Singing, dancing, talking, racing – and celebrating Carnival? The simple realization is this: What we do when we’ve been drinking alcohol is all a matter of culture. From our own experience, we believe we know: Alcohol lowers inhibitions. Shyness, reason, decency? Forget them for a few hours! This sometimes leads to beautiful things like a first kiss or wild dance floor stunts – and sometimes to ugly situations that end up in court and are excused there: It’s the alcohol, stupid! American ethnologists MacAndrew and Edgerton entertainingly and convincingly show that people around the world behave drunkenly in completely different ways, depending on tradition, situation, historical circumstances, or role models – aggressively or peacefully, quietly or talkatively, joyfully singing or violently. They are often remarkably capable of distinguishing, even in a drunken stupor, whom to kiss or hit – and whom not. We read astonishing, beautiful, and terrible stories and are amazed to realize: It’s not alcohol that is responsible for our drunken actions; we have simply learned it this way. Long after its publication, Jakob Hein has rediscovered and translated this treasure of knowledge that radically questions our perception of the "disinhibiting" effect of alcohol all the way to the concept of "diminished responsibility.".