How we became the heaviest drinkers in a century
mosaicscience.com
mosaicscience.com
By the time you hit 18, suddenly the reins are off, and what was once forbidden and done in stolen hours becomes acceptable, and without fail, uni freshers and those in college go off the rails, often developing habits that last the better part of a decade.
My current partner is Spanish, and talks of a culture that has never made drinking a forbidden fruit, stories of drinking at home with family, in moderation, abound. She, and her peers, simply don't have the "you're an adult now, DOWN IT FRESHER" attitude my Scottish peers do.
The same thing is often said about Italy and France.
For the life of me I can't recall where I read it (maybe someone can help out), but I've seen that because alcohol isn't treated as a forbidden fruit in such countries, alcoholism is also not treated as a problem, and that rates of it are severely understated. In other words, for example, it's far more socially acceptable to have 3 glasses of wine with your lunch every day in France than in the US.
Many of my coworkers are from Spain. It is commonly said that two hour lunches with a beer or three are the norm. When I first started, the director took the 5 new hires to lunch, and I recall him stating that he would have bought pitchers for the table if our client was not a stickler about noon drinking.
It is also very common for company events (perhaps twice/month on average?) to be held at bars immediately after work. There is no pressure for anyone to participate, but there is definitely an emphasis on drinking.
I mean, I don't think that is necessarily rare in the US either. We have weekly happy hours that get expensed if someone senior enough is there. And we have quarterly company parties that are paid for by the company and are just three hour open bars in a different location each time (boat, bowling, etc).
Alcoholism generally involves either heavy drinking or life impairment issues.
Its inappropriate to do any drinking at lunch, if you have work to return to.
That's pure social stigma.
There is a vast difference between drinking to intoxication and 2-3 glasses of wine with a meal. It's about as limiting as eating a heavy lunch and spending a few hours digesting.
I think that this illustrates that you do not understand that completely.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21604830
There are even suggestions of long term benefits. The authors concluded that for middle-aged subjects, increasing levels of alcohol consumption were associated with better function regarding some aspects of cognition. http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/3/240.long
PS: Initially reflex tests where considered for in car breathalyzers, but many people performed better slightly over the legal limit than they did normally.
I've experienced this once before, not with coding but with software testing. Liquid lunch (couple of pints of Guinness), and was a lot easier to focus on work after lunch because the slight buzz kept me feeling warm and happy, I remember being quite productive. It's not something that I'd want to make into a habit but I definitely think it can help with focus on repetitive tasks (so long as it's well within your personal limits).
Wait, who are you to tell me I can't have wine or beer at lunch before going back to work?
This sounds like pure moral judgement and that seems completely inappropriate to me.
You could have said "it's inappropriate to do anything that prevents you from doing your work correctly", and that would have been fine, but please let me judge that by myself, because a lot of socially acceptable behaviours have as much influence on work efficiency, like not sleeping enough or being stressed out because of events not related to work.
And by the time I can see effects in person, its way over the line for effective job performance. As others mention, some people have high tolerances for alcohol before showing any obvious symptoms. I maintain that critical job-related judgment skills are compromised long before that happens. So their 'tolerance' is a problem for me, the boss, not some excuse for them. My response: ban alcohol at lunch.
How far does that extend? Should I let you monitor my sleep patterns? Are you going to enroll me in a smoking-cessation course before allowing me to work? Will there be mandatory coffee breaks?
Will you take my phone away so that my family doesn't call me with upsetting news, thereby affecting my critical job-related judgment skills?
Well I'm glad I live in a country where bosses can't dictate what their employees eat at lunch, then. What next, ban onions and cheese because they give bad breath and that's unacceptable?
Though since my boss drinks beer at lunch about as frequently as I do...
If you are self-employed, fine. I'll let you judge that for yourself. Your potential clients would also probably judge that too, can't ask them not to. And if they don't like it, they'll take their business somewhere else.
If you are not self-employed, you can't judge that for yourself. Your boss will judge that for yourself, your co-workers will judge that for yourself, and your company's clients will also judge that.
I don't think that not sleeping enough and being stressed are "socially acceptable", as no one actually endorses these things. At the end of the day, your boss/clients likely won't care much about something being "socially acceptable" as much as something giving them an inferior product or costing them more money.
Unless you're in your early 20s, working for a startup.
Your outburst on the other hand, would have seen you thrown out for hate speech.
You're not making a good case for prohibition.
Never mind, I get it; folks who are emotionally invested in alcohol consumption get really nervous whenever it gets criticized.
Blimey.
I used to work for a UK branch of a US Fortune 100 company. On release nights we were provided with beer and pizza..
Most developers and testers were on a rota for releases but because of my role I had to attend them all. Free beer and ( bad ) pizza every second Friday for several years.
I seem to have survived OK, I wasn't sacked...
Increasing numbers of "respectable middle-class drinkers" are ending up with alcohol-related diseases, particularly women. You don't have to be a binge drinker or a dysfunctional alcoholic to put your health at risk.
That's why I'm actually fairly relaxed about my teenage son (16) drinking occasionally in a reasonably responsible manner.
There's really little opportunity for relaxed social drinking that happens elsewhere in Europe. Here in Czech Republic which is famous for cheap beer and all-night bars I've seen far less trouble than I did in Edinburgh and my alcohol consumption has dropped off a cliff as well (and I'm a stereotypical cheapskate Scot). I'm sure this would've been the case had I instead moved to Austria, Germany or Spain too. I really hope the UK binge drinking problem attributable to something simple like licensing hours...
That should encourage many more pubs and bars to stay open later, and remove the hurry to get home before the last train leaves.
There are lots of 24 hour off-licenses in London [2], though I don't think many are actually open 24 hours.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/alcohol-and-late-...
"How was Prague?"
"How was it? 40p a litre of vodka, 40p a pint!"
Certainly in England having drink with meals is the majority position I can remember having watered down cider with Sunday lunch from quite an early age.
A common Spanish practice, new from the last 20 years or so, is called 'botellon': Youth, from 13-20 or so, who can't afford to drink at bars, purchase cheap spirits or extremely cheaped boxed wine (an euro per liter or less), go to a park, and do nothing but sit and drink. A common brew is the foul calimocho: Empty half of a two liter bottle of Coke, and pour in a liter of extremely cheap wine, with an aftertaste that will not outlast the bubbles.
So the kids drink with the family, and then they drink more heavily in the park on weekends. It's not like you can blame them, given the employment situation: 50%+ youth unemployment. Finishing university can just turn you into a NiNi: Ni estudias ni trabajas (You do not study, yet do not have a job)
So I'd take the stories of Spaniards about our superior drinking culture with a grain of salt.
Yes, alcohol consumption per capita is probably larger in Spain than in the UK, but people mostly know their limits. The transition from social/family drinking to "botellón" is smoother than the typical all-or-nothing transition in the UK. The fact that it's more socially accepted also means that people talk about drinking in a casual way, that your friends or even your family will advise you, etc., so it's much rarer to actually get into serious health problems or become an alcoholic.
I was a rather hardcore "botellón"-goer in the 2000s (I think "peak booze" in Spain was more or less in the same date as in the UK), most of my friends were too, and the largest problems anyone had were maybe throwing up and passing out once or twice in 5-10 years of partying. In the UK on the other hand, I met people who drank way less frequently, but the day they did, 90% of the time they weren't able to walk home on their own. It was even worse when they passed some stupid law forcing pubs to stop serving alcohol after 11 pm - some people would gobble up as much booze as they could right before that time, and in less than an hour they would be unconscious.
In general, in all the places where I've been, the pattern is the same: in places where alcohol is socially accepted (Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece) I've seen fewer problems with alcohol than in places where it is frowned upon (UK, Sweden, US).
In fact, you can even see it inside Spain itself... what nationality are the people who practice "balconing" (getting drunk and jumping off from a balcony or window, often leading to death)? An overwhelming majority of British, with the odd German here and there.
For what its worth, I've seen the footage of people jumping from hotel balconies into swimming pools. You know what I've also seen? People jumping from jagged cliff faces into the sea, and that includes people from multiple different European countries. Here's the thing... They're the same behaviour. It's not an alcohol thing, it's a daredevil thing.
I had the same conversation (as a US college student) 24 years ago with my Spanish roommate. Alone, you and I are anecdotes. Together, we're data. ;-)
It is very interesting to see how the drinking culture has been shaped and how that we are sheep by partaking. Well in a way we are sheep and wolves.
Because there is something in drinking culture in the UK that is about 'egging on' other people to drink more, so if someone who is known to drink decides to take it easy (like just drink a bit slowly) then they are often cajoled into drinking more.
In addition there is the social pressure of buying rounds, so the next drink is always coming and many pints of beer all on the table at once. And you have to buy your round or you are a cheapskate - even if you didn't drink as much on the other rounds!
Then in the workplace there is the bonding and social cohesion you miss out on if you abstain at work lunchtimes or functions. Drinking increases your chance of greasing the wheels of promotion and advancement. I've worked places where people would get drunk at lunchtime. And not always on a Friday!
I'm glad it is at the peak and now declining. Probably a good thing.
Living in Australia now. Drinking culture is definitely less but it is certainly there. I think the fitness and coffee culture trumps it.
I spent a year on an exchange programme at a university in Italy, and found that 1) the Brits were by far the worst drinkers (followed by the Americans), and 2) the Italians had absolutely no concept of buying a round of drinks (I think they do have the phrase "bere in giro" but I'm not sure now if this was just a literal translation of the English without any genuine cultural meaning) - and the difference this makes is striking.
While the author talks about Peak Booze being over, the drinking culture in London is still pretty appalling, and not just dominated by people in their thirties (who should, like me, be the Peak Booze generation described in the article). I do see an improvement in younger people (late teens, early twenties), I think, who seem to have much less interest in smoking and to drink a bit more in moderation than we did - but I'm not confident that those same people in five years in London won't be out drinking to excess three or four nights a week too.
As an alternative, cocktails had a small resurgence in the 90s that continues today. But most bars make their cocktails with different proportions and different ingredients. So not only could the number of possible cocktails reach infinity, but the number of possible locations to find a 'well made' cocktail increases. If you want a good (or new) cocktail you're always on a search for that new special drink.
It used to be that drinking the cheapest beer you could find in as high a quantity as you could find made for a fun night out [for young folk]. But new drinking establishments are tailor made to provide you a new product which costs more money, with the promise of a more sophisticated (or at least variable) flavor palette; the availability of flavored spirits in every bar and club shows how hard the industry works to try and gain new customers.
All of this comes at the same time that wine is probably as cheap as it has been in centuries. The increase in new markets such as China, Brazil and India have created a giant global marketplace for wine, which New World growers such as Argentina, Australia, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States have happily provided for. We're awash in wine that is not just cheap, but tasty, too, growing the market even more.
We have more products than ever, more choice than ever, more customers than ever, more availability than ever, and a lower price than ever before. And they wonder why we drink more?
Couple of points...
"Alcohol makes many of us unpleasant: verbally abusive, angry, destructive."
That's a bit of a stretch. Yes you do get the 'angry drunk' phenomenon, but the number of drunken fights I've seen has been relatively small. I think this is different from place to place, there are cities where I know this is a bigger issue, but in general people tend to be more friendly when they're drunk.
"This generational difference isn’t just anecdotal. Young people are drinking less frequently, and more of them are teetotal. We don’t know why: it could be financial hardship, an increase in the proportion that don’t drink for religious reasons, or increased time spent online."
If I had to guess, I'd say it was the rise of importance in gym culture.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/f...
You get a 'violent' person drinking, you get an angry drunk who'll go looking for a fight, people drinking when they're in a bad mood or a bad place might be massively unpleasant that night.
There are some people who just shouldn't drink and it's not an exaggeration to say that for them, "Alcohol makes [them] unpleasant: verbally abusive, angry, destructive.", but in most cases it's not that simple at all.
If you think that you've been drinking in the wrong places, seriously. I'm from Bath, I started drinking in parks and pubs when I was about 15/16, and I drank a fair bit in my 20s (I'm in my 30s now). I can count on one hand the amount of alcohol-fueled fights I saw in all that time, and any other minor acts of aggression were also fairly infrequent. The vast majority of people I was with and met were nice drunks.
That said, I have seen cities where police riot vans are out every Saturday night, so as I said, it varies a lot, the baggage that comes with drinking culture is not the same everywhere you go in the UK. Sometimes people are dedicated to getting smashed, others are on the pull, others just want to get lary, others are just using it to loosen themselves up, and what is common in one city is not necessarily common in another, it varies from drinking place to drinking place.
I'd be interested to see what kind of violence it's associated with; I would guess certainly domestic violence is a big part.
First, an increase in aggression does not mean that everyone suddenly turns into a raging asshole, it just means an increase, even a slight one, in aggressive tendencies. Which does not necessarily mean physical aggression. People tend to become more demanding, or more snarky, or bold, and so on. Examples include: egging others on to drink heavily or do silly things even if they don't want to. Even things like ragging on your friends is representative of an increase in aggression. Such things can still be "friendly", but they are indicative of increased aggression. And a small subset of people do get more physically aggressive, confrontational, oppositional, etc.
A lot of this stuff is so ingrained in our culture that we don't even notice it. We just accept that being drunk translates to being more aggressive in a zillion subtle ways and don't even consider such things to be true aggression.
Additionally, I'm disappointed that so many people have jumped immediately to the "my limited anecdotal experience contradicts countless scientific studies" response. No, anecdotes are not data. Moreover, if you think about the way your friends behave when drunk you might notice signs of increased aggression as well, if you pay attention. I don't have any friends who get violent when drunk, and I have many friends who are adorable drunks, but I do notice a consistent pattern in becoming slightly more aggressive across the board. More demanding, less charitable, etc.
I agree with the 'mood amplifier' description that MLR gave before. It gives you some temporary courage to live more boldly. With this study, did they try and provoke a reaction from the drunk people?
I also think it misses the larger picture. For example, you mentioned about your friends who are adorable drunks, where are the studies that measure adorableness when drunk, or any other traits of inebriated individuals? Why does it always have to be about the negatives?
Don't get me wrong, I totally accept that our drinking culture has some hugely negative aspects, and I'll be glad if the upcoming generations enjoy socialising without it, but I also believe we shouldn't rush to see it without its merits too. Alcohol can make people do horrible things (hurting others being the main one), but it can make people do great things too (including being more compassionate), is this contradictory? At a stretch you could say courage/confidence is at the centre of both.
If you want to find them it's pretty easy here in Scotland - go to the wrong place at the wrong time and its practically guaranteed.
See: "radge"
Hadn't heard "radge" before, looked it up, get the idea. Looks like it's been kicking around for a bit too (at least since the 1920s)...
[NB The absolute worst "radges" are usually wee guys - Begbie from trainspotting being a classic, and all too realistic, fictional example]
It's unlikely that you'd see something so violent as a guy chucking a pint glass into a crowd, but randomly targeted violence\aggression is not uncommon and having worked in a bar in Edinburgh I have served, chatted with and had altercations with various Begbies in my time.
So it's probably not the generation as a whole that has an abnormal relationship, but a small minority of the generation.
Of course you know what's wrong with a title, after reading the article.
I think that in any generation the amount of vice is constant per capita, just its distribution and diversity differs.
Fast forward 10 years after I turned 18, and in total, I probably consume the equivalent of two cases of 12 bottles of beer per year, if that which averages out to about 0.45 bottles of beer per week.