"Show me your [stiff upper lips]!"

Via Christopher Shea comes news that will surprise no one I've talked to since returning to the States:

Irish drinkers lead the EU in the proportion of those drinking that have 3-4 drinks (35%) or 5-6 drinks (19%). As 5 or more drinks as the threshold for binge drinking, the Irish Times hails our success in binge drinking. But wait.  Binge drinking is 5 or more drinks. It's true we lead Europe in the category of very precise binge drinking, i.e. 5 or 6.

But you have to look at all consumption over 5 drinks. For Ireland there's another 5% who have 7-9, and 2% who have 10 or more. Total percentage of bingers: 19+5+2=26%.  For the UK: 12% have 5-6, and 6% have 7-9, 6% have 10 or more. So 12+6+6=24% are binge drinkers.

I spent more than a few evenings in London stunned stupid by the prodigious quantities of alcohol everyone around me was consuming.  I'm not simply talking about London toughs either, but professional men and women who stepped in the pub on their way home from work intent on crawling out of it seven hours later stained and debased.  If their infamous reserve is roughly equivalent to the Freudian superego, I would say that it performs its role quite admirably until the moment it inexplicably abdicates its responsibilities and allows the id to do what it will. 

And will it ever. 

The abuse that streams from their formerly stiff upper lips is more foul than anything this side of Deadwood.  That polite archeology student in the hipster sailor suit you were talking to ten minutes ago?  He no longer remembers who you are, but is damn sure you gave him mortal offense and insists on taking it outside before disappearing down the bar.  When he returns a moment later he promptly introduces himself.

Now I'm not unfamiliar with the levels of public intoxication and its attendant calls to violence I witnessed in England, but keep in mind that this is April and the Krewe of Bacchus is nowhere in sight.  When your nightly ritual resembles nothing so much as Mardi Gras, it might be time to consider cutting back on your cups.  Harsh criticism from a guest to be sure, but it's not like I'm an evangelical teetotaler.  I end my days with a vodka-something or two (depending on how stressful being awake has been) and am in no position to lecture other people about the manner or amount they drink, which is mostly my point: when someone like me marvels at the manner and amount of drink a given people consume, something is seriously wrong with the world. 

Because when people in no position to criticize anyone are flabbergasted into embracing their own hypocrisy it means you have a problem. 

Comments

[John Emerson]

Two drinks a night do not make you "someone like me" in the sense that you intended the phrase, except maybe to your mom and Dear Abby. Normally I'm an Anglophobe, but I have to stick up for them in this case.

[SEK]

Keep in mind that, while in England, I picked up their habit for understatement.

[SeanH]

I have absolutely no idea where your hosts saw fit to take you.

[SEK]

Camden Town, of course.

[Dominic Fox]

"You guys drink like someone's about to take it away from you..." - Rich Hall

[SeanH]

Ah, there's your problem.

[josef_kaye]

At fifteen minutes to closing, my friends would buy three pints for each of us--this is after we had been drinking for four hours at a steady (if that is the word) clip--and proceed to finish them before my horrified gaze. As with you, these guys and girls were all from the upper end of the educated classes. I thought I was a fair drinker but on a dedicated night I can't put away much more than half of what a UK Classics PhD throws downs in an average evening. My two months in London were quite an education.

[Naadir Jeewa]

Camden's a fairly average place to get plastered.

I just saw on Facebook, someone I know is thinking of sending their child to a boarding school in Berkshire who offers discounts if you're a pub landlord.

"As with you, these guys and girls were all from the upper end of the educated classes. I thought I was a fair drinker but on a dedicated night I can't put away much more than half of what a UK Classics PhD throws downs in an average evening."

Well, try and put away what a UK mature student union hacktivist in Bloomsbury throws down in an average evening. I tried that for a few months last year, and am still regretting it.

[John Emerson]

A thousand years of high British and Irish culture mocked by some rube from the land of Huey Long and Gerald L. K. Smith. .

[Ads]

Oh dear... What have I done...

[Ads]

And when and why did you walk to the other place? Did you lose your Oyster card or something? Jeez...

[SEK]

I slightly altered the facts to protect your identity, you doofus. As for when I walked down there, it was either the day I returned from Adam's or the day I returned from Manchester. I distinctly remember having returned and you having been busy, but you and I did so much walking it's all blurred together in my head.

[Ads]

One more thing. Was at my daughter's primary school yesterday, waiting near the office while my wife paid the lunch money for the term. Other mums in a circle, talking about what they did with their Easter breaks, turned instantly into mega-hangover comparisons. "I still can't see straight, four days later, and am headed home to be sick in the toilet." "Right, well, my husband and I were thrown out of Greece for fouling their pavements the morning after the second to last night..."

These were moms of four year olds, mind you. Four year olds who were on the trips with them.

Interesting country.

[Ads]

SEK and I are BFF now, I hope everyone knows that. I mean, he just called me a doofus!

The cats and the Greek place miss you.

[alkau]

Have you tasted the water over there. If you did you have the answer - You must drink to get the liquid needed for you to live, so why not drink something that taste well enough to drink!