[level3]

I noticed this was definitely true for me during my first several years here in Japan. In normal conversation, I would end up overthinking my sentences and making mistakes fairly often, but when drinking all of the nervousness and extraneous thought went away, and I could speak faster and more fluently than I thought I was capable of. Even with vocabulary recall, I would sometimes be surprised with myself for using words I probably would never have remembered while sober. Of course I still made mistakes, but the fear of it was no longer an obstacle.

Even now, I probably still speak more fluently when drinking, but I think the gap has almost disappeared.