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Comment by gst | Hacker News Reader

Just speculation, but I have the impression that alcohol "problems" are a larger problem in countries where the age required to legally buy alcohol is rather high.

In my home country (Austria) I could buy alcohol at age 13 without any problems. No one would ask for an ID. I think nowadays they are a little bit stricter, but you are still legally allowed to buy alcohol once you turn 16. Once you turn a little bit older alcohol isn't that interesting any more. Of course, you'd still buy a beer (or more) if you're partying with friends, but getting totally wasted is something teenagers would do.

I've moved to the US some time ago, and here I have the impression that even people in their late-twenties get regularly drunk just "because they can" and are "allowed to do so". Seems they just never learned how to use alcohol responsibly while they were young, and at some age it's too late to learn it.

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My thoughts exactly. Having traveled a bit, I've noticed that the stiffer the alcohol regulations, the more irresponsible people tend to be with their drinking when they come of age. The result of a whole lot of new found liberties all at once, with no real grasp of what the small prints attached really entail. I remember in my early 20s, when some of my American friends' idea of having fun was let's go out get wasted and I was puzzled by this notion.

In my opinion, being responsible with alcohol requires experience, which we all know is acquired through trials and error. I share the controversial belief that parents should be the ones to responsibly shepherd their kids' drinking habits. They shouldn't just wait for them to turn 21 and discover it in the "wild", or worse, let them go in those popular drinking safaris in Canada or Mexico, where the legal age is lower and regulations somewhat more loosely applied.

It's a good theory, but on the other hand stiffer alcohol regulations could be a response to a larger underlying prevalence in alcohol abuse.

You often find more police stations in places with more crime. Does that mean police stations cause crime? I doubt it. You could argue police stations cannot reduce crime to the levels of lesser crime areas but you cannot say that police stations are the cause of crime. The reality is: there is crime so you build police stations, not the other way around.

I believe this is the same for alcohol regulations. There are a lot of alcohol abuse so they make alcohol regulations stiffer. It may be true that regulations does nothing to reduce abuse and actually cause people to abuse alcohol even more but there is no evidence to prove this unambiguously.

Chiming in with more anecdotal evidence. My folks allowed us to (illegally) drink alcohol starting at age 14. It was something we did during special occasions, and we'd of course drink smaller portions due to body size differences. Reaching "drinking" age was no big deal.

Only once in my life have I ever drunk so much I threw up. And that was on my 25th birthday when I got a bit careless.

>could be a response to a larger underlying prevalence in alcohol abuse

You have an interesting theory, I'll hands down give you that, its a compelling perspective and I've never heard our nation's alcohol relationship in those terms, but that having been said, I feel like our nation is one that historically has overestimated our problems with alcohol. It may be a response to prevalence, I'm not going to take that away, but there is also the factor that we perceive the same prevalence differently.

I grew up near the Vermont/Canada border, the first time I went up there to drink I was 14 and we were raging it hard in some Quebecois' basement. I went upstairs to take a leak and almost shit a brick because unbeknownst to me, their parents were chilling upstairs watching TV and were fine with the fact we were getting wasted and hooking up in the basement. One of the girls that had gone up to cananda with me was puking her guts out in the basement bathroom and refusing to speak anything but broken French and they were completely fine with this. All the Quebecois' parents knew they were off getting trashed and were fine with it too, hell the mother of the family me and pukey mcgee were staying with us bought us our booze. A few years later I had a handful of friends at my place in the states and we had a few shots in the attic over newyears. My parents found and were pissed, my, and everyone that was there's, parents yelled at us quite a bit.

So we might have more abuse here, but we certainly define abuse differently.

In terms of numbers Austria consumes far more liters per capita per year than the United States. 13.24 liters vs 9.44 liters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_co...

There are other reasons why "binge drinking" appears to be higher in anglo countries (US, Britain, Canada, etc...). Especially among the upper middle class. Longer work weeks than the rest of the industrialized world, less vacation days, etc... Drinking age may play a role in our propensity towards binge drinking, but I think it also has a lot to do with our "work hard, play hard" mentality.

I agree that the easy availability of alcohol to teenagers in most European countries seems to achieve the effect that you describe.

There is another angle to this though - is it better to engage in binge drinking right in the middle of adolescence, when the body and mind is at a rapid pace of development, or in your twenties, when you are physically better equipped to deal with the effects of excessive alcohol consumption?

I am not a medical professional, but instinctively, the second option seems to me to be the safer one.

> your twenties, when you are physically better equipped to deal with the effects of excessive alcohol consumption?

Why would you believe that? I don't have any specific knowledge, but I also see no reason to believe that you're better equipped (physiologically) at 25 to handle alcohol than you are at 15.

You aren't still growing, so the binge drinking can't mess up your development processes. You have more body mass, so a given amount of alcohol will cause less of an increase in your BAC.

Another variable between European teenage drinking vs USA teenage drinking is driving.

European teens do drive - but it's not fashionable.

USA teens _have_ to drive. The party is spread out (multiple locations in suburbia) and the vehicle is the symbol of empowerment.

Obviously, mixing heavy or inexperienced drinking with driving is a recipe for death.

Drunk walking is just as dangerous. Freakonomics Radio recently did a piece of drunk walking and the numbers are surprisingly high.

I would imagine that drunk walking has less of a chance of killing others though. This doesn't even have to be by-standers. For example, with 4 drunk teenagers in a car, it just takes 1 drunk teen to kill 4. On the other hand, if you have 4 drunk walking teens, that kind of outcome is far less likely.

The chance that they all die is lower, but they chance that at least one of them dies is far far higher.

Are we comparing same levels of drunken-ness here? What about the difference between 4 drunk teens each walking alone vs. 4 drunk teens walking in a group (where it's possible to look out for one another)?

The mentioned article provides some figures:

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/12/28/the-perils-of-drunk-w...

The difference between drunk walking and drunk driving is that, while a drunk walker is a danger only to himself, a drunk driver is a threat to others.

A drunk walker careening into traffic poses no threat? Must note the "level" of drunkenness; motor skills at acceptable level but "above" limit per-law? You can still get public intoxication fines / jail, as well as a DUI if you hop on a bike (also highly dangerous).

In Germany it's illegal to walk outside if you're to drunk.

It's also illegal to make lots of noise on Sundays.

How do you get home?

This is of course bullshit. There is however, an interesting paragraph (StGB § 323a) that says you can go to jail for up to 5 years for being intoxicated if you get drunk deliberately and then commit a crime but are deemed criminally incapable.

Maybe not what the gp meant, but 20-80 lbs might make you better equipped. 10 years of "wisdom" hopefully helps too.

There is a study on adolescent binge drinking and its effect on the brain; if anyone wants to read it http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2827693/?tool=pm...

In short, it affects spatial working memory, verbal encoding and ability to inhibit ourselves. These effects don't seem that nefarious, and not so prominent in affecting our lives in a significant way; but don't take my word because I'm no neuro scientist.

On the other hand, on personal experience I've seen greater social issues with people that are heavy drinkers in their post adolescence period.

To me it's the people in the US who are the responsible ones. I moved here a while ago from Australia. Being blind drunk in Australia is for the most part acceptable at every level of society. Here in the USA, I'm sure it's acceptable somewhere but my experience so far is that it's viewed more like you're a fool who just never learned how to pace yourself.

I have the gotten the same impression from my wife, who is British. While the typical Brit doesn't go through the same sort of binge period in college, they tend to get drunk much more often throughout life. It's pretty much the norm to go to a family social gathering where everyone gets drunk or near drunk (including the 60+ year old grandfather). In fact, it's considered very odd (even anti-social) to not drink.

I just moved to London, and I was initially shocked at how early the pubs outside the office (Carnaby Street) start to fill up. Wed-Fri there are people drinking at 11am, and it starts to get downright crowded by 2-3pm. If the weather is nice it gets insane to the point of the street becoming impassable. Later on, say past midnight it looks like there's a palpable increase in the homeless population until you look closer and realize that a surprising number of non-homeless people are just passed out in the street. Okay, this is Soho, so it hardly represents the UK at large, but it's clear that the drinking culture is far more widespread.

I've also found myself drinking more, like having a pint or two several times a week. One reason is because there are so many good ales here, but also the weather and winter darkness makes it more appealing. It makes you feel warm and cozy somehow, where by contrast, drinking on a sunny beach makes you feel light-headed and exhausted.

Next stop, Australia.

I'm not sure. I think it depends whether the not drinking till some ages is self-imposed, or externaly imposed, and how much external that prohibition is.

For example I weren't drinking till 18, because I was very religious in primary/secondary school, and priests encouraged promising to yourselves to never drink till 18. Most people didn't care, I did (religion is nice mind-hack, btw, it's a shame it stops working when you don't believe it anymore).

So I had to learn to party without alcohol, and I did. Some people were unfriendly because of that, but I figured they were obviously dumb, if me not drinking spoils their fun, so I won't care about them.

Then I got 18, go to university, and drink alcohol like everybody, but never feel the need to drink too much. As for now I'm 28, and I've never had hangover, or lost memory. And I was partying hard at university.

In my country you can buy alcohol from 18, but enforcement is not very strict, so kids start drinking in primary school, because it's cool, because you're gambling system. Of course most people grow up eventually. Binge drinking is a part of culture (well, wódka is Polish/Russian invention :) ), but young people prefer beer, and you have to really want to got drunk, when drinking beer, to got drunk.

I think it more depends on the attitude and example of parents (mine had drink on occasions, but I've never seen my parents drunk. They also never made the alcohol sound like it's some great forbidden fruit they had to protect me from).

I think it's the other way round: a high age limit may be a consequence of the drinking problem a society has, as a measure to limit consumption.

So, I completely agree with you regarding the observable counterproductive nature of over-restrictive substance laws, but I'm curious why you put "problems" in quotes. I ask because I've seen a tendency in some cultures to feel that alcohol addiction doesn't exist, or that it's an issue that is severely overstated elsewhere.

Same observation in China: all the heavier drinkers seem to be foreigners (me included).

Now we have to question the cause/effect relationship. Do we have higher age limits because we have alcohol problems or do we have alcohol problems because the age limit is high?

I do not think it is about regulation, in Slovakia where I am from or Czech where I study it is really easy to buy alcohol in younger age, but people tend to get shitfaced all the time, regardless whether they are 16 or 26... It depends largely on culture.

You're not alone. I personally experienced in many of the different places I lived in as a teenager, from places where you almost never get carded at all, to places where the threshold is 15/16.

Most countries don't have such a low limit. Australia is considered low, and we have a national binge drinking problem.

One thing is the official age limit. Another, and much more important thing, is the age when the parents start serving alcohol to their children.

My parents allowed me to have a small sips starting when I was 5. At that point in my life, I could not understand why adults wanted to drink such awful stuff when there was sweet soda. My parents have never said NO to me when I asked for alcohol.

Result? I learned that alcohol is something you drink in moderation, I've never been (really) drunk, I've never associated alcohol with rebellion or a necessity for having fun or having a diner.

You also have to take into account that alcohol affects people differently. Some people just get tired, some people feel really good.

Also, some people have addictive personalities (in addition to alcoholism).

I am not sure how you take away "alcohol is something you drink in moderation" from being given it at an early age.

Because you learn that its just another beverage rather than some forbidden fruit.

To go even further, it's just another beverage that tastes nasty. As a kid, my mom and dad let me taste a variety of beers/wines from time to time when I asked, and every time I thought it was disgusting. I still don't drink primarily because even years later I cannot stand the taste of alcohol, even when it's diluted; my secondary reason is because I don't want to limit my experience of life.

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