11 ms·

How we became the heaviest drinkers in a century

93 points by tomkwok 11y ago

bbcbasic 11y ago
As a Brit of similar age, who went to uni I can totally relate to everything and it was a very enjoyable read and a trip down memory lane. It is very interesting to see how the drinking culture has been shaped and how that we are sheep by partaking. Well in a way we are sheep and wolves. Because there is something in drinking culture in the UK that is about 'egging on' other people to drink more, so if someone who is known to drink decides to take it easy (like just drink a bit slowly) then they are often cajoled into drinking more. In addition there is the social pressure of buying rounds, so the next drink is always coming and many pints of beer all on the table at once. And you have to buy your round or you are a cheapskate - even if you didn't drink as much on the other rounds! Then in the workplace there is the bonding and social cohesion you miss out on if you abstain at work lunchtimes or functions. Drinking increases your chance of greasing the wheels of promotion and advancement. I've worked places where people would get drunk at lunchtime. And not always on a Friday! I'm glad it is at the peak and now declining. Probably a good thing. Living in Australia now. Drinking culture is definitely less but it is certainly there. I think the fitness and coffee culture trumps it.
- bshimmin 11y ago
  I too enjoyed this piece and could relate to, well, all of it apart from the hair straighteners. I spent a year on an exchange programme at a university in Italy, and found that 1) the Brits were by far the worst drinkers (followed by the Americans), and 2) the Italians had absolutely no concept of buying a round of drinks (I think they do have the phrase "bere in giro" but I'm not sure now if this was just a literal translation of the English without any genuine cultural meaning) - and the difference this makes is striking. While the author talks about Peak Booze being over, the drinking culture in London is still pretty appalling, and not just dominated by people in their thirties (who should, like me, be the Peak Booze generation described in the article). I do see an improvement in younger people (late teens, early twenties), I think, who seem to have much less interest in smoking and to drink a bit more in moderation than we did - but I'm not confident that those same people in five years in London won't be out drinking to excess three or four nights a week too.
- tajen 11y ago
  A London company wants to buy my business, but I've refused. It's not even about money, because everything is negotiable (including remote office from France), it's that at the bottom line I care for my health and abs. I want to get as far away as possible from their drinking habits, they look old at young age, and they'd enroll me into drinking.
  - samtp 11y ago
    Unless the company looking to buy you are professional drunks and/or alcohol salesmen, that's an absurd way of thinking.
ZenoArrow 11y ago
I can also relate to this article, it's a fairly accurate assessment of social/drinking culture in the UK at the time. Couple of points... "Alcohol makes many of us unpleasant: verbally abusive, angry, destructive." That's a bit of a stretch. Yes you do get the 'angry drunk' phenomenon, but the number of drunken fights I've seen has been relatively small. I think this is different from place to place, there are cities where I know this is a bigger issue, but in general people tend to be more friendly when they're drunk. "This generational difference isn’t just anecdotal. Young people are drinking less frequently, and more of them are teetotal. We don’t know why: it could be financial hardship, an increase in the proportion that don’t drink for religious reasons, or increased time spent online." If I had to guess, I'd say it was the rise of importance in gym culture.
- DanBC 11y ago
  A lot of violence in the UK has links to alcohol. http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/focus-on-violent-crime-and-sexual-offences--2013-14/sty-facts-about-alcohol-related-violence.html http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/f...
  - MLR 11y ago
    A lot of crime will be linked with alcohol, it's an inhibition lowering drink, and in my experience a 'mood amplifier' if you will. You get a 'violent' person drinking, you get an angry drunk who'll go looking for a fight, people drinking when they're in a bad mood or a bad place might be massively unpleasant that night. There are some people who just shouldn't drink and it's not an exaggeration to say that for them, "Alcohol makes [them] unpleasant: verbally abusive, angry, destructive.", but in most cases it's not that simple at all.
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  Some people can be nice drunks, though they are rare. Studies have determined that the one consistent behavioral change from being drunk, across continents and cultures, is an increase in aggression.
ZeroGravitas 11y ago
As someone of roughly the same age, now with kids, I'm glad that the younger generation seems a bit more sensible. Possibly a case of extra disposable income and social attitudes needing some time to catch up to the realities of it.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  Or they have a better ways to get high. There are a lot of options out there and in recent years some of them are tolerated more than before. I think that in any generation the amount of vice is constant per capita, just its distribution and diversity differs.
  - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
    Well, some vices are objectively worse than others. I think alcohol, despite being legal and socially acceptable, is pretty bad for you by various metrics. Hopefully whatever they've shifted to is better, not worse and the social customs around it lead to less dependency and misuse.
abstractbeliefs 11y ago
Being in wave below the author (currently in my 3rd year of University), I think there's also something to be said for how we treat alcohol around our children. In the UK we have a strange duality with underage drinking - in part we accept it as unstoppable, but at the same time it has a very strong stigma from society, at least here in Scotland. By the time you hit 18, suddenly the reins are off, and what was once forbidden and done in stolen hours becomes acceptable, and without fail, uni freshers and those in college go off the rails, often developing habits that last the better part of a decade. My current partner is Spanish, and talks of a culture that has never made drinking a forbidden fruit, stories of drinking at home with family, in moderation, abound. She, and her peers, simply don't have the "you're an adult now, DOWN IT FRESHER" attitude my Scottish peers do.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >talks of a culture that has never made drinking a forbidden fruit The same thing is often said about Italy and France. For the life of me I can't recall where I read it (maybe someone can help out), but I've seen that because alcohol isn't treated as a forbidden fruit in such countries, alcoholism is also not treated as a problem, and that rates of it are severely understated. In other words, for example, it's far more socially acceptable to have 3 glasses of wine with your lunch every day in France than in the US.
  - noxToken 11y ago
    Anecdote: Many of my coworkers are from Spain. It is commonly said that two hour lunches with a beer or three are the norm. When I first started, the director took the 5 new hires to lunch, and I recall him stating that he would have bought pitchers for the table if our client was not a stickler about noon drinking. It is also very common for company events (perhaps twice/month on average?) to be held at bars immediately after work. There is no pressure for anyone to participate, but there is definitely an emphasis on drinking.
    - mason55 11y ago
      > It is also very common for company events (perhaps twice/month on average?) to be held at bars immediately after work. I mean, I don't think that is necessarily rare in the US either. We have weekly happy hours that get expensed if someone senior enough is there. And we have quarterly company parties that are paid for by the company and are just three hour open bars in a different location each time (boat, bowling, etc).
racl101 11y ago
I pretty much stopped drinking or 99% of my drinking after I turned the legal age (18yrs in Canada) because it wasn't fun anymore. It wasn't taboo. I started drinking at age 16, and drank only at parties if there were fun people around. Those 2 years are where I've done most of my drinking. Fast forward 10 years after I turned 18, and in total, I probably consume the equivalent of two cases of 12 bottles of beer per year, if that which averages out to about 0.45 bottles of beer per week.
jrpt 11y ago
I don't know much about the correlations the article mentions (for example, are raves really a good reason why pub attendance fell?) however, I think that a discussion of alcohol is incomplete if it doesn't mention addiction anywhere nor mention the fact that the majority of alcohol sales come from the top drinkers: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/25/think-you-drink-a-lot-this-chart-will-tell-you/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/25/th... So it's probably not the generation as a whole that has an abnormal relationship, but a small minority of the generation.
- gavazzy 11y ago
  10% of the population is drinking 10 drinks a day. That's unfathomable
peterwwillis 11y ago
Almost nobody I know under 30 has any idea why one would sip whisky. According to them, whisky (and alcohol in general) is nasty stuff, and you drink it to get drunk. To which I always reply: why wouldn't every strong drink consist of vodka, then? As an alternative, cocktails had a small resurgence in the 90s that continues today. But most bars make their cocktails with different proportions and different ingredients. So not only could the number of possible cocktails reach infinity, but the number of possible locations to find a 'well made' cocktail increases. If you want a good (or new) cocktail you're always on a search for that new special drink. It used to be that drinking the cheapest beer you could find in as high a quantity as you could find made for a fun night out [for young folk]. But new drinking establishments are tailor made to provide you a new product which costs more money, with the promise of a more sophisticated (or at least variable) flavor palette; the availability of flavored spirits in every bar and club shows how hard the industry works to try and gain new customers. All of this comes at the same time that wine is probably as cheap as it has been in centuries. The increase in new markets such as China, Brazil and India have created a giant global marketplace for wine, which New World growers such as Argentina, Australia, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States have happily provided for. We're awash in wine that is not just cheap, but tasty, too, growing the market even more. We have more products than ever, more choice than ever, more customers than ever, more availability than ever, and a lower price than ever before. And they wonder why we drink more?
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  Some people like whisky, some people don't. If they were first introduced to Teachers, it might take them a while to find something that's a little easier to drink neat.
guelo 11y ago
The title should say UK millenials. I'm not part of that "we".
- theoh 11y ago
  Please don't add fuel to the fire of HN's fastidious interference with article titles. Of course tabloid newspapers will have titles that are aimed at their target audience ("we"). If you have the media literacy to notice that you aren't included in that "we", you also have the media literacy not to need the title modified.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Titles are important. They are how we determine what fraction of the flood of information we'll consume. Getting them right is really helpful. Of course you know what's wrong with a title, after reading the article.
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    It was my first question when I saw the title: "What do you mean, 'we'? Which 'we' are you talking about?" A little more context would have been nice.
    - theoh 11y ago
      Yes, context is the magic word. Fiddling with the wording of titles, not so much.
w__m 11y ago
"I wouldn’t say any of my close friends are alcoholic" tut-tut, a single alcohol palimpsest (loss of consciousness / memory without falling asleep) indicates "warning" phase of alcoholism. Yes, it does not necesarily mean You will become a chronic alcoholic, but it means "controll was lost" and You are on your way there.
sjg007 11y ago
Alcohol is too cheap; especially at UK universities where it is not even taxed! In addition all GSA events are organized around booze. The again you have Scandinavia with high alcohol taxes that don't do much to limit consumption apparently.
brogrammmer 11y ago
Yeah, but drinking's super fun so who cares?

93 points by tomkwok 11y ago

As a Brit of similar age, who went to uni I can totally relate to everything and it was a very enjoyable read and a trip down memory lane. It is very interesting to see how the drinking culture has been shaped and how that we are sheep by partaking. Well in a way we are sheep and wolves. Because there is something in drinking culture in the UK that is about 'egging on' other people to drink more, so if someone who is known to drink decides to take it easy (like just drink a bit slowly) then they are often cajoled into drinking more. In addition there is the social pressure of buying rounds, so the next drink is always coming and many pints of beer all on the table at once. And you have to buy your round or you are a cheapskate - even if you didn't drink as much on the other rounds! Then in the workplace there is the bonding and social cohesion you miss out on if you abstain at work lunchtimes or functions. Drinking increases your chance of greasing the wheels of promotion and advancement. I've worked places where people would get drunk at lunchtime. And not always on a Friday! I'm glad it is at the peak and now declining. Probably a good thing. Living in Australia now. Drinking culture is definitely less but it is certainly there. I think the fitness and coffee culture trumps it.

bshimmin 11y ago
I too enjoyed this piece and could relate to, well, all of it apart from the hair straighteners. I spent a year on an exchange programme at a university in Italy, and found that 1) the Brits were by far the worst drinkers (followed by the Americans), and 2) the Italians had absolutely no concept of buying a round of drinks (I think they do have the phrase "bere in giro" but I'm not sure now if this was just a literal translation of the English without any genuine cultural meaning) - and the difference this makes is striking. While the author talks about Peak Booze being over, the drinking culture in London is still pretty appalling, and not just dominated by people in their thirties (who should, like me, be the Peak Booze generation described in the article). I do see an improvement in younger people (late teens, early twenties), I think, who seem to have much less interest in smoking and to drink a bit more in moderation than we did - but I'm not confident that those same people in five years in London won't be out drinking to excess three or four nights a week too.
tajen 11y ago
A London company wants to buy my business, but I've refused. It's not even about money, because everything is negotiable (including remote office from France), it's that at the bottom line I care for my health and abs. I want to get as far away as possible from their drinking habits, they look old at young age, and they'd enroll me into drinking.
- samtp 11y ago
  Unless the company looking to buy you are professional drunks and/or alcohol salesmen, that's an absurd way of thinking.

ZenoArrow 11y ago

I can also relate to this article, it's a fairly accurate assessment of social/drinking culture in the UK at the time. Couple of points... "Alcohol makes many of us unpleasant: verbally abusive, angry, destructive." That's a bit of a stretch. Yes you do get the 'angry drunk' phenomenon, but the number of drunken fights I've seen has been relatively small. I think this is different from place to place, there are cities where I know this is a bigger issue, but in general people tend to be more friendly when they're drunk. "This generational difference isn’t just anecdotal. Young people are drinking less frequently, and more of them are teetotal. We don’t know why: it could be financial hardship, an increase in the proportion that don’t drink for religious reasons, or increased time spent online." If I had to guess, I'd say it was the rise of importance in gym culture.

DanBC 11y ago
A lot of violence in the UK has links to alcohol. http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/focus-on-violent-crime-and-sexual-offences--2013-14/sty-facts-about-alcohol-related-violence.html http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/f...
- MLR 11y ago
  A lot of crime will be linked with alcohol, it's an inhibition lowering drink, and in my experience a 'mood amplifier' if you will. You get a 'violent' person drinking, you get an angry drunk who'll go looking for a fight, people drinking when they're in a bad mood or a bad place might be massively unpleasant that night. There are some people who just shouldn't drink and it's not an exaggeration to say that for them, "Alcohol makes [them] unpleasant: verbally abusive, angry, destructive.", but in most cases it's not that simple at all.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
Some people can be nice drunks, though they are rare. Studies have determined that the one consistent behavioral change from being drunk, across continents and cultures, is an increase in aggression.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago

As someone of roughly the same age, now with kids, I'm glad that the younger generation seems a bit more sensible. Possibly a case of extra disposable income and social attitudes needing some time to catch up to the realities of it.

venomsnake 11y ago
Or they have a better ways to get high. There are a lot of options out there and in recent years some of them are tolerated more than before. I think that in any generation the amount of vice is constant per capita, just its distribution and diversity differs.
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  Well, some vices are objectively worse than others. I think alcohol, despite being legal and socially acceptable, is pretty bad for you by various metrics. Hopefully whatever they've shifted to is better, not worse and the social customs around it lead to less dependency and misuse.

abstractbeliefs 11y ago

Being in wave below the author (currently in my 3rd year of University), I think there's also something to be said for how we treat alcohol around our children. In the UK we have a strange duality with underage drinking - in part we accept it as unstoppable, but at the same time it has a very strong stigma from society, at least here in Scotland. By the time you hit 18, suddenly the reins are off, and what was once forbidden and done in stolen hours becomes acceptable, and without fail, uni freshers and those in college go off the rails, often developing habits that last the better part of a decade. My current partner is Spanish, and talks of a culture that has never made drinking a forbidden fruit, stories of drinking at home with family, in moderation, abound. She, and her peers, simply don't have the "you're an adult now, DOWN IT FRESHER" attitude my Scottish peers do.

forgetsusername 11y ago
>talks of a culture that has never made drinking a forbidden fruit The same thing is often said about Italy and France. For the life of me I can't recall where I read it (maybe someone can help out), but I've seen that because alcohol isn't treated as a forbidden fruit in such countries, alcoholism is also not treated as a problem, and that rates of it are severely understated. In other words, for example, it's far more socially acceptable to have 3 glasses of wine with your lunch every day in France than in the US.
- noxToken 11y ago
  Anecdote: Many of my coworkers are from Spain. It is commonly said that two hour lunches with a beer or three are the norm. When I first started, the director took the 5 new hires to lunch, and I recall him stating that he would have bought pitchers for the table if our client was not a stickler about noon drinking. It is also very common for company events (perhaps twice/month on average?) to be held at bars immediately after work. There is no pressure for anyone to participate, but there is definitely an emphasis on drinking.
  - mason55 11y ago
    > It is also very common for company events (perhaps twice/month on average?) to be held at bars immediately after work. I mean, I don't think that is necessarily rare in the US either. We have weekly happy hours that get expensed if someone senior enough is there. And we have quarterly company parties that are paid for by the company and are just three hour open bars in a different location each time (boat, bowling, etc).

racl101 11y ago

I pretty much stopped drinking or 99% of my drinking after I turned the legal age (18yrs in Canada) because it wasn't fun anymore. It wasn't taboo. I started drinking at age 16, and drank only at parties if there were fun people around. Those 2 years are where I've done most of my drinking. Fast forward 10 years after I turned 18, and in total, I probably consume the equivalent of two cases of 12 bottles of beer per year, if that which averages out to about 0.45 bottles of beer per week.

jrpt 11y ago

I don't know much about the correlations the article mentions (for example, are raves really a good reason why pub attendance fell?) however, I think that a discussion of alcohol is incomplete if it doesn't mention addiction anywhere nor mention the fact that the majority of alcohol sales come from the top drinkers: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/25/think-you-drink-a-lot-this-chart-will-tell-you/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/25/th... So it's probably not the generation as a whole that has an abnormal relationship, but a small minority of the generation.

gavazzy 11y ago
10% of the population is drinking 10 drinks a day. That's unfathomable

peterwwillis 11y ago

Almost nobody I know under 30 has any idea why one would sip whisky. According to them, whisky (and alcohol in general) is nasty stuff, and you drink it to get drunk. To which I always reply: why wouldn't every strong drink consist of vodka, then? As an alternative, cocktails had a small resurgence in the 90s that continues today. But most bars make their cocktails with different proportions and different ingredients. So not only could the number of possible cocktails reach infinity, but the number of possible locations to find a 'well made' cocktail increases. If you want a good (or new) cocktail you're always on a search for that new special drink. It used to be that drinking the cheapest beer you could find in as high a quantity as you could find made for a fun night out [for young folk]. But new drinking establishments are tailor made to provide you a new product which costs more money, with the promise of a more sophisticated (or at least variable) flavor palette; the availability of flavored spirits in every bar and club shows how hard the industry works to try and gain new customers. All of this comes at the same time that wine is probably as cheap as it has been in centuries. The increase in new markets such as China, Brazil and India have created a giant global marketplace for wine, which New World growers such as Argentina, Australia, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States have happily provided for. We're awash in wine that is not just cheap, but tasty, too, growing the market even more. We have more products than ever, more choice than ever, more customers than ever, more availability than ever, and a lower price than ever before. And they wonder why we drink more?

voltagex_ 11y ago
Some people like whisky, some people don't. If they were first introduced to Teachers, it might take them a while to find something that's a little easier to drink neat.

guelo 11y ago

The title should say UK millenials. I'm not part of that "we".

theoh 11y ago
Please don't add fuel to the fire of HN's fastidious interference with article titles. Of course tabloid newspapers will have titles that are aimed at their target audience ("we"). If you have the media literacy to notice that you aren't included in that "we", you also have the media literacy not to need the title modified.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Titles are important. They are how we determine what fraction of the flood of information we'll consume. Getting them right is really helpful. Of course you know what's wrong with a title, after reading the article.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  It was my first question when I saw the title: "What do you mean, 'we'? Which 'we' are you talking about?" A little more context would have been nice.
  - theoh 11y ago
    Yes, context is the magic word. Fiddling with the wording of titles, not so much.

w__m 11y ago

"I wouldn’t say any of my close friends are alcoholic" tut-tut, a single alcohol palimpsest (loss of consciousness / memory without falling asleep) indicates "warning" phase of alcoholism. Yes, it does not necesarily mean You will become a chronic alcoholic, but it means "controll was lost" and You are on your way there.

sjg007 11y ago

Alcohol is too cheap; especially at UK universities where it is not even taxed! In addition all GSA events are organized around booze. The again you have Scandinavia with high alcohol taxes that don't do much to limit consumption apparently.

brogrammmer 11y ago

Yeah, but drinking's super fun so who cares?