There is a well-known Latin phrase that says In vino veritas (the truth is in the wine), suggesting that under the influence of alcohol one is more predisposed to reveal things that one otherwise would not.
It is not something exclusive to the Romans, many other peoples have similar sayings, starting with the Greek phrase En oinoi aletheia which means more or less the same. And the Jewish Talmud also includes a passage about it.
We find the first allusion to the Roman expression in the Natural History (14, 141) of Pliny the Elder in the 1st century AD:volgoque veritas iam attributa vino est (truth is attributed to wine).
The Greek, although earlier and by the poet Alcaeus of Mytilene in the 6th century BC, we know it from a quote by the Byzantine scholar John Tzetzes in the 12th century, and he comes to say that wine is the window of man . And as for the Hebrew, much more explicit, that we find in the Talmud:the wine enters, the secret comes out .
The disinhibiting properties of alcohol have been known for a long time, but surprisingly they were also used for something as opposite as making key decisions. Herodotus, when he speaks of the Persians (in the 5th century BC) in the first book of his History, states:
That is, decisions made while drunk were reexamined sober the next day, and if they still agreed they were right, they put them into action. Apart from the fact that the system included a playful part that otherwise would not have decision-making, the Persians thus took advantage of the disinhibition produced by alcohol in the first debate to gather ideas (even those that might seem absurd).
In this way, they ensured that all the participants exposed points of view that probably being sober they would not dare to reveal. Tomorrow the debate would turn more serious and, reexamining the issues they had drunkenly agreed on, they could consider options that would never have arisen if they had not used this curious method.
However, Herodotus also mentions the opposite, which no longer seems so reliable. Making drunken decisions, even when considering only sober-approved ideas, certainly seems dangerous.
Perhaps what Herodotus means, in a somewhat convoluted way, is that the Persians wanted to be sure that their decisions were correct and so well founded that they could be valid under any state.
Interestingly Tacitus tells something similar but about the Germans in the 1st century AD:
According to Tacitus, the method allowed the Germans to free themselves from inhibitions and avoid the usual caution, thus leading to innovative solutions.