to think the binge drinking culture is a national disgrace?

[Carrierpenguin]

I don't go on many nights out but when I do I see grown adults vomiting in the streets, last week I saw an adult man vomit over himself and the platform whilst staggering for a 9pm train, his also drunk friend laughed I find all this behaviour disgusting and unacceptable, someone has to clear up after these people (poor cleaner) and I read on BBC website it costs £21 billion per year to emergency services and a&e.

So someone with a heart attack should have to compete with a drunken fool on a night out? Qualified doctors have to treat people who chose to drink a litre of vodka for a laugh after work with their friends? Police have to break up drunken street fights whilst someone else gets burgled?

I don't have the answer, but I find the binge drinking culture disgusting, perhaps there could be another advertising campaign to show how revolting and antisocial it is (I think there was one a few years ago). As a society we seem to be too accepting of this irresponsible behaviour?

Hope, thanks for replying. I wouldn't expect someone with a name like HopeClearwater to be anything but naive and sanctimonious. I appreciate the suggestion re a visit to A&E, but you might be depressed to hear that I actually run a hospital with two A&E departments, so I have the pleasure of seeing - and dealing with - the fall-out of people's lifestyle choices on a daily basis.

SirChenjin, thanks for the Telegraph link, but I'd suggest it's of less value than my own on the same subject (which, in case you missed it, is
www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/160680/e96457.pdf ). Not only does yours come from a Torygraph interpretation of a Eurobarometer study, as opposed to the World Health Organisation, but it's now five years old.

Yet again, people are letting conjecture and prejudice get in the way of their judgment. After all, why rely on actual facts when we already know what we think?

I grew up in Newcastle in the 70's, an area where heavy drinking is traditional. Going on pub crawls by age 14 was normal. I don't recall seeing women urinating or vomiting in the streets ,couples having sex in public, (though there were definitely other problems connected with drinking).Nowadays this is seen as part of a good night out. Watch Geordie shore. Fights break out regularly, the house is smashed up, one of the girls has sex and can't remember afterwards, another urinates the bed, vomiting everywhere is normal to them.
This is what the binge drinking culture is (and tbh they drink so frequently I don't think 'binging' is really accurate). Years ago people, especially women, would have been ashamed to be seen like that in public. Nowadays they're treated like celebrities because of it.

No, it's not of less value. If you are referring to Annex 3 of your report then you will notice that the figures are taken from studies which are older than the one I linked to in the Telegraph (which did not undertake the study but merely reported its findings)

I recognise that change fatlazy.

mummy you do know that Geordie Shore/Essex are staged and scripted don't you and produced to have maximum impact? They show us as much about 'reality' as Trumpton does?

You shouldn't watch anything on there with any degree of credulity or conclude anything other than the scriptwriters/programme makers/participants/audience are vacuous dickheads for colluding in this spectacle.

I don't watch the programmes but I have young family who go out!

I think what's almost more worrying to me is the anti-women stance so many people take when discussing this. As though it's normal and somehow acceptable to see men pissing in the streets or having fights, but definitely not girls: surely it's revolting no matter what the gender? Also the implications of rape; why is it so often the girl's fault when neither party can remember who consented to what?

OP, surely no one thinks people getting this pissed is a good thing? So YABU to ask! I've was drunk to the point of vomiting during my university years on occasion (never any need for medical help though) so I don't really feel I can make eternal judgements on these people: hopefully they will grow out of it and will learn something from the experience. Not sure what, but I'm pretty sure they won't all be lost causes for humanity.

edith spot on!

I live in a small town, and walk the dog very early in the morning. Last year I had to call the police/ambulance on two occasions to come & have a look at people who were collapsed in the street (4.30 - 5 am ish) I go past several small clubs and bars, and we pick our way through discarded bottles/takeaways. Some mornings I pick up the bottles, if there's not too many, and bin them - and they're nearly always full. Likewise the takeaway cartons - how can people afford to waste money? And then there are the glasses from the places. I put them on the door step of whichever drinking establishment is nearest. And, as dog and I skirt round the pools of vomit, I think to myself - why do I bother picking up her shit? It's only a small place, it used to be so nicely kept, but now even the flower planters are full of the detritus of the drunken fuckwits.

I think there are a lot of social pressures to drink to extremes that are a problem.

Generally people are seen as odd/boring if they're not willing to go and get hammered every weekend, it's not just teenagers and young 20 something people.
DP and I are in our late 20's and we've been firmly pushed out of the social group we were part of because we settled down in a house and had children, we don't find drinking fun or exciting and that makes us boring apparently.

I think the fact that it's so hard to move out of home and essentially grow up and be independent doesn't help, if you can't get your own place or a car or anything like that, what else will you spend your money on? You can still be in your 30's and living with mum and dad or in a flat share and go out getting in these states with your mates because you don't have any firm responsibility waiting for you in the morning.

I work in health care. I have seen people with liver failure, people cracking open Tenants extra 9am in the morning, people with horrific alcohol related injuries, falls, car accidents, really the uk does have issues. Poverty and homelessness is often related to drugs and alcohol issues, so is disability from being injured when drunk, getting pregnant or Sti's when drunk etc...

I speak as someone who used to party hard but when girls of 18 get liver failure in freshers week at university then for me the time has come for this country to face up and sort this issue out!

russabbott I'm aware Geordie shore is scripted. Please don't pretend they're not really getting drunk though, or puking up or pissing themselves. It's nothing out of the ordinary.
In any case, my point still stands. They're not ashamed to be seen behaving like that. The fact is that kind of behaviour is celebrated nowadays, whereas once (not to long ago) it would have been condemmed.

I grew up in a fairly grim Northern town where going out on a Friday and Saturday night and getting wasted was the norm. The people I saw were the roughest and drunkest I've ever had the misfortune to meet. Men and women fighting, people vomiting in the streets etc was the norm. I've travelled all over the world and never seen anything like it. One pub we used to go in was like a Victorian brothel, uck!

Not sure why British people feel the need to get that wasted, I think it's social pressure, but it doesn't seem to exist any where else!

It's definitely worse oop North, not as refined as those Southern monkeys

I can't go to my local (southern!) town centre on a Friday or Saturday night. It has an indoor shopping mall, and the Council does not have any proper long term masterplan for the town centre, which now has too many shop units. So most of the high street has been allowed to change into large pubs and bars with late night licences. People come from miles around to visit and get drunk, with stabbing, getting glassed etc quite normal. Yet the council perceive it to be a successful town as there are very few shop vacancies.

surely no one thinks people getting this pissed is a good thing? So YABU to ask!

But I think the people getting pissed do. I think people talk as though it were an achievement.

Scripted or not Geordie Shore and other similar shite reality programmes can end up normalizing the behaviour for the people who watch it.

I think there should be stricter laws. These programmes about police bending over backwards to help drunks are quite annoying.

I agree. Alcohol should either be much much more higher priced or a charge payable if you end up needing hospital treatment. Same goes for taking drugs or smoking.

It now seems to be the norm that you are unusual if you don't drink rather than do.

Well I don't think you can really charge people for hospital treatment though I get the point. Anyway people don't think that far ahead so it wouldn't help.

Also we don't want to stop people drinking, we just want them to be sensible about it. It would help if we could make people see it as pathetic and embarrassing to overdo it.

Something along the lines of community service for being seriously drunk in public might work. A few hours sweeping in your local shopping area in front of people who know you - with a hangover?

People nowadays have more information at their disposal about the harmful effects of excess alcohol consumption than in 1700-and whatever (Hogarth's painting).

They didn't have the NHS back in the 1700s either. Binge drinkers abuse the NHS a&e and don't appreciate it, because they don't have to put their hand in their pocket and settle the A&e bill due to their selfish greed.

I can't believe people on here are making excuses for these drunks? They are a drain on heavily stretched resources and should be charged (even if it's after the fact). Why should they be allowed to "make their mistakes". No, bugger that for a game of soldiers, not when it means a needy person being rushed in due to a heart attack may risk not having staff to help them because "revellers" fancy getting slaughtered on a Saturday night! Their choice, right?

Young people here in Britain get drunk because they see the misuse of alcohol as the norm.
To socialise people in other countries go out to eat, dance, play board games, etc, alcohol in moderation is an accompaniment of said activity, here in the UK THE activity is to drink and the other stuff is secondary.
I have English friends with small children who tell me that they drink wine in the evenings to reward themselves after a tough day with the kids. This does not happen in other parts of the world.
I firmly believe that young people learn through modeled behaviour. If your child sees you buying wine as part of the weekly shop and emptying several bottles a week, then they will grow up thinking that this is normal.
I grew up seeing my family drink alcohol only during celebrations and in moderation, so that is what I do now and what I hope to teach my kids.

YANBU, it's a disgusting phenomenon, a waste of time, money and health, and timetoask I agree with everything you said.

Yes, alcohol is a super drug.

I agree with you and I do believe people want to escape their awful reality or whatever makes them want to go blotto.

No advertising campaign is going to do any good. Same shit, different day, just makes a lot of money for city types.

What is needed is mass therapy. And all kinds of healing therapies, as in primal scream, rebirthing, massage, art classes,etc. I know some people swear by AA, but I find it a bit cultish to be honest.