Correction: I was a teetotaller except for my one drink I'd had at the Playboy Club, which at the time told me I didn't much like hard liquor (and this was Vodka, which is tasteless). I still don't much drink hard liquor (no scotch or bourbon at all) and pretty much stick with wines.
But the other point about the futility of my director's whimsey was that being drunk, I was in no state to pragmatically gauge and remember any sensations to use in my drunk impersonation on stage...had my drunk even been remotely the same as the one I was playing.
I also knew what malarkay "the method" was through this experience...for everytime I was truly feeling it, my director thought I was faking it. Everytime I knew I was faking it, he thought it was real. I got very good reviews in the part, by the way,McCann in Pinter's THE BIRTHDAY PARTY.
I do not believe in the cult of just one approach to acting. I think you pick and choose from the array of methods out there and use the stuff from each discipline that works for you.
I also know there are those moments on the stage when you're really in the groove and you can do no wrong, everything is genuine and real and, even as much in the moment as you are, there is Another Self floating behind and above you watching you, going: "I am hot tonight." Those moments, alas, happen all too frequently.
I also know that there are times you go onstage thinking of Chinese food and no matter how hard you try , you can't give into the heat and the emotion of the play. And at those times, you had better "try acting, dear boy" and fall back on discipline, focus, and technique, because there is an audience who've paid their money and you owe and you'd better convince them, whether you "feel" it or not.