Friday, July 06, 2007

Binge Drinking, my ass!

Having my medical for my new job a while back the doctor told me what I already knew that my Body Mass Index is a point off what it should be and I have been aiming to remedy this since by buying a pair of trainers, cooking for myself more often and generally winding back the excess. For instance I am writing to you of a Friday morning, a morning on which I have often unfortunately had the hounds of hell doing laps of my head, my mouth feeling like a duck shed and my stomach rejecting food and all its evil works. Today however I am in the office early (though writing this post kinda cuts down on the amount of extra work I will complete with said early start) and feeling fresh. Instead of a mad crazy night out I was home by 9 last night, I had four pints and a nice meal and gracefully left the establishment and this morning all faculties and memories are intact. Nevertheless, I was binge drinking.

Yes the helpful people of the Drinks Industry Group have this morning informed me that my idea of binge drinking is overestimated. After I had consumed 2.5 pints of beer last night I was officially binge drinking. I mean, come on! The Drinks Industry Group found that 27% of people believe 10 drinks or more to constitute binge drinking with a further 27% believing 7 -9 drinks falls into this category – these are obviously reasonable people. Don’t get me wrong, I am fully aware of our unhealthy drinking culture and its impact. But I don’t see how this survey adds anything new to the debate, we all know that we need to normalise the level of drinking in this country but as far as I can see this is just a drinks group pandering to the government by being seen to take an interest in our level of drinking, all the while I’m sure they lobby to safeguard the advertising of alcohol at sporting events and also defend a publicans right to raise prices. Get your own house in order before you go imposing some puritanical standard on us, undermining my attempts to lead a healthy life.

I’m not even going to look up 'binge' in dinctionary.com to support my argument, of course moving onto the 3rd pint you should be conscious of encroaching onto the danger zone of no return but when I have taken the decision to get home early, eat with my food and be responsible I will not be told that I have been drink bingeing. Let that to the stumbling, shouting crowd who were still at their houses as I walked home slugging beer because it was too expensive to drink at a pub before they projectile vomit their way to a late bar, get turned away, mess up their Body Mass Index by heading to AbraKebabra and then start a fight. Sort that problem, leave me to my quiet night.

Story here.

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