What is it that makes us tell tales of our drinking exploits as if they were exciting and brave adventures?

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My oldest friend and I did 4 bottles of wine last night and now I feel like shit. Even after the fourth bottle I could still destroy him on Pro Evo.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 08:56 (twenty years ago)

I didn't get to bed till 3am.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 08:57 (twenty years ago)

I'm planning a 24-hour pub crawl for my birthday, in order to fully take advantage of the new drinking laws. It will be arranged with military precision, and talked about for years to come in hushed tones.

― Hello Sunshine (Hello Sunshine), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 09:00 (twenty years ago)

to answer the question, maybe cos alcohol helps us have exciting and brave adventures, gives us the courage to do things we wouldn't do when sober. like kiss that person, or bust that streetsign, or punch that guys face in.

― awesome is as awesome does (lucylurex), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 09:05 (twenty years ago)

talked about for years to come in hushed tones

24 hours of none stop drinking should never be remembered.

― not-goodwin (not-goodwin), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 09:06 (twenty years ago)

sorry i am aware i get rather righteous when i'm off the sauce. but people are so annoying when they're drunk!!!

― awesome is as awesome does (lucylurex), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 09:13 (twenty years ago)

This is a British thing. I've never heard a French person boasting about how much s/he'd drunk.

― JP Marchaux, Tuesday, 17 January 2006 09:22 (twenty years ago)

That's cos they're lightweights.

― Latin Routes (noodle vague), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 09:25 (twenty years ago)

Can't be bothered to check, but I think the French still on average drink more than the British. But they don't do the massive binge drink thing, and they don't have a boasting-about-drinking culture.

― JP Marchaux, Tuesday, 17 January 2006 09:29 (twenty years ago)

Why do we boast about drinking?

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 09:31 (twenty years ago)

Ahhh, this annoys me so much. And when they go "I was so hammered last night . . . " they all have this conspiritorial smirk, and you're expected to smirk along, like they're all "I don't play by society's so-called rules, I'm a maverick."

― Johnny B Was Quizzical (Johnney B), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 09:33 (twenty years ago)

http://www.eabl.com/csr/contImg/Articles/art7/pop_drink.jpg

― Latin Routes (noodle vague), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 09:36 (twenty years ago)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v251/joserouse/Animals/0905beer_drinking_horse.jpg

― Latin Routes (noodle vague), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 09:37 (twenty years ago)

http://www.joecool.org.uk/Images/billf_jcpup79/images/beer%20drinking_jpg.jpg

― Latin Routes (noodle vague), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 09:38 (twenty years ago)

L-R: Blunkett, Straw, Blair.

― Latin Routes (noodle vague), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 09:38 (twenty years ago)

It's interesting though. I wonder what other countries go in for boasting about drinking. Do the other Anglo countries do it? My impression is that the Americans and Australians may do it, but much less than the Brits. Scandinavians also have binge drinking cultures, do they boast about how much they drink? My impression (admittedly based only on a week's holiday) is that the Norwegians don't really do it, they just stoically get their drinks down. Do Germans boast about how much they've drunk?

― JP Marchaux, Tuesday, 17 January 2006 09:41 (twenty years ago)

I am sure it is a recent development this boasting. When you read novels from the 40s and fifties being really drunk was always seen as very shaming. I remember in Orewell's "keep the Aspidistra flying" where the hero gets horribly drunk and loses his job and remember the shame of David Copperfield after he'd been on the sauce.

Both wonderfully real descriptions of being horribly, horribly drunk though.

― Paul Kelly (kelly), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 10:16 (twenty years ago)

I don't know whether it's a recent development or not, but those characters' social position has more to do with their attitude to being beastly drunk than anything else.

― Latin Routes (noodle vague), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 10:20 (twenty years ago)

That is true, I remember Orwell also wrote that the majority of the English drink like fish, and use the foulest language. Things have perhaps not changed all that much

― Paul Kelly (kelly), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 10:26 (twenty years ago)

Orwell was a prissy snob.

― Latin Routes (noodle vague), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 10:29 (twenty years ago)

Boasting about teh drunkenen is a very very Australian pastime, sadly. What irks me is the same people who'd go out and cause shit on a Friday night in their askew ties and spew-stained shoes is those same people would be darkly against the lovved-up e-heads or the chilled out stoners at home.

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 10:32 (twenty years ago)

George Orwell, in the essay "England, Your England", was merciless: „ The English are inveterate gamblers, drink as much beer as their wages will permit, are devoted to bawdy jokes, and use probably the foulest language in the world.”.

Hmmm snobby or not I don't know, but apart from the gambling, it seems pretty true today too.

― Paul Kelly (kelly), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 10:38 (twenty years ago)

Drinking too much is flirting with death. Flirting with death is glamourous and exciting and brave. Hurrah!

― Disciplining And Controlling My Mind (kate), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 10:51 (twenty years ago)

I've never heard a French person boasting about how much s/he'd drunk.

It's because they're so incoherent (amirite)

― Sororah T Massacre (blueski), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 10:52 (twenty years ago)

Alcohol is usually the #1 thing synonomous with hedonism/A Good Time in this culture so it's an easy signifier to demonstrate to people that you are having fun and this makes you feel better.

― Sororah T Massacre (blueski), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 10:54 (twenty years ago)

gambling might be true too. there are a fuck of a lot of betting shops all over the place, they must all be staying open somehow.

― emsk ( emsk), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 10:56 (twenty years ago)

Alcoholism is usually the #1 thing synonomous with hedonism/A Good Time in this culture

― Latin Routes (noodle vague), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 10:56 (twenty years ago)

I don't know that it is necessarily indicative of "a good time" - I think it's more a bravado thing. Being horribly drunk isn't necessarily fun - but it does require a certain... ignoring of the consequences which translates as a kind of bravery.

Certain people I've known have found it especially disgusting in me, because girls aren't supposed to drink like men. Although more and more, they are. It's not necessarily a good thing.

― Disciplining And Controlling My Mind (kate), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 10:58 (twenty years ago)

maybe it's just our sad version of the hero's journey.

― teeny (teeny), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 11:31 (twenty years ago)

Finns are always telling heroic tales of drunken adventures too. And we are also binge drinkers (more so than the other Nordic peoples, I think), I guess the two go hand in hand. Anyway, drunken tales are like a glue that holds the society together. Finns, especially men, are bad at small talk or personal discussions, but we can always talk about the weather, the politics, or how what awful things we did last Saturday after ten pints. What else would we talk about, that's the one thing most have in common? Also, I have a suspicion that the habit of telling glorious tales about drunkenness was made up to cover the fact that there's really nothing glorious about it.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 11:48 (twenty years ago)

but sometimes exciting things do happen when you're very drunk! you might end up playing video games for hours, but then again you might end up drinking free martinis and dancing to "you shook me all night long" with britney spears. don't tell me that's not exciting.

― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 11:52 (twenty years ago)

I think we should replace drinking with eating poisonous slugs.

That would strip the glamour from the "Oh, man, I had TWELVE slugs last night" bravado.

― Disciplining And Controlling My Mind (kate), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 11:54 (twenty years ago)

I wonder is binge drinking ultimately about climate? In Europe, in any case, Northern Europe = binge drinking (UK, Scandinavia, Russia, Germany etc), while Southern Europe = drinking every day, but with meals (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal etc).

― JP Marchaux, Tuesday, 17 January 2006 11:56 (twenty years ago)

"It shrinks my liver, doesn't it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys, yeah. But what it does to the mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I'm above the ordinary. I'm competent. I'm walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I'm one of the great ones. I'm Michaelangelo, molding the beard of Moses. I'm Van Gogh painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz, playing the Emperor Concerto. I'm John Barrymore before movies got him by the throat. I'm Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of them. I'm W. Shakespeare. And out there it's not Third Avenue any longer, it's the Nile. Nat, it's the Nile and down it moves the barge of Cleopatra."

― Latin Routes (noodle vague), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 11:57 (twenty years ago)

"When you read novels from the 40s and fifties being really drunk was always seen as very shaming." - hmm not sure about this, it is often used for comic effect (Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis), but is still exciting & brave. Go back further - think of Falstaff in Henry IV - he's a pissartist, but has dignity & the audience's sympathy

― bham, Tuesday, 17 January 2006 12:04 (twenty years ago)

I mean, even our MPs...

Boris Johnson - capital wheeze or intolerable buffoon?

― hush your hopeless falsetto crooning (kate), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 12:32 (twenty years ago)

Shakespeare on binge drinking:

MACDUFF
Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed,
That you do lie so late?

Porter
'Faith sir, we were carousing till the
second cock: and drink, sir, is a great
provoker of three things.

MACDUFF
What three things does drink especially provoke?

Porter
Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and
urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;
it provokes the desire, but it takes
away the performance: therefore, much drink
may be said to be an equivocator with lechery:
it makes him, and it mars him; it sets
him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him,
and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and
not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him
in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.

MACDUFF
I believe drink gave thee the lie last night.

Porter
That it did, sir, i' the very throat on
me: but I requited him for his lie; and, I
think, being too strong for him, though he took
up my legs sometime, yet I made a shift to cast
him.

― Hello Sunshine (Hello Sunshine), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 12:34 (twenty years ago)

what di said, upthread

drink and drugs faciliate people doing things that mightnt otherwise, things they probably wanted to do.

i think theres a bit of sanctimony about the slight disdain people often look at "drinking exploits", although im sure we have all met the "i was soo drunk larst night" student, even if only in the pages of a satirical comic

― terry lennox. (gareth), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 13:16 (twenty years ago)

I've never heard them as exciting and brave tales. They're more like self-depreciating jokes.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 14:49 (twenty years ago)

you clearly have a higher class of friend.

― snowkitten (g-kit), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 14:51 (twenty years ago)

maybe it's an effort to do damage control if you emphasize the funny bits instead of the embarrassing bits. (i don't really understand bragging about it because it's rare for me or my friends to get actually drunk, so when someone does it often is kind of a shameful thing.)

― Maria (Maria), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 15:02 (twenty years ago)

"A glash of lemonade for Mishter Kennedy, pleashe, and a pint of mild and a large Shcotch for me."

― Latin Routes (noodle vague), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 15:05 (twenty years ago)

yeh but it is knida boasting hiding under a cloak of self deprecation. eg "i fucked that exam up so badly...."

― ambrose (ambrose), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 15:26 (twenty years ago)

I'm familiar with this kind of storytelling that's a mix of self-depreciation AND boasting. Which leads me to how JP Marchaux's list, for some reason, does not include Canada.

― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:01 (twenty years ago)

But I don't think the "northern countries" theory necessary holds water. I've heard plenty of stories of absurd levels of drunkenness from people from Brazil, Mexico, Chile, etc. Maybe it's the countries of extremes, really hot, really cold, rather than the merely mild. Throw in a long history of, oh, Catholic guilt and there ya go.

― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:10 (twenty years ago)

someone i know boasts about good meals he eats. he'll refer to his level of success at finishing the meal as a "victory" or a "defeat." and when the server brings the food out: "yess! we win!!"

― jbr, Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:16 (twenty years ago)

What climate could be milder than Britains? Imagine how we'll booze when the Gulfstream disappears.

― snotty moore, Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:17 (twenty years ago)

That is totally cute, especially the "yess! we win!!" part. I always cheer when the food comes out! omg, we ordered food and now that food is here! and we get to eat it! yaay!
xpost

― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:20 (twenty years ago)

Britain is, um, oh, I know: extremely damp? extremely surrounded by water? (It's a pretty baseless theory, btw.)

― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:23 (twenty years ago)

maybe it has to do with... religion !
protestant countries = binge drinking / catholic countries = wine at meals (as for the other religions, i haven't thought that up yet...).

― AleXTC (AleXTC), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 17:56 (twenty years ago)

"THEN fashioned for him the folk of Geats
firm on the earth a funeral-pile,
and hung it with helmets and harness of war
and breastplates bright, as the boon he asked;
and they laid amid it the mighty chieftain,
heroes mourning their master dear."

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 20:47 (twenty years ago)

I JUST TURNED 21 AND I'M VERY DURNK AND SLIGHTLY STONED... GIMME SOME LOVEEEEEE....

― Roz (Roz), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 20:55 (twenty years ago)

http://pandora.lib.hel.fi/lastensivut/kuvitus/rakkaus.jpg

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 20:59 (twenty years ago)

awww, rozanna!

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 21:01 (twenty years ago)

Yayyyy.

― Roz (Roz), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 21:02 (twenty years ago)

http://www.leffa-arviot.com/arvostelut/r/rikos_ja_rakkaus/01.jpg

Happy birthday!

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 21:02 (twenty years ago)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/lixnixn/untitled.jpg

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 21:04 (twenty years ago)

hahaha thanks, tuomas...

i just had a party at my place but now i have to clean up before my dad gets home in the morning.. and my brother's passed out and i'm too drunk to do anything.

― Roz (Roz), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 21:04 (twenty years ago)

http://elina.rakkaus.net.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/siskot.jpg.w300h273.jpg

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 21:06 (twenty years ago)

http://koti.mbnet.fi/ufbg/Hankorakkaus.jpg

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 21:10 (twenty years ago)

saying a city has international flavor = DRUNKS

― A BOLD QUAHOG (ex machina), Wednesday, 18 January 2006 00:38 (twenty years ago)

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