Andy's rant about alcohol

[andrewducker]

There's recently been a fair bit of publicity about the alcohol problem this country has - sparked by the resignation of the leader of the Lib Dems over alcohol addiction, and a report that liver cirrhosis is on the rise.  Polls show that people are drinking more to deal with stress and work, but there seems to be more to it than that - a cultural malaise that seems to afflict the British more than most.  I understand that our levels of binge drinking are significantly higher than most other countries.

I've discussed with spidermonster our mutual frustration with people who seem to only enjoy themselves when drunk, and spend most of their time looking forward to when they can next get wasted.  Now, I've got nothing against people engaging in mind-altering substances as an occasional thing - but when your life begins to revolve around them there is a problem.  Multiple members of my regular gaming group arrive, open a beer, and then work their way through them over the course of the game, noticeably affecting their gameplay as they go.  I've been asked (by someone else) if I don't feel like I miss out on life by not drinking a lot.  All of this was leading me towards a post of some kind, and then I read this on a friend's journal (reposted anonymously, because their identity isn't important) and it crystallised everything for me.

Eleven days without alcohol makes you realise what an incredibly fucking boring thing life is.

And this seems to be the major fucking problem.  People hating their life, or at the least being bored and depressed by it, and not feeling that they can change it for the better.  It's a whole society medicating its miserableness by spending as much time as possible lowering their IQ to the point where life becomes bearable.  It's people unable to have fun unless they can blame the fun on alcohol.  Last night e had a few people over, and they sang, and played games and had some good conversations, and it was great.  And part of the reason it was great was that I knew that at least two of the people there dance and sing _while sober_.  It was a huge shock to me to originally discover that so many people wouldn't dance until they'd had a couple of drinks.  Singing seems to have become the province of professionals and drunks - when it used to be that _everyone_ sang.

Frankly, it disturbs me intensely, and I find it all hard to see as anything other than a sick society.

Comments

sick society...

[neriedes.livejournal.com]

I couldn't have put that better myself.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

[makyo.livejournal.com]

I don't drink alcohol, and am often asked why. The answer is that it's not something that has ever interested me - plus I like being able to think clearly. The response to this answer tends to vary somewhere between ``Huh? You're weird'' and ``Oh, fair enough, I suppose'' (although usually the latter carries overtones of ``but I don't really understand'').

It's often struck me as odd that while I'm often asked to justify my abstention, I don't think I've ever heard anyone who does drink asked to explain why they do.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

It's often struck me as odd that while I'm often asked to justify my abstention, I don't think I've ever heard anyone who does drink asked to explain why they do

You haven't hung out with enough alcoholics..

I agree with a lot of the above but I also think it's rather b/w. many people do use alcohol reasonably sensibly as an inhibition depressant to make social occasions jolly(er) as well as to briefly reduce stress on occasion (a g n t on coming home from work can be v welcome) - I am one of them I think. We all have different causes of stress, and levels of inhibition, and different things we feel inhibited about - I am not of the generation that feels dancing sans alcohol is this comfortable inevitable thing while A is; OTOH I have no problem talking in groups of people I don't know well whereas many people find that difficult.
One might point out that my non LJ "straight" type friends - who mostly like to drink to be sociable - can happily make good conversation all night whereas A's non drinking friends perhaps sometimes substitute conversation with games and song. That isn't a value judgment - it 's different horses for diff courses. I've been mildly appalled at some non drinking gaming events that conversation seesm to be entirely restricted to the Rules Of The Game - to me games are an excuse for social interaction, but I suspect they feel most comfortable focussing on the game and nothing but the game.

What I'm saying is it's all relative. Some people use dance & music to get socially uninhibited, some use alcohol, some use cocaine/E/whatever, some don't feel the need for anything. Or may not want to be disinhibited at all - which is another whole issue - is it entirely good always to want to be entirely in control? Almost anything can be "sick" in excess, if your sanity depends on it - sex, food, drink, computer games, LJ .

I hate the binge drinking culture as much as anyone else probably reading this LJ. And yes if your life is only palatable when you get massively munted every night, then yeh, your life isn't good. But this is nothing new: the reason that Russia has and has always had a vast alcoholism problem is that most its male population has been self medicating with vodka for centuries.. I suspect binge drinking is just another feature of the delinquent period that young people pass through on the way to whole adulthood - and stats show most people (tho not absolutely all) simply grow out of petty criminality - I suspect the same will turn out to be true of binge drinking.

[theferrett.livejournal.com]

I don't get it, either. I like life.

[andrewducker]

I am not of the generation that feels dancing sans alcohol is this comfortable inevitable thing while A is;

I think that being a generational thing is very unlikely. I think I know one other person who comes dancing sober with me. And I know a couple of people who enjoy singing - one of whom is part of a choral group. The vast majority of my friends are just as bad at needing alcohol as anyone else.

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

Show me a society which doesn't use any mood-altering substances?

And, while I'm at it, while most of the papers went a bundle on the liver cirrhosis news, how many of them noted that we've gone from among the lowest consumption of alcohol in Europe in the 50's, when real alcohol prices were lower and taxation and licensing were still based around around the wartime regime, to a little above the mean average: and liver cirrhosis is also only just above the mean? Not good, but hardly apocalyptic.

And now I shall agree with you about binge-drinking and a sick society. I don' t think Britain is exceptional in the gross amount we consume, but we do have a problem in the drinking patterns many of us exhibit. It's been like that for a while: I think somewhere around Queen Anne there was a taxation system put in to encourage domestic distillers, gin was cheaper than beer for a long time, and there are certainly accounts from then to today of exactly the same kind of drinking from squalid desperation. It's a hell of a lot better now than in the 1860s, but that don't say much.

There's also the influence of developed capitalism including rapid product cycling and heavy advertising, of course: I think I'd like to tie that in with increasing obesity despite constantly falling calorie intakes (average male daily calorie take was over 5,000 in the 50s, wasn't it?) and the massive growth of office jobs with stricly limited creativity and more-or-less abstraction from end products. But I don't have either the data or the capacity to analyse it in a useful way.

Thank you for raising the topic - it's provoked me to examine my thoughts (as you may have noticed), and it's also a necessary condition for trying to make a better society that we do examine these things. It (and indeed you) are a Good Thing.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

> people who seem to only enjoy themselves when drunk

I am slightly alarmed by th enumber of people who answer "would you like to dance?" with "Later. I'm not drunk enough to dance yet."

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

It's the same with singing. I go regularly to piano bars, and occasionally to karaoke clubs, and one hears that over and over again: "I'm not drunk enough to sing." It's a weird and alien mindset.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

I understand the singing more than the dancing, because when you're singing everyone's attention is actually on you, so I can see why you'd want to lessen your inhibitions unless you're really sure you're good, and you enjoy performing. (I tend to go for the "not singing in company" option.) But dancing - unless you're on a podium, nobody's watching you, and nobody cares if you dance well, so I don't understand that so much.

[andrewducker]

I agree entirely.

You're being remarkably prolific today :->

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

Heh, maybe you're being remarkably interesting :o)

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Eleven days without alcohol makes you realise what an incredibly fucking boring thing life is

If this is a young person without responsibilities then for god's sake they should change their life. I know it's a joke but, shit.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of it is to do with the current disjuncture between effort and reward. If you're of the baby bust generation, you're pretty much fucked by demographics anyway as far as I can see. You maybe can't afford a house and/or won't have a pension, so why not just drink - which becomes more affordable rather than less - to blot it all out and shorten your lifespan? In a perverse way it makes sense - I don't think it's any coincidence that the birth rate has fallen as well.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

I agree, but ... this is far from new. Consider the perils of gin, much written about during the Victorian era.

In other words, if I start reading about societies alcohol problems, I wonder what's being hidden from me by reportage about a problem which has always existed...

Which is not to say that I think alcohol and alcoholism is not a problem; deciding how to approach the problem is not trivial, either. An increase in liver cirrhosis is definitely problematic, and I think the rise of alcohol related health and welfare problems are, as you say, symptomatic of wider problems in society. We need to address those too, again, as you say -- how do we make our society not only fair, but of value? Being a leftie, I'd like to say it's all the fault of capitalism privileging profit over community, but I know that's my personal political bias. Assessing what has changed is ... well, something most governments don't seem that keen on assessing. They tackle the symptom, rather than the disease. Gah. It's enough to drive me to drink (sorry, in poor taste, I know).

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I am not of the generation that feels dancing sans alcohol is this comfortable inevitable thing while A is

In all fairness, my aunts and uncles are about your age (some a little older) and we were all dancing at Christmas, singing loudly, etc etc, without being particularly drunk in most cases.

The one person who wouldn't join in? My twenty one year old sister.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Speaking as (I assume) one of those someones who dances and sings while sober, I have to agree.

I like drinking. I do. I like nice wine, and good whisky, and I even quite enjoy cheap spirity drinks. I'll even admit that I quite like the giddy sensation of being a little bit drunk.

That being said, I do think it's a shame that there's this culture of self-consciousness these days where people can't let go until they're drunk.

And what annoys me far more than that is that if I, say, dance and sing while sober, I'm either thought of as (a) drunk, or (b) a bit daft.

Now, I am a bit daft, but not just because I'll dance without drinking. WTF?

[andrewducker]

I didn't mean to imply that I thought that alcohol problems were _new_. Although we do seem to have had a small upswing recently, binge drinking has been a problem for a loooooong time.

[andrewducker]

Tis true. I'm an immensely fascinating chap. I can also leap tall buildings in a single bound, catch bullets and complete sudoku even faster than I can do Rubik's cubes.

(note - at least two of the above are untrue - and one of them is only true by misdirection)

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

Righto, nevermind me then :) Sorry to ramble off on a tangent.

[andrewducker]

and the massive growth of office jobs with stricly limited creativity and more-or-less abstraction from end products.

Tis true - being distanced from the means of production will cause anomie amongst the proletariat.

[andrewducker]

Good Lord. You're _always_ online.

I find it so easy to lose track of who is/isn't with people who (a) have odd time zones and (b) aren't on IM - I thought it was dead late where you are, but it's only 8pm

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

It's obviously a bit to do with individual temperament, a bit to do with culture.

Singing eg - in Korea , EVERYONE sings karaoke - they're crazy about it - and no self respecting dinner party is complete without people getting a chance to do their well rehearsed party pieces. (To be fair though, they also like drink!!)

I have a bit of a cringe about people singing because of long exposure to filk at sf cons, which is often not a Pleasant Experience - but that's just me. My friend Alison (bohemiancoast) who is pretty much my age will burst into song at the drop of a hat (though you *can* then sit on her - she's quite bouncy).

Dancing is a bit different. IN recent Western "yoof culture" (m'lud) dancing has become a fairly essential part of conventional social life, getting laid , et al. But not everyone likes or feels comfortable dancing (me, for eg) - hence the use of drink/drugs. If you (one) couldn't go out on a Saturday night without playing rugby, I'd bet we'd see a lot of people swallowing E before going out to be scrum halves :-)

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

I love to dance, I dont especially like to drink

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

"Eleven days without alcohol makes you realise what an incredibly fucking boring thing life is"

Bollocks. I disagree :-)

Life, or at least how much fun you have in it, is entirely down to actions of the individual. Much in the same way in fact, that I believe that a "party is what you make it" except on a much wider and longer term scale.

The booze and singing/dancing thing is merely about overcoming selfconsciousness - it doesn't make them alcoholics or unable to have fun without drinking: there are a million and one other activities that *don't* make people selfconscious in the slightest.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

I didn't drink at all for roughly 3 years, but now I'm fairly happy to have 1 or 2 drinks with friends. I don't look down on people who feel that they need a drink to totally relax in an awkward situation, but I think that's rather different to what you're angry about. At least I would hope so.

[andrewducker]

IN recent Western "yoof culture" (m'lud) dancing has become a fairly essential part of conventional social life

By "recent" do you mean "since the 1960s"?

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

More 1980s. It's been a whole different scene since E and the Happy Mondays. hey in my day sonny, we didn't even have "clubs".

[andrewducker]

I believe my mother referred to them as "discos" and she certainly went to them in the 1960s.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Yeh, we had discos. But they just weren't as big a deal as clubs were in the 90s.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

no matter the age or responsibilities they should change their life. Neither misery nor drinking to alleviate it should be inflicted on their family...

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean (I'm a parent) but sometimes we endure a bit of tedium for the sake of supporting the family financially, and we can't just kick off to Tahiti or something. Less room to manouevre. But spending the day drunk isn't a sensible response of course.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I spent far far far too much of my life drinking far far far too much. I knew what I was doing. Reducing my mental capacity until I could manage to have fun with the average type person, substituting for anything productive I might otherwise have to do, easing the the pains of life, helping me sleep, helping me ignore and tolerate and live with what was wrong in my life.

I gave up for 2005, because it was getting truly silly and I wanted to clear my head and sort out my life. I cannot do moderation (with anything!) tried it many a time and failed hopelessly. About halfway through the year I realised just HOW much it had been cutting me off from life, from my feelings, from actually *living* rather than just surviving. I feel now that I never want to drink again.

People are variously mystified, impressed and accepting. Many people seem to be urging me to start drinking again at some point (albeit maybe a bit sensibly). I don't know why - I'm better conversation sober and a lot less problematic to deal with. Plus I'll drive you home :-) That's a very cool point, actually, I never have to worry about transport. If an event is going to be beyong public transport options in terms of time, i just drive/ride the bike.

But I will sing and dance (for a given value of 'dancing') when sober. Always would do :-)

[nickys.livejournal.com]

> It's a weird and alien mindset.

Very much so.

[taromazzy.livejournal.com]

Man, I feel thirsty just reading this...........

However, I love my life sober OR drunk, it's all good!

DRINK!

[opusfluke.livejournal.com]

Feck! Arse! Gerls! Now that's out of the way I can state that as a notorious drunk I suffer from the Sam Vimes effect. I only drink to make other people seem more interesting at some points but I never mean to get bladdered. I most often get a bit squiffy and stay there. This is fun. Getting blind drunk is not fun. Just as a bit stoned can be creative and fun while cabbaged is profoundly boring. Just as a little sleep deprivation is amusing but bug-eyed paranoid is not fun. Having started on nicotine again for a second time after a year being clean I can say that the enhanced dopamine reception makes me feel better, just as I discovered the last time I was clean for a year. In essence eveything in moderation. Gaming on a little booze was fun for me, anything more than keeping myself topped up defeated the purpose. N.B. Never run Cthulhu or play Paranoia as run by Munchkin unless sober as an ascetic- you only wind up crying.