It's honestly one of the biggest ills facing society. The roadmap to addiction is severe, and there's really nothing "cool" about it.
While it doesn't necessarily precipitate dysfunction, it definitely greases the wheels, and leads to all manner of things from general assholery to physical abuse to date rape.
Especially in America, where we've stupidly raised the drinking age to 21, which has achieved little beyond promoting binge drinking among teens.
Fuck the doom posting. I'd rather hear about you going on some grand adventure hike than clinking ice cubes to the desperation of your soul.
I'm not for prohibition, but I think people need to check themselves before playing their hand in blackout culture.
I'll be honest with you, I think the age is irrelevant and what counts is cultural attitude. Over here in the UK it's 18 and we've got one of the worst binge drinking cultures among not only teens, but 20-30s too. It's a point of working class cultural pride to be the person that can drink the most among peers. This is promoted by all venues, clubs and online because it benefits sales.
Promoting a healthy relationship with alcohol is necessary and this means clamping down on all the sources that promote this cultural attitude as well as outputting media that opposes and promotes the opposite - a health relationship with the drug posed in a positive light.
Dude it was really wild when I visited the UK, it's like everyone's idea of a weekend is binge drinking and/or doing lots of drugs if they can afford it. In Greece drinking age is also 18 I think (I'm saying I think because it doesn't mean anything in practice, like, it's just not enforced) and sure enough most people start drinking more than just a cup of wine or whatever when they are 15 or so, but they don't get shitfaced as much as Brits do, and not as frequently, plus they don't do anywhere near as much drugs. Brits are also some of the worst tourists because they get incredibly drunk and/or high and mess shit up, piss everywhere, become obnoxious etc. Why does that happen?
Bad culture around it and zero opposition or willingness to present a healthy alternative.
I suspect part of it is also our attitudes to mental health. People are expected to suck it up when it comes to mental health and never talk about it. This results in alcohol use as a form of self-medication, among other things. Of course nobody is willing to tackle this issue because alcohol abuse is apparently "british culture" and to even remotely touch it would result in serious reactionary opposition. You can achieve some wins with like supermarket restrictions of promotion/special offers on sales but that's not addressing the cultural issue itself.
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Scotland is up there
Idk haven't been there.
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We can have fun and drink too. 4-5 pints vs 8 pints and 4 shots for a night is a significant difference in behaviour and attitude to the night. One I think is "let's have fun with alcohol" and the other is "let's fucking drink myself into complete oblivion".
Eliminating the latter requires positive depiction and promotion of the former. And perhaps promoting recognition among people that the latter is a warning sign of people who are in some form of trouble and trying to use alcohol to escape it through complete self obliteration.
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That's fair. I don't disagree with you. Awareness so people actually help those engaging in this behaviour and promote the healthier relationship would do a lot. Having people recognise those who are clearly drowning some sort of problem and using it as a barometer for providing help seems like a good way to work at the issue to me.
Brits seem to take a really specific pride in doing MDMA as unsafely as possible as well. I can't imagine what the rate of serotonin syndrome is over there.