The Five Stages Of Inebriation, According To One 19th Century Drunkard

A century before photos of sloppy drunkenness were plastered around social media accounts of all kinds, there were these gems:

The "The Five Stages of Inebriation," which we spotted on Juxtapoz, illustrate the five stages of drunkenness, according to one very dapper and very drunk 19th century fellow. We see the bearded gentleman transition from sober to tipsy to drunk enough to do bad impressions of being passed out on a wheelbarrow. What can we say, we've all been there.

The hilarious sepia snapshots, taken by Charles Percy Pickering in the 1860s, are thought to be staged, educational photos recreating the effects of inebriation for a temperance group. Advocates of temperance encouraged good citizens to be teetotallers, a term describing those who abstained from alcohol completely. Fun fact, according to the State Library of New South Wales, the term emerged because temperance proponent John Turner had a stutter and mispronounced the word "total."

"The Five Stages" are examples of albumen print photographs, in which the albumen in egg whites is employed to bind photographic chemicals to the surface of the paper. This is how most photos were printed until the 1920s. What do you think of these retro drunken antics? Let us know what stages of inebriation Pickering missed in the comments.

Correction: This series occurred around a century before your drunken social media pics, not centuries before as previously stated. We regret the over-estimation.