Can you get 'high' on alcohol or only 'drunk'? [closed]

According to a friend of mine, saying someone is 'high' on alcohol as opposed to drunk is incorrect. I always assumed you were drunk when you had too much alcohol and would say someone was high on alcohol until that limit was reached.

In short, I need to know if it's incorrect to say someone is high on alcohol and that someone can only be high on drugs and the like.

Solution 1:

Merriam-Webster defines high as a synonym for drunk, along with more than a dozen other synonyms. I have never heard of high being used to convey a lesser degree of intoxication than drunk. To convey some stage of a slight effect from alcohol, the word tipsy is often used.

High is also commonly used to mean intoxicated on drugs, or in a sense of intense pleasure comparable to intoxication, i.e, "Sunshine almost always gets me high...." lyrics from John Denver circa 1971.

Edited to add another example: The Kingston Trio had a hit from 1958, "Scotch and Soda", which has been widely covered including by Manhattan Transfer in 2011. Lyrics are:

"Scotch and soda, mud in your eye, baby do I feel high, oh me oh my, do I feel high. Dry martini, jigger of gin, oh what a spell you've got me in, oh my, do I feel high. People won't believe me, they'll think that I'm just braggin', that I could feel the way I do, and still be on the wagon. All I need is one of your smiles, sunshine of your eyes oh me oh my, do I feel higher than a kite can fly!
Give me lovin', baby, I feel high."

Solution 2:

It's not incorrect to say someone is

high on alcohol

Good Ngram "high on alcohol"

Here's a Google Ngram chart; from there you can locate web references, e.g., Congressional reports that use "high on alcohol." This becomes more common after 1960 or so.

The Ngram chart (which is similar for American and British English) shows the use of "high on alcohol" increasing in the late 1950s and becoming more prevalent after 1960, which is when it likely became necessary to distinguish, in both speech and written English, between being high on alcohol (before "high" was probably enough) and being high on other drugs.

Some comments have suggested that "high" alone now means "high on drugs", not "high on alcohol." Using the term "high" (he's high, I'm high) in a social setting may be ambiguous, or it may depend on the social setting.