In vino veritas? Experts discuss contrite actor's drunken tirade

Mel Gibson says he didn't mean the horrible things he said about Jews when he was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving July 28. He says that, in his heart, he is not a bigot and that hatred of any kind goes against his faith.

Gibson has been charged with driving under the influence, being over the legal blood-alcohol limit and having an open container of alcohol in his car.

In his latest of two apologies, he told the Jewish community there is no excuse, "nor there should be any tolerance for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of anti-Semitic remark."

Gibson, 50, has been accused of anti-Semitism before. Some Jewish leaders said his 2004 movie "The Passion of the Christ" blamed the execution of Jesus on the Jews. And his father, Hutton Gibson, has said the Holocaust was fiction.

So, did Gibson really mean what he said? Could alcohol, as people often suspect, expose a drinker's true feelings, or might it lead to wild rants that have nothing to do with real convictions?

It's something Gibson himself seems to be struggling with. As he said in one of his apologies, "I am in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display, and I am asking the Jewish community, whom I have personally offended, to help me on my journey through recovery."

To try to get to the bottom of this, The Associated Press asked forensic psychiatrists and neuroscientists to offer their theories on Gibson's tirade.

Maybe he meant it

"Generally speaking, we don't say things we don't mean," says Dr. Alberto Goldwaser, a forensic psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at NYU medical school. He says alcohol reduces inhibitions: the shy girl dancing on the table, the teenager subway surfing.

Gibson chose a specific message about Jews — the arresting deputy was Jewish — and was unable to censor it, Goldwaser says.

"We don't think thoroughly about what we are saying when we are intoxicated," says Goldwaser. "But that doesn't mean we don't believe what we are saying. At that moment, we really believe it."

And when we sober up?

"We still mean it the next day," he says. "The next day, we say, 'I never meant to say it.' Not, 'I never meant it.' "

What about his father?

"If his dad is anti-Semitic and he grew up with those kinds of things being said around the house, sometimes those memories come back," says Dr. Marilyn Rymer, medical director of the Mid-America Brain and Stroke Institute at Saint Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, Mo. "So you may be saying what you heard. These things are in your head even though you make an effort not to believe them."

A neurological disorder?

"We don't understand why people say certain things," says Dr. Bankole Johnson, a professor of psychiatric medicine and neuroscience at the University of Virginia. He points to a neurological disorder called Tourette's syndrome, where people uncontrollably utter expletives in a way that has nothing to do with their personalities.

Gibson doesn't seem to have Tourette's — The Associated Press did some research on the symptoms. So how can you tell whether a man who's simply drunk means what he says?

"Look at the person's track history," Johnson says. "Use that to determine what the likelihood is that this might be what the person really thought."

Issues floating around

Yes, alcohol loosens the tongue and people say things that are in their head, says Dr. Mark Levy, a forensic psychiatrist and a professor at University of California, San Francisco. "But I wouldn't want to give the impression that everything a person says when they are inebriated is exactly what they would think in a rational state of mind," he says.

"Those are issues floating around in Gibson's head," Levy says. "He drew upon them when he was completely disinhibited. Would he, in a sober state of mind, have felt those things as vehemently as he did when he was drunk? It's hard to say."

So, is he responsible for what he said?

A plea of "not guilty because of drunkenness," Levy says, would never hold up in a California court.