mash is drunk on apple juice.
  • In this Undertale fan comic, Sans gets drunk on ketchup.
  • RandomVerse Spider-Man gets plastered on milkshakes. The first time it's done straight, but ever since then the Hulk and Iron Man have been drugging his milkshakes to get wacky movie-trailer related hallucinations for their own entertainment.
  • Intelligence Factor says that Amped Toxtricity like to drink stagnant water because they're resilient to toxins, and it has an effect on them that's similar to getting drunk.
  • In the The Great Mouse Detective fic "Theobromine", Basil's equivalent to Holmes's cocaine is chocolate, with Dawson similarly horrified by its effects. (Chocoholic mice are Truth in Television, although it's not known if it's toxic.)
  • In the Fairly OddParents fanfiction, Origin of the Pixies, magical beings are subject to getting drunk on sugary substances like candy and soda rather than alcohol.
  • Dahlia Hawthorne Escaps From Pirson: In one chapter, Alita traps Kristoph under a pile of sand, and then pours water into the pile to try and drown him. He proceeds to drink all the water, and get drunk, which makes him a Drunken Master with a "pirate sword", and makes him able to ignore the pain from the beating that he took beforehand. It does however, also cause Single Malt Vision when Alita uses Double Team, causing him to see 200 duplicates instead of the actual 10.
  • In the Battle Tendency part of JoJo New Universe, the reason that Jackie Applaine got her nickname of Applejack is that she enjoys drinking apple juice up to the point of getting intoxicated.
  • Taken to its logical extreme in the Codename: Kids Next Door fic Soda and Sugar, which goes with the interpretation that many operatives use sweets similarly to alcohol or drugs, and as a result they often get addicted. Numbuh 5 binges on dark chocolate when she wants to drown her sorrows.
  • The Merry Go Round Broke Down depicts Hogarth from The Iron Giant as a has-been from a bomb of a movie. Unfortunately, he's stuck eternally a child so he can't even drown his sorrows in alcohol. He instead drinks a lot of coffee.
  • The MLP Loops:
    • In Loop 69.5, changelings can get drunk from feeding on love. Judging by Twilight's reaction, this is not the first time this has happened.
    • Loop 195.4 mentions that Prince Blueblood, taking part in a non-alcoholic drinking contest, got plastered on three cans of diet soda.
  • In the one-shot Final Toll, this is invoked. Cheerful Child Romani drinks seven bottles of Chateau Romani (a type of milk drink that is implied to be alcoholic), which is a lot even for adults but nevermind for someone who is twelve at oldest. Her older sister Cremia lets her do this specifically so that Romani will be knocked out until the next morning. Or, at least, knocked out when the moon crashes into their town.
  • Soda at 70 Proof starts with Rachel and Fanny going down to a empty "bar" on Halloween night to drink sodas. It's shown that Rachel is a bit too fond of soda.
  • The Audience: After a thousand years of sensory deprivation on the moon, Luna is getting drunk on life, with any kind of pleasant sight, sound, taste, smell or touch triggering an intoxication-like effect. Celestia's initially worried about her, wondering if her behavior is the result of a curse or brain tumor, until Arthur figures out the real cause and reassures her.
  • In Half Past Adventure, Helix runs a bar that seems to only serve soda, although it's treated like an ordinary bar.
  • The title of the Harvest Moon oneshot Cream Soda comes from a childhood memory Ellen has of drinking her favorite cream soda while her dad drank alcohol. Her mother got mad at that. Ever since that day, Ellen can't drink cream soda without feeling sick.
  • The Bridge: Adagio Dazzle mistakes root beer for the real thing and gets drunk on it.
  • Cat Tales: In Knight Before Christmas, at Harley Quinn's annual Rogue's Christmas party, Roxy Rocket manages to get drunk off the jello shots in the punch and ends up in the coatroom being intimate with Penguin. She is not happy when she snaps out of it and realizes what she's been up to.

    Films — Animation 
  • In Toy Story, when Buzz is having his Heroic BSoD at Sid's house, he somehow manages to get drunk on imaginary tea.
  • The Boxtrolls does this almost literally; cheese makes Mr. Snatcher act like a surly drunk (complete with heavily slurred speech, impaired movements, hallucinations and a nasty mood), on top of causing him to swell grotesquely and break out in a rash. Dude must be lactose-intolerant...
  • Big Hero 6: When Robot Buddy Baymax's batteries are low, his body starts deflating and he moves, walks, and talks as if he's incredibly drunk.
    Baymax: [stroking a cat] Haaaaairy baby!
  • Throughout Madagascar, Phil the chimp can be seen drinking copious amounts of root beer, and he spends most of his screentime seemingly hungover or drunk as a result.
  • A literal version occurs in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish; While recounting how he had lost his last eight lives, Puss remembers an incident on St. Patrick's Day, where, under the influence of milk, he stumbled off the edge of a tall building to prove cats always land on their feet.
  • The page image is from The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, where SpongeBob goes to drown his sorrows in ice-cream with Patrick at the Goofy Goober after getting passed up for a promotion at the Krusty Krab. He eventually blacks out while dancing with the mascot and wakes up the next morning with a bad hangover (complete with heavily slurred speech and a five-o-clock shadow).
    "WAAAAAAAIIIITEEEEERRRRRR!!!!"
    • Binging with Babish recreated the Triple Gooberberry Sunrise from this scene and proposed a defictionalization in the form of whiskey churned into the ice cream. One three-scoop sundae contains half a shot of liquor; given the quantities in which SpongeBob and Patrick ate them and assuming a low alcohol tolerance, inebriation isn't exactly far-fetched.
  • A Bug's Life: A male mosquito at the "tough bug" bar, who already appears to be slightly tipsy, orders a "Bloody Mary, O+" — a drop of blood. He downs the whole thing in one suck and passes out.
  • In Frozen, chocolate seems to play this role. In "For the First Time in Forever", Anna mentions that she'll want to eat chocolate when she's nervous about seeing a handsome guy. Later, in "Love is an Open Door", when Hans tells Anna he has feelings for her, he says "maybe it's the party talking, or the chocolate fondue."
  • In Shrek 2, Puss in Boots orders a shot glass of milk at the Poison Apple bar to drown his sorrows, even asking the bartender to leave the bottle with him.

    Puss: [downs a shot of milk] I hate Mondays...

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In the Prohibition-era Laurel and Hardy short Blotto the boys want to go to the Rainbow Club and get drunk off a bottle of liquor stolen from Stan's wife. They get absolutely sloshed and laugh in the face of Mrs Laurel, who calmly tells them that she had swapped the liquor for cold tea.
  • The Old West clichĂ© of the gunslinger going into the bar and ordering sasparilla/sarsparilla. (Also, possibly, Getting Crap Past the Radar, since sasparilla was used to treat syphilis.)
  • In Miss Congeniality, we see the heroine ordering a pint of something at the bar. The bartender asks whether she really wants that much. It then turns out to be a pint of ice cream. She even refers to it as getting "chip-faced" (it has chocolate chips).
  • In Death to Smoochy, Sheldon laments the lack of control over his show by sitting at the bar, a bit drunkenly talking about old kid show hosts... while drinking orange juice.
  • In Alien Nation, the Newcomers get drunk off spoiled milk. The lactic acid in the fermented milk is produced by anaerobic digestion— just like the production of alcohol. Conversely, grain alcohol has no intoxicating effect on them whatsoever.
  • In A Clockwork Orange, Alex and his violent droogs are first seen with glasses of milk in their hands at their favorite hangout, the Korova Milk Bar. Alex's narration is quick to point out, however, that the milk is laced with various psychotropic drugs to "sharpen you up for a bit of the old ultraviolence."
  • A Deleted Scene from the 2002 live-action Scooby-Doo film had Velma do a song and dance number after drinking a non-alcoholic drink.
  • In one scene from Singin' in the Rain, Don, Kathy and Cosmo seem exceptionally giddy after drinking milk together into the wee hours of the morning (The Hays Code prohibited the use of alcohol onscreen).
  • In Troop Beverly Hills there's a scene in which Phyllis (Shelley Long) is in bed depressed over her impending divorce and drowning her sorrows in bottled Evian spring water, with empty bottles all around her. Many of the "drunk scene" cliches apply, including her neighbor friend telling her she's had enough and Phyllis ordering her to bring her another.
  • In a variant from Back to the Future Part III, Doc Brown gets rather maudlin and detached from his surroundings by sitting at the bar holding a shot of whiskey, not drinking or even sniffing it. When he finally chugs it, it knocks him out cold.
  • After defeating Kim in Kim Possible, Drakken celebrates by drinking a gallon of milk. The next scene shows him waking up "drunk", with several bottles of milk on top of him.
  • Played with in Spider-Man: Far From Home when Beck asks Parker how many lemonades he's had when Parker tries to give him E.D.I.T.H.
  • Space Jam: A New Legacy has Bugs briefly getting drunk on carrot juice.

    Literature 
  • The Further Adventures of Dr A.A.A. McGurk M.D. by Osmar White, opens with a depessed Dr McGurk drowing his sorrows in malted milk at the Explorer's Club. When he comes up with the idea of seeking the Pole of Impossibility (somewhere in the Antarctic) by camel, the other explorers comment "You've put too much malt in your milk."
  • Discworld:
    • In Men at Arms, the Watch all Need A Freaking Drink after finding the first victim of the gonne. Three of the six have beer, Nobby has an Umbrella Drink, Detritus has a molten sulphur (because the heat affects troll brains)...and Carrot has a glass of milk. This is actually an aversion. Carrot drinks milk because he's The Teetotaler; he doesn't want to be drunk.
    • In The Truth Mr Tulip appears to be trying to get a drug habit but his lack of understanding of chemistry means that he ends up mainlining things like chalk. Mr Pin is trying to explain to him that all drugs are chemicals, but all chemicals are not drugs, but does not seem to get his message through.
  • Harry Potter: Winky the House Elf gets drunk on butterbeer, a beverage usually drunk by underaged wizards without any intoxicating effect, thus having little to no alcohol content. However, house elves are very small individuals (two-three feet tall humanoids) so if the drink really is alcoholic by even a little bit, that would explain how it renders a house elf drunk while doing nothing to teenagers.
    • The books never actually clarify this one way or the other. Butterbeer could be like root beer, or it could be closer to cider. England has different cultural mores in regards to alcohol and drinking at a young age than America so whether this is a case of this trope or Can't Hold His Liquor is left as an exercise for the reader.
  • In A Song of Ice and Fire, the Dothraki use fermented horse milk to get drunk. Likely a reference to Real Life Kumis, fermented horse milk that is (very mildly) alcoholic.
  • Used by Dolphus Raymond the town drunk in To Kill a Mockingbird. He's often seen in public, tipsy and swigging from a bottle in a paper bag. The young protagonists eventually discover that it's actually a bottle of Coca-Cola, and he just pretends to be a drunkard so the bigoted townspeople won't harass his family over his marriage to a black woman.
  • In Gordon Korman's Beware the Fish the main characters slipped some of the school genius' experimental cold cure into the coach's sports drink, unaware that the combination would make him act as if he were drunk. After he wandered over to the girls' school across the road and shocked the headmistress into fainting, they and the genius managed to keep him from further wanderings by playing poker for matchsticks.
  • Dragons in Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher are rendered to a somewhat drunken and euphoric state when they are given milk. It makes them very docile and easy to manage. The protagonist does this when his dragon starts getting too large to manage normally.
  • The Demigod Diaries: The Maenads are getting drunk off of eggnog, since their parents will not let them have wine yet.
  • Acheron, in the The Dark Hunters novels cannot handle Sprite. He avoids all food and drink in general, but when he tries Tory's Sprite, he becomes intoxicated, and builds a tiny replica of Atlantis, and shrinks Tory and himself down to wander it. Once he passes out, they return to normal size.

    Live-Action TV 
  • A pub sketch from A Bit of Fry and Laurie has Hugh go off on a long series of inebriated complaints about his wife after having several glasses of ribena (blackcurrant cordial).
  • In Babylon 5, Vir can be seen drowning his sorrows with a Shirley Temple, a nonalcoholic children's cocktail. Though, in that scene he doesn't seem to realize that there's no alcohol in it. However his boss Londo, and several other Centauri are pretty heavy drinkers, Vir just Can't Hold His Liquor until season 4 when he gets massively drunk.
  • In one episode of Bottom, Richie needs a quick shot of booze to settle his nerves. Eddie gives him a shot of Tizer (a soft drink), which does the trick anyway.
  • The Dukes of Hazzard: When Rosco was fired for repeated mistakes and replaced by "Robot P. Coltrane" (in the Season 7 episode of that name), he is so depressed that he drowns his sorrows at the Boar's Nest ... in buttermilk.
  • Eureka has this exchange between Zoe and Vincent, which is then followed by a standard sympathetic-bartender conversation. She's drinking milkshakes.
    Zoe: Hit me.
    Vincent: I'm cuttin' you off. I think three is your limit.
    Zoe: I don't pay you to think, I pay you to pour.
  • In an episode of The Golden Girls, Dorothy is sitting in a hotel bar, working up the courage to crash her ex-husband's wedding to his new wife and tell his she still has feelings for him (she doesn't go through with it.) While sitting there, she asks the bartender to "give her another." At first he resists, but when Dorothy insists, he simply says to not blame him when she gets sick, and... puts another bowl of popcorn in front of her.
  • Another example of a placebo effect in Grounded for Life; during St. Patrick's Day the Red Butte Pub has ran out of alcohol. Eddie tries to remedy the situation by serving non-alcoholic beer and convinces people they're drunk which works for a while until the customers overhear it's non-alcoholic. One of Brad's friends is convinced he's drunk he starts hitting on Lily.
    • One episode revolves around what looks to be a stash of pot but is actually oregano that Eddie keeps as a decoy. Eddie later confronts Lily about taking it and the show cuts away to Lily and her friends acting high and craving pizza.
  • Played with on the series finale of The IT Crowd, in which milk is used as prop wine.
  • It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Charlie frequently tries to get intoxicated with various substances, but doesn't seem to realize Elmer's School Glue won't get him high.
  • Moone Boy: Stressed by his parents fighting at home, Padraic takes to drinking undiluted Ribena (a British blackcurrant soft drink) straight from the bottle.
  • In one Monk novel, Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse, Monk gets himself into a hangover of Sierra Springs water.
  • Mork of Mork & Mindy gets drunk quickly on ginger ale. Most likely another Bizarre Alien Biology case.
  • In an episode of Murphy Brown, Miles gets "drunk" off of punch that he assumes must be full of alcohol. There wasn't a drop of anything remotely alcoholic in that punch.
  • In the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode Gamera vs. Zigra Joel and the bots throw a root beer kegger—and get just as drunk as they would drinking real alcohol.
  • NCIS has a Lampshaded example late in Season 9, as Jimmy Palmer appears to be getting drunk off some shots, but...
    Tony: I thought you said this was apple juice.
    Dorneget: I even watered it down!
  • In an episode of Night Court, when Christine and Roz go to a bar, Christine drinks Roz' signature drink. Typically, Christine makes an ass of herself. Later when she asks "What was in those things?" it turns out it was pineapple juice and soda water.
  • One episode of Reno 911! has Clementine get drunk from drinking what is revealed to be non-alcoholic beer at Kimball's Christian singles mixer.
  • Saturday Night Live: The first episode after the 2012 election (hosted by Anne Hathaway) showed Mitt Romney (Jason Sudeikis) actually sneaking milk on the balcony as the news breaks that he has lost the election. Bonus points because Romney is Mormon. And the pop-top sound effect when he opens up the carton.
  • Sesame Street: Cookie Monster, in an interview with Stephen Colbert as part of his "A Cookie is a Sometime Food" campaign, admits to having had "crazy times" in the 70s and 80s, comparing himself to Robert Downey Jr.
  • Ta'Ra of the short-lived Something is Out There got drunk on caffeine due to Bizarre Alien Biology.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: In "Timeless", Seven of Nine gets drunk on synthehol because her Borg implants were not designed to process it. The point of synthehol is it's a synthetic alcohol substitute meant to mimic the flavor of alcohol without getting you drunk, and it gives you the pleasant side of being intoxicated (buzz, relaxation, "light" feeling) without the negative sides (hangovers, lowered inhibitions, toxicity)
  • In Episode 2 of WandaVision, Vision accidentally swallows chewing gum, which literally gums up his inner workings and makes him act drunk.
  • Ultraman: Alien Fanton are a peaceful alien species known to be big eaters. Due to their Bizarre Alien Biology, they can get drunk on yogurt.
  • Young Sheldon: In "A Baby Tooth and the Egyptian God of Knowledge", Sheldon tries to recreate his dream of learning the Unified Field Theory by taking the strongest drug he can think of — chamomile tea. He takes a super concentrated dose of it and gets a hallucination that his scientist posters come to life (along with Missy's Cyndi Lauper poster).

    Music 
  • Simon from Prozzak drowns his sorrows in milkshakes.
  • The cats in the video for the Caravan Palace song Lone Digger appear to be taking straight shots of milk.

    Theater 
  • Bye Bye Birdie:
    • After underage Hugo Peabody fails to get served at Maude's, he staggers on the next scene, seemingly drunk.
      Mrs. MacAfee: Hugo, what have you been drinking?
      Hugo: Milk. But it worked!'
    • When he's trying to get served at Maude's, he uses some terminology that makes it very clear he doesn't know what he's talking about, including asking for a "rocks on the scotch, and put some rocks in it" and a "vodka malted."
  • The Book of Mormon: In the second act, Elder Price gets drunk on coffee, drowning his sorrows with it. Since Mormons aren't allowed to have beverages with caffiene, and Elder Price is The Fundamentalist of the faith group he belongs to, it's a sign that he's having a nervous breakdown.
  • The SpongeBob Musical: Mrs. Puff decides to live it up in the remaining hours before the eruption of Mt. Humongous destroys Bikini Bottom, and proceeds to drown her sorrows in "kelp juice".

    Manhua 
  • Parodied in Old Master Q. One of the comic strips sees Master Q staggering out a bar, empty beer bottle in hand. Then follows Chin, similarly drunk, holding a vodka bottle. Finally, Big Potato follows suit, as drunk as the others while holding... a 48oz Coca-Cola bottle.

    Video Games 
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: Gorman does this and lampshades it, as seen in the quote up top. Downplayed in the Japanese version, where it's hinted that the beverage has liquor as one of its ingredients. In fact, Majora's Mask 3D takes it a step further, as you can find Gorman completely hungover in the morning of the Second Day, after a night in the Latte Milk Bar.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass: There's a milk bar on Mercay Island, where your adventure begins. Try to order something, and the bartender says Link is too young to drink there.
  • In The Night of the Rabbit there is a mouse in the Hares Family's birthday party who gets drunk on coffee.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: In one of the nighttime announcements by the Monokuma Kubs in Chapter 1, Monokid (who is a robot in the shape of a teddy bear) has gotten into alcohol-like intoxication from eating too much honey. His face is flushed red, he sounds loopy, and his speech is punctuated with hiccups. At the end of the announcement he falls asleep on the couch still clutching the honey pot, and when the Cubs make their announcement the following morning he’s still on the couch, snoring loudly.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, the Namazu get drunk off common tea, which makes it a suitable substitute alcoholic offering to the Big One as part of the Seven-Hundred and Seventy-Seven's festival. Unfortunately, it also means that attempts to learn the Xaela's tea ceremonies tend to go awry rather quickly.
  • Genshin Impact: During the "Summertime Odyssey" event, Venti buys some juice for Xinyan and Kazuha. Kazuha gets drunk off of his. Subverted as it turns out Venti got some cocktails as well.
  • Joked about in the post-final-boss content of God of War Ragnarök: Kratos encounters Durlin the dwarf, who's holding a mug while claiming he's given up drinking. When Kratos points out that he's clearly not given it up, he insists it's goat's milk. When Kratos points out that it's brown, he quickly says "It was an ugly goat."
  • Several of the protagonists of Persona 4 get drunk off of non-alcoholic beverages they get at a night club. Unusually, they were just hanging out, with no implications of drowning sorrows- they just happened to get drunk off of regular fruit drinks. It's only Yukiko, Rise and Teddie (the last of whom isn't human and could very well actually get drunk off nonalcoholic drinks) who get hammered, while everyone else is perfectly sober and wondering what happened to them. Even better, the sloshed ones don't know the drinks aren't alcoholic until after they're drunk, and the others lampshade that it's either a placebo effect or a result of "the atmosphere". This also happens in the Anime of the Game, except the main character also gets hit by the effects. Or at least pretended to (with him it's hard to tell).
  • Taken literally in Retro City Rampage, where drinking milk from the milk bar severely distorts your vision, while drinking a cup of hot coffee restores it.
  • Soda Popinski and his bottles of soda in the Wii version of Punch-Out!!. In the original NES game, it was more of a Frothy Mugs of Water scenario (with his name getting changed from Vodka Drunkenski, his name in the arcade, and just plain old booze), but Next Level Games took the soda angle and ran with it, while making it vague whether he was getting drunk or high from his drinking (the Wii game also plays his drinking for laughs by noting he trains by hauling crates full of soda, which he then proceeds to down by the ton). Either way, he retains enough of his Lightning Bruiser skills to still be a tough opponent.
  • The Sims uses juices and nectar as a substitute for alcohol. Interestingly, most of them don't actually cause drunken behavior. Drinking much from the Juice Keg however does cause clumsiness and loss of inhibition as one would expect.
  • In the American version of Skies of Arcadia the drink of choice in most taverns is loqua, which is supposed to be simply flavored juice. There are plenty of people around the world that are VERY happy with their juice. In the original Japanese, it's simply wine
  • In Bar Oasis, although very rare, it's possible to get drunk on nothing but Cinderellas and Shirley Temples.
  • The Genie in King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow gets drunk off of mint. It's one of the tells for when he's around in disguise, and one his master will berate him for.
  • Freedom Wars: There are two substances prisoners like to imbibe in; one's a beverage that can make one tipsy, and the other is a highly addictive white powder. They are not alcohol and cocaine, as neither substance exists anymore. Rather, it's salted seltzer water and sugar.
  • Citizens of Earth: The Bartender actually sells soda, not alcohol, but given how the soda works the difference might as well not exist: drinking soda will give a character a strong buff or restore a large amount of energy, and then cause debuffs a few turns later (unless you manage to win the battle before this happens, which will get you the advantages of the drink without the disadvantages). This is explained in-game as being a "sugar crash", which is a G-rated way of saying "hangover".
  • Mario Party 2: Implied to be the case when, in the Western Land board, passing by the milk bar gives you the option of inviting all players to a hootenanny (basically warping all players to the bar). After the hootenanny is done, the player who started it is sitting on the ground in a daze. The fact that they sound distressed while in a daze makes it seem more suspicious.
  • EarthBound (1994): There are some NPCs who claim to be and/or act tipsy from drinking mostly innocuous beverages like coffee and soda. They actually were drinking alcoholic beverages in the original Japanese version of the game (but the dialogue was Bowdlerized in the North American release), and if you look closely at some of them you can see that they are clearly still holding mugs of beer.
  • Shining Resonance: Said almost verbatim by Rinna, as she managed to get drunk on juice with no alcoholic content, though there's some ambiguity if she was just playing it up in order to vent her inner frustrations about the subject putting her down (that being the revelation her old childhood friend Beatrice, who was originally falsely accused of having betrayed their people and went on the run, is now working voluntarily for The Empire).
  • Bug Fables: Berry Juice seems to be the Bug equivalent of alcohol. Several characters are clearly hung over after drinking lots of it, and Aebees the border guard is seen drowning her sorrows with it.
  • The Super Famicom version of Kirby's Star Stacker contains what appears to be a very uncharacteristically adult image of Kirby and friends celebrating with some drunken revelry at a karaoke bar... except, according to the label on the bottle Kine is chugging ("ćµ·ć°´"), they're drinking salt water. Literal Frothy Mugs of Water? (Try not to think about why or how a sunfish-like creature would get drunk off a substance found in his own habitat.)
  • In Antonball Deluxe, Anton's constantly shown downing cans of soda and ice cream floats. The intro cutscene for Antonball shows him clearly tipsy as he drinks another can, to the point where he doesn't see the open manhole in front of him.

    Web Animation 
  • Homestar Runner:
    • The Strong Bad Email "personal favorites" finds Strong Bad remembering a time where he "drank a glass of soy sauce and thought [he] could fly Bubs' Concession Stand." In the same e-mail, The Cheat also gets drunk on soy sauce and tries to eat Bubs' Concession Stand.
      Strong Bad: Hang on tight, The Cheat! We're takin' this baby to the moooooon!
    • In another email, "caffeine", Strong Bad performs a science experiment of the effects of caffeine on Strong Sad. So he slips "a few heaping spoonfuls" of Sanka — instant decaf — into his little brother's orange juice, and the few tiny grams of caffeine immediately sends Strong Sad into a caffeinated, Motor Mouthed blitz.
      Strong Sad: Hey Coach Z! Hey Coach Z! Whaddaya got? Whaddaya got for me? How about that? Wanna play some soccer? Some hockeyjock? I got whatever it takes!
  • In an extrascene from Decline of Video Gaming which lampshades the creators' English accents, by having them act in a sufficiently stereotypical manner. Tom claims that they are incredibly drunk, only to be told by Dim that the wine is only Ribena. This ends poorly for Dim.
  • Button's Adventures: Button Mash gets plastered on apple juice while drunkenly having a reassuring argument with Neon Lights. Turns out Button can't hold his apple juice.
  • One Minute Fly: The fly in the first installment gets drunk after biting a coati, ticking off two items on its bucket list at once.
  • Battle for Dream Island: The Power of Two: In "The Great Goikian Bake-off", Tree is revealed to have a treehouse. When a chocolate ball is inside, he appears to be in a less sober state. However, it's worth mentioning he feels fine when only other contestants are in there.

    Webcomics 
  • A justified use of the trope in Gifts of Wandering Ice - Ash gives Elie a couple cans of soda with thirty gramms [sic] of sugar and a crazy dose of caffeine ostensibly to calm her down from the shock of meeting Bitey, but his true intention was to distract her so he could think clearly.
  • Happens with Pepsi in this VG Cats comic. Leo says it's "like, symbolic and stuff".
  • Happens on multiple occasions with orange soda in Housepets!, much to the surprise and confusion of some of the characters.
    Miles: I must say, I did not expect intoxication was possible from a can of orange soda.
  • Narbonic's Dave Davenport can get stone drunk on half a glass of vanilla Coke. (And pathos.) Helen is also seen drowning her aloneness with not one, but two Shirley Temples.
  • Robin of Shortpacked! (a sugar-powered super speedster) apparently drowns her sorrows by drinking Hi-C and getting on those 25¢ animal-or-vehicle-moves-back-and-forth-for-a-couple-of-minutes rides outside stores.
  • New Year's gets a new spin in this Life in the Analog Age comic.
  • In Questionable Content, Raven once told a story about getting drunk on eleven Shirley Temples. She is then informed that said drink is non-alcoholic.
    Raven: Really? Well, there goes my excuse for dancing topless on the coffee table and making out with some random girl, then.
  • In one Arthur, King of Time and Space strip manic-depressive teetotaller Lancelot stops at a tavern and orders a milk. "And leave the bottle."
    • In the same author's fanfic comics, lactose has the same effect on Kryptonians and Gallifreyans as alcohol does on humans, so Superman and the Doctor really can get drunk on milk.
  • Homestuck has Terezi and her dangerous reaction to Faygo soda. Her reaction to the overly-sugary soda is akin to an all-out bender, including massive hangovers.
  • White Dark Life: Caroline gets intoxicated off of coffee or other sources of high caffeine by proxy of being a drider. Devin, the other drider of the comic, however has built up a tolerance for it so as not to ruin her human disguise.
  • Vampire Girl: Somewhat averted with Levana, even though we don’t see what kind of effects blood has on her, her urges to drink blood seem rather remisicent of an alcoholic who really wants a drink.

    Web Original 
  • In The New Adventures of Captain S, the eponymous captain drowns his sorrows in milkshakes after losing his powers and failing to save videoland, complete with bartender cutting him off.
  • In the Double Toasted review of the aforementioned Big Hero 6, they parodied the "low battery" scene, with (among other things) the added implication that Baymax saw Aunt Cass as a Stacy's Mom.
    Martin as Baymax: [slurring] Your aunt has a nice ass, you know that? Tell her I want to talk to her.
    Korey as Baymax: [slurring] What a fine-ass auntie of yours. Been tryin' to fuck that bitch for two days or nuthin'...
  • An artist by the name of Liednar draws mystical animal characters who can become drunk off of SODA. The reason? The mystic animals can't handle the carbonation of the drink. Hilarity ensues!
  • The Nostalgia Critic:
    • He does this at one point to spoof the pointlessness of the bar scene in Jack. He goes through the standard I'll Tell You When I've Had Enough! conversation, spanks a stuffed monkey and then apologizes to it, declaring it his best friend, and then bemoans having drunk the 2%.
    • He also did a similar joke in his review of Good Burger when Dexter's Drowning His Sorrows in shakes.
      Ed: Um dude, don't you think you've had enough?
      Nostalgia Critic as Dexter: Don't tell me when I've had enough shakes! I'll tell you when I've had enough sha-ha-ha... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you... I'll chase it down with some fries.
  • 90's Kid from Atop the Fourth Wall gets drunk off of Diet Coke after Rob Liefeld quits the comic business (although Liefeld ultimately would not quit after all).
  • Link getting drunk from Lon Lon milk is an element of some fanfics, fanart and flash videos.
  • The Hard Times: "Depressed Straight Edge Woman Tells Bartender to Leave Bottle of Grenadine". The woman in question doesn't drink alcohol so she deals with sorrow by drinking excessive amounts of alcohol-adjacent substances like grenadine. Everyone treats this just like she has an alcohol addiction.

    Western Animation 
  • On Arthur, Buster has drowned his sorrows in chocolate shakes on more than one occasion.
  • Baymax continues to experience this in Big Hero 6: The Series, such as the time he was winded after Overdrive Mode:
    Baymax: I CAN DO ANYTHIIIING!
  • Bob's Burgers: In one of the anthology episodes, Gene is a country singer who's singing partner left him, so he goes to a bar and darkly tells the barman, "Give me a shot of chocolate syrup with a root beer back. Leave the bottle."
  • In one episode of Care Bears: Adventures in Care-a-Lot, Love-a-Lot, bummed out because Cheer apparently forgot her birthday, drowns her sorrows with cups of hot chocolate. After her fourth cup, Funshine asks her if she's had enough.
  • In the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "Mind Your Cheese and Q's", Monty locks himself in the vault of cheese and sings a variation of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall", replacing "beer" with "cheese". Might not seem like much, but it does seem like something that modern cartoons (unless they're adult-oriented) wouldn't dare put in. The way Monty sings it sounds like he is quite drunk. Doesn't help that later in the episode he seems to have a bit of a hang-over.
    Monty: 99 pieces of cheese on the wall. 99 pieces of cheese. *hiccup*
  • Clone High:
  • One Cow and Chicken short ends with the Red Guy at a "Milk Bar" drowning his sorrows in milk after losing Cow as both a lounge singer and milk provider for his own bar.
  • In the Daria episode "Psycho Therapy", Daria convinces her father that milk will calm him down, and his copious drinking of it is treated like an addiction.
  • At the start of "#BackInAFlash" from DC Super Hero Girls, Barbara goes to the Local Hangout after eats a bunch of sundaes after embarrassing herself. Barry tries to stop her from
  • El Tigre: After all his attempts to grow a mustache fail, Manny drowns his sorrows with multiple milkshakes in a bar-like setting.
  • A Family Guy cutaway has Stewie get drunk on apple juice after Brian tells him it was wine.
  • In Food Fight, the protagonist drowns his sorrows with milk.
  • In an episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Mac is depressed and goes to an ice cream shop and orders a sundae. However, being one of those kids who's not allowed to have sugar, he goes completely drunk (a la Spongebob) and has even more ice cream. He leaves with a hangover. Strangely, this is the opposite of sugar's usual effect on him. In another episode, Eduardo has to be put under twice the normal amount of anesthesia at the dentist and throughout, he slurs his words.
  • An episode of Freakazoid! had his then-sidekick hospitalized with a minor injury. Freakazoid proceeded to drown his sorrows in papaya smoothies.
    Freakazoid: ...give me another one.
    Barman: Hey, slow down, Mr. F. It's not like Expendable Lad's dead or anything, he's just in the hospital with a bruised clavicle.
    Freakazoid: I said give me another one, curse your tiny paper hat! If I wanna blitz myself into some papaya-induced hallucination, that's my business.
  • Gumby may be the Ur-Example, if not the Trope Maker. The little clay boy falls off the milkshake wagon more than once; since he's made of clay, the icy cold confections leave him stiff as a board if he overindulges. "You know what happens if you drink too much ..."
  • On Home Movies, Jason acts like an angry problem drinker when he binges on candy.
  • In episode 5 of The Legend of Korra, Bolin gets "drunk" on noodles after he sees Korra kiss Mako and gets very sad. The next day he acts hungover, so his "drunkenness" was probably a mixture of lack of sleep, gorging himself, and hysterical sobbing.
  • There's an example of this in the episode "In Like Flint" from Ōban Star-Racers. Even though she won the rematch against Grooor, Don Wei said her manner of racing had disgraced the team and they would be dropping out. Molly ran out and the next we see her, she's at the local bar with four empty drink pouches sitting in front of her.
    Molly: Another grenadine milk! Pronto!
    Skrub Bartender: Maybe you should stop. You know what they say, "don't drink milk and drive".
    Molly: Listen, pal! I already got a father!
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic :
    • In "The Best Night Ever", Spike is feeling left out after his friends split up at the Grand Galloping Gala, and near the end of the episode he's seen drowning his sorrows... in donuts and hot chocolate.
      Spike: Hey, Pony Joe, another donut.
      Pony Joe: Don't you think you've had enough?
      Spike: Another donut! EXTRA SPRINKLES!
    • In "Over a Barrel" we see a pony who's had a few too many salt licks...
  • The Owl House: "Keeping Up A-Fear-ances" references this when after binging on lots of tubs of ice cream, Lilith and King act and speak as if they were drunk. It's even enough to worry Hooty, who notes that Eda buys said ice cream at the Night Market, and thus it may well be alcoholic.
  • The Pinky and the Brain episode "This Old Mouse" has Brain drowning his sorrows in... water from the cage's bottle.
    Pinky: Um... Brain... d-don't you think maybe you've had enough to drink?
    Brain: Nag, nag, nag, just leave me be!
  • The Powerpuff Girls (2016):
    • In the third episode Blossom and Buttercup are hungover due to binging on candy at a sleepover.
    • In the episode "Monkey Love", Blossom sits at a bar drinking cups of milk. When she asks for a cup of dark chocolate milk, the bartender stops her because he thinks she's had enough.
  • In an episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show, Stimpy drowns his sorrows of having 2 of his 9 lives left in milk. Stimpy then exclaims to the cow bartender that he needs more, to which the cow replies, "Haven't you had enough? Moo."
  • In Regular Show, they usually drink Soda like it were beer. In the karaoke episode, Mordecai and Rigby even seems to get drunk on karaoke night and they don't remember anything next Monday, and it's portrayed like a hangover. Hot wings also have the same effect. Many a wild night is kicked off by a basket of wings, which also causes a drunken frenzy as well as a hangover the night after. Benson even tearfully eats a bucket of wings while in a stupor when he buries a suit he thought he ruined.
  • Rocko's Modern Life:
    • In an episode Heffer finds out that he was adopted, and goes off in search of his real father (who turns out to be a real Jerkass). He finds himself at a diner (clearly a Shout-Out to the famous "Nighthawks" painting), and orders tons of food. (Again complete with telling the man behind the counter, I'll Tell You When I've Had Enough!)
    • In another episode, Rocko and Heffer take Filbert to an ice cream parlor for his bachelor party... and wind up with an ice cream hangover (and only minutes to spare to get to the wedding.)
  • The Simpsons:
    • Happened in "Boy Scoutz N the Hood" when Bart and Milhouse buy a Squishy that is all syrup, and proceed to get "drunk" from the extreme sugar rush. Bart wakes up the next morning with a hangover, and discovers to his horror that he joined the Junior Campers (Boy Scout exies) during their binge. His sister offers No Sympathy. In the same episode, Milhouse (who also drank that same Squishy with Bart) woke up with a profanity shaved into the back of his head. As for Barney (who was briefly shown sharing the boys' Squishy), he wakes up on a Navy ship wearing a sailor suit and exclaims "Oh, No... Not Again!"
      Lisa: Tsk, tsk, tsk. The remorse of the sugar junkie.
    • Somehow, in "Round Springfield", we find that Bleeding Gums Murphy spent all of his earnings from his one record on FabergĂ© Eggs, which is treated like an addiction to alcohol, complete with him telling the man at the store "I'll tell you when I've had enough!".
    • In "Deep Space Homer", when Homer and Barney join NASA, Barney excels while sober but becomes instantly drunk with a single glass of non-alcoholic champagne.
    • Also with Lisa drinking milk at Moe's in "The Burns and the Bees". Moe was reluctant to give her the keys to her bike-lock; he wasn't even sure why he had them in the first place.
    • "The Kid is All Right" takes this to new levels. A despondent Lisa starts drowning her sorrows at Maggie's play-tavern, and gets drunk through the act of pretending to drink imaginary beer through pantomime. She gets so hammered, that Maggie stops "serving" her and has her banned from the play-tavern.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: Spongebob's "ancestor" passes out from a glass of milk in an episode.
  • In Teen Titans, after the car Cyborg built from scratch is stolen, Raven finds him in a parking lot surrounded by about 15 empty milkshakes.
  • In the Time Squad episode "Pasteur's Packs O' Punch", Larry 3000 starts going through wild mood swings after getting electrocuted, including acting like a surly drunk, impersonating Jerry Lewis, and dancing on a table while claiming to be "the Queen of France".
  • In one old Tom and Jerry short, "Blue Cat Blues", Tom goes on a milk binge when depressed about his unrequited love.
  • In The Transformers episode "Microbots", the Decepticons drink energon straight from the cube, causing them to overload, the effects being similar to drunkenness.
  • The VeggieTales episode "Silly Singalong 2: The End of Silliness?" opens with Larry, distraught over the cancellation of "Silly Songs with Larry", drowning his sorrows in ice cream. Then he gets a nasty ice cream headache.

    Real Life 
  • Wonder why people can get drowsy and seemingly mildly-intoxicated after drinking milk? This is because milk contains ample amounts of the amino acid tryptophan, a vital ingredient for the manufacture of two important neurotransmitters: melatonin, in the pineal gland that regulates the circadian sleep cycle and therefore puts you to proper sleep, and serotonin, the "contentment" neurotransmitter as vital as dopamine and that which antidepressants try to increase the amount of in the brain. This effect is generally weaker in adults, but can still take place, hence why warm milk is often recommended as a non-alcoholic means to relax at the end of the day.
  • This is actually possible in real life. Thanks to Pavlovian conditioning and the placebo effect, drinks that "look" alcoholic but really aren't can easily make people feel loaded:
    • An experiment involved giving free beer at a student party, without telling the students the beer was alcohol-free, of course. Afterwards, the party-goers were questioned. Almost all of them said to be at least tipsy or not able to drive safely any more. They were very surprised when an alcohol test was done and it showed they hadn't drunk any alcohol at all. In fact, they showed all traditional behavioral symptoms of drunkenness, which cleared up instantly when they found out they were technically sober. This is also why, in fact, how somebody behaved when drunk can be different depending on the culture; people who believe they're drunk will act like they believe drunks do. Giving people alcohol-free booze just takes it meta. It's even been observed on This Very Wiki with the My Immortal drinking game anecdotes. If the stories are to be believed, despite the fact that many of the participants are just drinking water, quite a few people got drunk.
    • See here for a scientific experiment conducted on how the illusion of being drunk can affect your memory.
  • Water intoxication is a real phenomenon. Although in most cases, it's Exactly What It Says on the Tin and will make you sick rather than drunk.
    • Water intoxication can kill you, as its effects arise from diluting your body fluids to such a degree that your neurons can't fire properly, and also because water rushes into the comparatively more salty and sugary cells (both common body salts like sodium and potassium chloride, as well as glucose, create an osmotic gradient, meaning water moves from areas of lower concentration of these compounds to a higher concentration), causing the brain to swell and crush itself against the inside of the skull. Deaths from hypotonic hydration are most common among sufferers of senile dementia, as they keep going back for a glass of water on hot days, over and over, unable to remember that they've already ingested gallons of it.
    • But for healthy adults, deadly water intoxication rarely happens, and usually occurs when the person drinks huge amounts of water and doesn't let their body dispose of it. And that's why radio stations don't host "Hold your pee to win!" contests anymore... It has been recorded to happen with kids forced to hold it during class however. Let kids go to the bathroom, teachers. They can't pay attention anyway if they are trying to hold it.
  • There are quite a few alcoholic beverages based on milk around the world, thanks to milk having plenty of sugars that can be utilised in fermentation for the production of ethanol.
  • Rookie stoners can be like this, specially in their first time. In most cases people don't get high in their first time, but some teens, trying to merge with the rest, act as they were at the highest points of the scale of stonedness, sometimes describing their "wild hallucinations". It's a common stoner prank to give fake weed (Like oregano) to first time smokers and see their reaction.
  • Excessive sugar in a drink can also have a similar effect, when the drinker crashes from the sugar high. Naturally, kids are susceptible to this.
  • Occasionally the cast of The Goon Show, a 1950s radio programme, would say something along the lines of "round the back for the old milk there", it was explained later that some of the cast would lace bottles of milk with alcohol to hide the fact they would sneak a drink during recording, the fact they would keep the joke in indicates the producers never realised they were discovered and used it as an in-joke to announce an interval.
  • There is a condition called gut fermentation syndrome or auto brewery syndrome, which causes one to become intoxicated from eating things with sufficient amounts of carbohydrates and sugars. This condition arises because the digestive systems of people with auto-brewery syndrome have higher amounts of yeasts than normal, including those that can metabolize sugar into ethanol, which is then absorbed into the bloodstream. People with the condition may have a hard time convincing others, especially police that have stopped them on suspicion of DUI, that they haven't had any drinks and can't explain why they have a high blood alcohol content until they know that they have it.
  • Over at The Critter Room, Tiny Kittens HQ, Kitkat Playroom, etc., newborn kittens are often seen at their mom's "milkbar" and then falling asleep for long periods with very full bellies. Fans of these human interest netcasts call this a "milk coma".

Alternative Title(s): Drunk On Prune Juice, Drunk On Malts

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"Energy!"

The Decepticons get plastered on their own source of power.

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