Actor Mel Gibson said it was the alcohol talking when he blurted out a series of anti-Semitic remarks after being pulled over for drunk driving, but experts differ on whether Gibson's words can be excused as the product of drinking.

The Los Angeles Times reported Aug. 1 that Bankole Johnson, chairman of psychiatric medicine at the University of Virginia, said that alcohol can make people talk gibberish. "They might not even be certain of what they are saying," he said. "They don't understand what they are saying, and they don't mean what they are saying."

But others, like psychologist Mark Fillmore of the University of Kentucky, said that such remarks do not emerge from a vacuum. "Alcohol doesn't produce new behaviors," he said. "It releases things that people believe or know ... It exaggerates the personality of the individual."

Fillmore noted that research shows that moderate alcohol consumption causes people to release prepotent responses, meaning the beliefs, thoughts and actions they normally suppress.