i’m so cool, i can drink so much
the other day, drinking on public transportation was banned. and what that lead to, predictably, was a giant booze party that ended in violence.
i’ve lived here quite a while now, and one thing i still just cannot wrap my head around is the british approach to drinking.
many of my u.s. readers will be surprised to learn that drinking on public transportation was legal in the first place. in fact, drinking in almost all public places is perfectly legal. this, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. but combine it with the british attitude to alcohol, and you get a lot of problems.
drinking makes up a significant percentage of most socialising in the u.k., and drinking regularly (read:daily) is considered the norm by many. going to the pub several times during the week for “a few pints” is fairly typical, and binge drinking on weekends is a frequent occurence. for special occasions or sporting events, the ante is upped even further. nor is it restricted to the menfolk – many women i know go home and unwind after work by consuming the better part of a bottle of wine. just because.
all this drinking means there are high levels of associated rowdiness, illness, and violence – the news is full of it every day. and because of this, tube rides home on saturday evenings are loud, crowded, sloshy affairs. yobs sit at the back of buses with a can of lager, disruptive, intimidating and vandalising. empty trains become rolling parties for underage teen drinkers, smoking cigarettes and playing music.
and in response to the ban on alcohol on public transport, there’s near riots in a protest of the loss of their “right to drink”.
i just don’t get it – the french drink a lot. the spanish drink a lot. yet they don’t have anywhere near the consistently excessive levels of binge drinking that occur here. every weekend is seen as another opportunity to get wasted. and the problem is not even so much that it’s their “right”, but that they seem to take real pride in just how much, just how often, and just how many places they drink. they seem intent on drinking themselves into a stupor just as often as possible.
they’re drunk at sporting events, drunk on holiday abroad, drunk on the tube, drunk in the park. anywhere and everywhere.
i’m no teetotaller, and i’ve certainly had my share of embarrassingly tipsy evenings and hungover mornings. but they are the rarity rather than the rule. jonno and i frequently go a week or two without any alcohol – something nearly unthinkable to most of my british friends, who tell me how they find it really difficult when they “detox” by abstaining for 10 days.
when i first arrived, i enjoyed the more relaxed attitude to drinking. five years later, i’m so tired of all the public drunkenness and shit that goes with it. i’m astounded by just how deeply alcohol permeates everything – it’s depressing and ugly.
not that the ban means people will be any more sober when i’m on the northern line after 11:00pm, mind you. just that there will be fewer empty bottles rolling around under my feet.
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Comment by noble savage
2.06.2008 @ 21:57 pm
tell me about it! i could’ve written this myself.
i used to think it was great that the brits were more relaxed about drinking, thinking surely it must result in more responsible and mature drinking habits than those in the puritanical and rule-loving US. man, was i wrong! when the rose-colored glasses came off i saw just how pervasive and destructive the constant drinking can be on the people, the nation, the entire way of life here. i find it quite sad when grown adults with otherwise respectable lives brag about how trashed they get on a regular basis, as if the only thing that makes them interesting is how many pints they can down. it truly is pitiable.
and, like you, i used to put back the booze like it was nobody’s business so i know that of which i speak.
Comment by Charlotte
3.06.2008 @ 12:52 pm
Having lived in the UK and Germany, I’ve spent some time trying to work out why the attitude to alcohol is so different. In Germany, alcohol is very much part of life, but there is far less of the yobbishness and drinking to get wasted that I also noticed is entrenched in British society.
One thing Germany does differently is that teenagers can drink wine and beer from the age of 16. This potentially means there is less defiance around alcohol; it is part of life. I went to a huge concert here in the Burg last year, where beer was served in one litre plastic glasses. People got very drunk and had a fabulous time. Afterwards, they quietly got in their buses and on the train and went home. No violence, no fights, no aggression, none of that scary weird atmosphere you get in the UK.
Perhaps it’s because public drinking is acceptable here, everybody does it, including older people, that no-one can get their thrills from being in-your-face and wrecked. I still haven’t worked it out.