Comments on: The British Disease of Not Being Able To Drink Properly

By: Lauren Age 17

Lauren Age 17 — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 21:25:06 +0000

Yes! How right are you?! Binge drinking is not a new problem, ‘idiots’ just need to be taught how its done properly from a young age! But at the end of the day binge drinking is fun! And while i’m young i shall continue to do so EVERY saturday night! We’re British, we’re fun, intelligent humorous people….let our alcohol embedded culture remain!! xxxxxx

By: John Elfed Hughes

John Elfed Hughes — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 07:11:38 +0000

It sounds fair enough to me. Once you cause trouble, that’s when you draw the line.

By: Dan B

Dan B — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 14:35:58 +0000

You Sir are a wise man. I love booze. Cider for preference mmmmmmm, and my liver throbs.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 03:28:10 +0000

I know a bit about Binge Drinking I did it once and the binge lasted for over thirty years. Having been interested in all things DNA I can safely say that I had a massive predisposition towards the stuff going by the latest evidence. I got to say that I enjoyed most of it in my early twenties but as one consultant once said to me “drink enough and you will become an alcoholic”, but being the “idiot” I am, I carried on regardless……. Have fun.

Another Birmingham University drunk! (in recovery)Read about my recovery at my blog

By: matt

matt — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 22:46:24 +0000

Alexi Sayle once recommended the development of a special “drunk’s car” for the commited drink driver. I seem to remember it would be the size of a reliant robin, coated in 3 ft of foam padding, had a top speed of 5 mph and had a large rotating illuminated sign on top which said simply “drunk”.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 16:23:21 +0000

“Perhaps this is the problem, that rather then teaching our children about the dangers of alcohol we should be showing them how it’s done properly.”

I’m in the biz, and we do. It’s called “safer drinking” or “harm minimisation” if you want a nice broad term that can be applied to drugs also.

I’m a great one for getting very ddrunnk myself (it’s refreshing!) but it’s not binge drinking like the pros do it. Unless you wake up in casualty the next morning, missing an eye from having collapsed on some railings, surrounded by nurses who won’t treat you because you kept trying to punch them the night before, having alienated all of your friends and been tossed out of your gaff, you can’t really say you’re binge drinking properly …

that said, most of the drinks ed. for kids is aimed at binge drinking because of the danger of fatal alcohol poisoning, which takes an annual toll of the young and foolish. The fighting’s a bit of a side issue — they’re trying to combat it because of the one-punch-deaths, another regular but depressing statistic in the binge-drinking world.

By: Lawrenson, M

Lawrenson, M — Sat, 31 Jul 2004 02:34:28 +0000

I’ve been involved in ‘binge drinking’ in it’s current newsworthy sense a few times. The crush, the noise, the rivers of booze, the shouts of disappointment from people not being allowed entry. And this was a Monday! (Student night). I wouldn’t like to see what it’s like on a Friday. The places I was taken to, the local Walkabout and Liquid (a Hanley club) there was nothing to do but drink. You can barely see, you can’t hear anything said to you, what’s the point?

In the words of Randy Newman – Don’t turn on the light, ’cause I don’t wanna see!

By: Dad

Dad — Sat, 31 Jul 2004 01:31:30 +0000

Limited drinking hours were always the excuse for stacking up a few pints before closing time, but today it seems the stacking starts when the bar opens?

I’m with Jez on this one. Alcohol has a positive effect in removing social barriers to conversation, though sometimes this is at the expense of listening as well as talking! Pubs should encourage discussion, not drown it with music (I am basically deaf in a high ambient noise environment and I would guess I am not alone in this respect).

It’s been a long time since I was seriously drunk and I really don’t want to revisit the experience. I’m simply getting old.

As to Broad Street, in the 1950s it was the dullest street in Brum and it wasn’t much better in the “swinging” sixties – the fact that Lee Longland is still tehre is quite remarkable. Of course in those days Birmingham was lacking in almost any form of social outlet. Maybe the flowering of Broad Street was a necessary diversion.

By: jonathan

jonathan — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 22:41:11 +0000

Absolutely right Pete. We have been binge drinking in this country since a long time before that scary term was invented…and not just here either. When I lived in small-town northern Spain most of the bars were open all night Saturday, and a couple of them until 7AM. One of these late bars was known as the ‘violent bar’ because all the aggressively-inclined young folk would gather there, and at 6AM sharp(seemingly on some kind of signal invisible to the uninitiated) put down their drinks and launch into a good old-fashioned pub brawl. We used to retreat to the safety of the other side of the square and watch them throw dustbin lids at each other with great force and inaccuracy. It looked like ‘Jeux Sans Frontieres’ for drunks. At least it did to me, but you have to remember, I was very, very drunk…

By: dan

dan — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 16:05:57 +0000

Perhaps you could go the whole hog, Pete and have a complete Vocational Qualification. A GNVQ in Consuming Alcohol. You could have lectures from drunk academics (wait a minute, sounds like my History of Ideas unit at Uni), a unit on dealing with the improving effect alcohol has on the appearence of the opposite sex, science/maths modules that helps folk calculate the cheapest way to get drunk in any given hostelry through a cash to alcohol percentage ratio thang. I for one would have signed up for the drunk chat up lines seminar when I was free and single. Perhaps I could have saved myself a great deal of time and embarrassment, ahhh but would it have been so much fun? You’ll have to ask Dave Metcalfe, he witnessed much of this from me while down in Pompey.

By: Jez

Jez — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 15:23:08 +0000

While I intend to do all the same stuff you describe (because we’ll be doing together) I don’t consider that binge drinking. The aim of the evening is not to pack down as much random alcohol as possible, simply in order to get vomitously drunk before being kicked out. It’s to socialise – talking about breasts (although I suspect Spider-Man 2 might edge them out this week, geeks that we are), listening to how the path of Dan’s life has brought him back to us, and yes even going for a balti at Bombay Spice afterwards.

Many pub chains, of the Branigans, Walkabouts, etc variety, are designed to discourage people from talking. In a nutshell – turn up the music so it drowns out conversation, remove most of the furniture so there’s no where to sit, promote sales lots of sweet sticky drinks that mask the taste of alcohol. Result? Bags of cash in the till, loads of pissed-up idiots in the streets.