So these 4 drunks walked into a bar …

If it’s true that the drunk you is really just you with the bark off – the real person revealed without all the armour you normally wear out in public – then if there are only four kinds of drunks, as a study published in the Addiction Research & Theory journal suggests, then deep down there are only four kinds of people.

So which one are you?

1. If you can "drink hells any amount of whiskey without getting drunk," you're an Ernest Hemingway drunk—and you're in the majority. These are "drinkers who tend not to undergo drastic character changes or experience harms." So they’re probably the same all the way down.
2. About 23% could be called Mr. Hyde—or Ms. Hyde, since more than half of the subjects who fell into this category were women—meaning they became "particularly less responsible, less intellectual, and more hostile when under the influence of alcohol." Conversely, that suggests they’re the most repressed when sober.
3. One-fifth are labelled Nutty Professor, meaning “they were more introverted before imbibing and became much more gregarious and uninhibited afterward.” Maybe they realise people actually like some of their stories?
4. Finally, the Mary Poppinses made up about 15% of the pool; “they are ‘particularly agreeable’ after drinking—in other words, the happy, ‘sweet’ drunks who don't cause any trouble. These people really are nice all the way down.

So how much of this is anything but bollocks? Well, the “scientists” surveyed 187 pairs of undergraduate "drinking buddies" from a Midwestern university about their sober and intoxicated states. And that’s your sample size.

Mind you, that’s no bar to it being reported in the Guardian, in Time magazine and (now) even here at NOT PC.

[Hat tip Geek Press]