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Alcohol is normalized from a young age in the UK, yet it's abused by adults more heavily than here. I don't think that's a panacea.

Something I can finally contribute to on HN!

There’s probably a few causes for how we abuse alcohol in the UK.

1. Most pubs close relatively early (11pm-1am), so after work you don’t have too much time to spend before you have to decide between a club or home.

2. Anecdotally, although most people know their limits. I see people in my circles tend to drink at the rate of the fastest drinker and “catchup”, especially if doing rounds.

3. We do have a bit of a binge drinking culture. Our culture (in my opinion) tends to encourage getting drunk (as long as you don’t cause harm to others).

The culture of buying rounds causes a problem. You don't want to miss a round, because it's a free beer.

Out to lunch during business hours in the UK, my colleagues would routinely put back 2-3 pints. That's absurd to me.

It's very expensive, though.

My experience living in several European countries basically echoes the parent comment.

Countries where alcohol is normalized since childhood, cheap, widely sold and allowed (basically the Mediterranean countries: Spain, Italy, Greece, possibly France although I don't know France that much) -> people drink but tend to have sane drinking habits.

Countries where alcohol is frowned upon, heavily taxed, expensive or difficult to buy (Sweden, Norway, the UK, etc.) -> people abuse drink and just don't know when to stop.

Germany has cheap easily available alcohol at a very young age and a massive drinking culture.

Correlation, perhaps, but the causation could be reversed.

France, it varies from region to region. Brittany for example has a reputation of heavy drinkers, and having lived there for a while it's a bit deserved.

Also, students parties can be quite alcohol heavy, specially the start of the year parties. For example, in business and engineering schools, you have the WEI (Week End of Integration), basically, most of the students go in a remote location to get drunk for most of a Week-End (including during the 3 or 4 hours bus trip), there, you see some people completely passing out. After that, during the year, you see people getting drunk, but very rarely to the point of passing out.

However, the consumption of alcohol as a student can easily be continuous, for example, in my school of ~450 students, we had a bar managed by the students, with a license to serve alcohols like beer or cider, and some students ended-up border line alcoholics.

Drawing any kind of conclusion about a county's drinking habits based on purely anecdotal experience seems like a futile exercise. Also, I'm no expert, but I skimmed a few studies a couple of months ago, and they all suggested higher alcohol prices reduced consumption. Admittedly, I'm not sure if the studies covered what impact pricing has on individual consumption / binge drinking.

As an American who enjoys drinking, I find it shocking, too. Not that people do it, but the extent. I've had few experiences as miserable as being hungover. I've been really hungover twice in my life. After the first time, I said never again. After the second time, I said I really need to come up with a system to avoid this.

So I have a simple system I call Proof Points. I think I've shared it here once before. It's like calorie counting, except you track alcoholic intake as alcoholic proof (% content x 2) x oz of alcohol (yes, I'm an American). Do some trial and error and you should be able to find a range where you feel good drinking but don't end up the next morning not knowing where you are or even feeling noticeably lousy.

For me, the range is 300 to 400 proof points. Yeah, I can't always know how much alcohol I'm getting in a drink I order. But I'm able to ballpark it. And it's been effective for me. Even times when I drink a little too much, I'm sure it has stopped me from drinking way too much.

Take it with caveats up and down. Don't mistake it for BAC. I never drive if I'm drinking because, as I understand, most legal limits are now so low, you'll hit them well before you expect it.

I think this actually would help curb the drinking problem among US students and all the attendant ills that go along with it. Perhaps if it was offered as a nicely designed phone app. It could serve as a counter-pressure, more or less effective depending on the circumstances, to the peer pressure that the article identifies as a major driver of excess drinking.

> proof points

In Britain, the personal health lessons at school included guidance on the alcohol content of various drinks, and this is repeated on many bottles.

1 "unit" of alcohol is 10mL. It's close to the amount in a small beer, single measure (25mL) of spirit or a small glass of wine.

There are plenty of apps already.

I've got an easier solution in lieu of doing maths while drinking. When you feel warm and fuzzy, stop. That's typically only a few drinks in, and lasts for a couple hours. No issue with major dehydration.

> For me, the range is 300 to 400 proof points.

Am I doing the math wrong, or would that be less than two pints of beer at 5% ABV? Or does this not work with beer?

One regular drink is 100 of these proof points. A pint of strong beer is 2 drinks.

2 pints of medium beer is indeed a generally good amount to drink in one meal or before you pause for a while. Obviously how many minutes better drinks is a factor

"proof points" are usually called "drinks". 1 "drink" is 0.5oz of alcohol (1oz 100proof shot, 12oz can of American swill beer, or a half-pint of real beer, or one glass of wine).

I propose a measure I'll call Total Proof,

  T = (% content) x volume in oz

Which is related to Proof Points (P) by the following:

  P = 2T

Since T and P are proportional you can use Total Proof in the same way as Proof Points, just skip the multiplication by 2 and divide your target range in half.

My favorite 9% IPAs clock in at 288 Proof Points or 144 Total Proof for a pint, which makes sense because I usually follow that with a light lager that gets me to around 200 Total Proof or 400 Proof Points.

Dividing the ABV in half would result in a "normalized" scale that could tell you, for example, that you're exactly 72% drunk when you finish a pint of 9% because 9 x 0.5 x 16 is 72.

In college, I followed the simpler rule of a two liters of water before sleeping, prepped before going out, and it kept away hangovers pretty consistently; but I also drank with a paranoia of puking, so I never got that drunk

> After the first time, I said never again. After the second time, I said I really need to come up with a system to avoid this

That's not how it works. You're meant to keep saying 'never again' and then go out the next week and repeat. It's the British way.

Having seen students in Europe and from the US, agreed. It definitely helps to be lower.

I did an exchange program (from the US) to Germany, and I did notice parents having a moderating effect on drinking, but then there was an overnight party at the end of the schoolyear, which meant kids weren't going home to their parents.

Drinking wise, it was basically identical to most parties I saw in college in the US, except the kids were 16-17 instead of 18-19.

Pair that with increasing the driving age to 18 or 21 and you'd have a massive reduction in college drinking deaths and teen driving deaths.

I'm not sure that would ever work in America. We are sufficiently spread out that public transportation would be difficult (if possible) to implement. And I'm not talking about NYC or SF; remember, not every one lives there. Much of the rest of the nation is very spread out, which is not an immediately solvable problem.

Regardless, I needed a car as a teen; my parents were both busy and my brother and I needed to do things (including work). 16 is just about the age that people start doing stuff, so that's when they start driving. It's also when people can first get jobs, so important there too.

Maybe there would be a reduction, but you would hurt a lot of innocent people in other ways. It is not for us to suffer to curb the excesses of others.

Statistically, teen driving has already decreased, in part due to the abundance of technology allowing conversations and hangouts without physically being in the same location.

> It's also when people can first get jobs, so important there too.

This too is statistically reducing.

The statistical reductions are down slightly from extremely high numbers. And for what it's worth, people shouldn't have to have a reason to do something, the government should have a reason to restrict it. Namely, the person being restricted must be harming some one else. Many teens are perfectly good drivers; I was never in an accident/received a ticket and have not ever.

Neither of the things I mentioned are because of government, strictly. They are results of social changes from technology and job market changes from technology - sprinkle in some helicopter parenting and too academic focused 16 year olds.

In my opinion, there is one really good reason for US drinking age to be higher: it is much more common for American teenagers to drive personal vehicles, so if you lower the drinking age, you would (at least, I believe) cause a drastic increase in DUIs and related accidents and deaths.

It makes drinking exponentially cooler. Putting something out of reach elevates it in young people's minds. Crack was cool back when only the rich could afford it, now that it's been democratized through a genius chemistry rework it's affordable enough for homeless people and has a terrible image. Drinking needs to undergo a similar process here in the States.

> Crack was cool back when only the rich could afford it

Cocaine (specifically, powder), sure; crack was always low status. In fact, that was the whole source of the political brouhaha over crack vs. powder sentencing disparity.

You might reduce the stigma if you lowered the age. People continue to perceive drinking as an act of "rebellion" even after 21, mostly because it was for so long. Besides, it doesn't work. I am literally the only person I have ever known who did not drink in HS.

This was also the primary reason the drinking age was (re-)raised to 21: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_...

You can't ask parents in the US to be responsible for their kids. Parents' lawsuits led playgrounds to be engineered as sterile, boring, and lawsuit-free. We're also puritanical, as the biggest argument parents give against same sex marriage is having to explain it to their kids. And we're stupid, as the general view is that trusting young people or giving them responsibility would lead to them hurting themselves more. Parents even get in terrible for letting their kids just walk around. (The irony being that we let them drive at 16 and join the military at 18)