Drinking Culture
Boozy Brits at Home and Abroad
Welcome back!
I realised something today - there are close to 1,500 people that receive this newsletter - yet I don't know where most of you live.
I mean which countries, not exact addresses! 👀
I was wondering this after a chat with my good friend Jack who pointed out the differences in drinking cultures around the world.
More specifically, the booze culture in the UK.
There is something uniquely different about the drinking habits of Brits compared to those around the world, in my opinion.
Having travelled to a fair few countries, nothing really compares to the relationship British people have with alcohol.
Pub & club culture and attitudes towards booze in the UK are like nothing you will ever experience anywhere else.
To say that alcohol is the focal point of daily life is an understatement.
Booze dominates social events and special occasions. It also dominates many sombre events and mundane ones too.
Weddings, funerals, sporting events, payday, birthdays, the weekend, university… the list goes on.
Background
I took my first drink around the age of 13 but I didn't start drinking properly until I was around 15-years-old when everyone my age was doing it.
We would drink at the park or at house parties. We would drink before going clubbing (there was an underage nightclub in our town). We would even try to get into pubs and proper nightclubs...with limited success!
Booze, for me, was a great way to talk to girls and socialise with people from my school who maybe I wouldn't during the day. It was fun (but ultimately destructive!)
We'd sneak around pretending we were staying at one person's house when really we were staying somewhere else hooking up with women. Our whole year group at school was doing the same things every weekend, although some of us took it further than others.
A few people, myself included, would even start sneaking booze into school. This is where I believe my trouble started. I loved the funny feeling of 'being pissed' (drunk - for you Americans). However, it was probably where an addiction began…before it was later cemented throughout my 20s.
Anyway, this kind of behaviour was the norm for a lot of young Brits and is how many parts of the country began their drinking careers.
Before long, going clubbing transitioned into the next phase of normal British life - binge drinking at weekends when you're 18 - 21 (and beyond) - something that is almost seen as a right of passage.
Almost every social interaction at this age is set to a boozy backdrop or hungover reminiscents. It's worse in some parts of the country that witness drug culture form from an early age.
In my case, cocaine started becoming more prevalent around 18/19-years-old, the same with ecstasy. However, it was my early 20s where cocaine really took hold...more on that another time.
Back to the booze.
Brits have a well-earned reputation for boozing abroad, something I have witnessed first-hand.
Drunken Brits head out to sunny destinations each year and cause chaos. They provide a boost in tourist for many countries, but also provide a headache for locals who are now sadly becoming accustomed to the destructive relationship with alcohol that many British holidaymakers have.
I would like to say I am overexaggerating, however, I am not. We've all seen the videos. There have even been TV programmes, films and documentaries specifically made on Brits boozing abroad. It's a stigma that is widely considered accurate.
Stag and hen do's represent the majority of this reputation earned by British people, with many of these special occasions becoming more about the booze, actually becoming the tradition, rather than the celebration it was originally intended as.
British students abroad are also a sight that many may have witnessed and been shocked to see. Excessive drinking by the youth whilst abroad is considered normal.
But it doesn’t stop with the youth. Expats boozing abroad and middle-aged pub drinkers are also a fixture of the stereotypical drunken Brit, along with the ramifications of their heavy boozing.
Drunken arrests, rehabs and hospital visits are sadly part and parcel of the excessive drinking culture instilled in the UK from an early age.
If you think I am bashing Brits, I'm not. Having lived nearly all my life in the UK, I have witnessed first hand our relationship with booze - the pub and club culture is something very unique to the country.
I've spent an extended amount of time in the States and although there is an element to what I'm talking about, when I took my British drinking mentality over there, the reaction to mine and that my fellow British friend's relationship with drinking was one of surprise and shock.
Maybe it was because I was partying nearly every day by this point but it genuinely sparked the conversation about the difference between the relationships the two country's had with the 'liquid poison'.
Conclusion
This is a subject I feel like we could dive deeper into as a collective, so I will leave it here for now and encourage everyone reading this to interact.
I'm going to put a 'Leave a comment' button below in the hopes we can get a discussion going.
I'd love to hear from any British people reading this and know whether you feel I've accurately summed up the drinking culture in the country or not.
I would love to hear from people in other countries in order to find out whether you've experienced the British drinking culture arrive in your country and whether what I've described is accurate. I would also like to hear about the relationship you feel your own country has with booze.
I hope to hear from you all soon.
Thank you for reading “Drinking Culture”.
I appreciate the positive responses I got from my last newsletter “Addicted To Your Job”.
Also, a big thank you to Mark for buying me a coffee, much appreciated my friend 🙏
Take care,
Roscoe
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