Sunshine or Sunset?

I woke up about half an hour ago, and the first thing I need to remember is to turn my watch forward. Damn daylight savings time. But then, while I set up my virus scan to run in the background, I decide to check my emails and float around some of the blogs of my PCG chat compatriots, and while I was doing so I noticed that both Creed's Blog and James have taken the Anne Diamond story to heart. So, rather than add what little I could say on the subject to their posts, I'll instead link you to the story and talk about something else.

I went out last night with a few friends and respective partners. We went into town, had a beer or two, then went back to the house of one of the party. At his house, we sorta splintered off and did different things: a few people set up the Wii and played Wii sports, while the rest of us hung around the iPod dock and had an unnecessarily loud singalong to whatever music we could find.

Unforunately for you guys, however, the events of that night are not the point of this particular post. Instead, I'd like to talk about binge drinking culture.

I feel as though that particular sentence has already scared you all off. After all, this has been debated repeatedly in the modern media for more or less the last 5 years, and I'm fairly sure that by now you are getting fairly tired of it. Well, tough. I'd like to put forward my viewpoint on the particular issue, and the only solace you can take in that is that I'm not a newspaper, and I'm not able to access the relevant medical studies (at least, not easily), so this is going to be purely opinion.

Firstly, let's just be clear on what I mean about 'binge drinking culture'. I am referring to the culture that exists in the modern Western World that glorifies the consumption of extremely large quantities of alcohol in a short period of time. And I have used the word glorifies quite deliberately, namely because that is exactly what it does. How often have you walked past a group of people (usually young, albeit not always) who are talking about their latest night out, and how fantastic it was that they got so smashed?

Now, let me be clear. I don't object to drinking, nor do I object do getting drunk. I will happily have a beer most nights, and although I personally don't drink to get drunk, I am friends with many people who do, and so it would be a bit hypocritical for me to be strongly against the concept. What I dislike is a lot closer to the heart.

For some odd reason, in this binge drinking culture, someone who actively decides not to take part is considered to be an oddity. Even worse, they are subjected to the most overt form of peer pressure around, because not only is everyone doing it, but many of them will make repeated attempts to encourage others to partake in the drunkfest.

Let me reiterate what I said earlier. I do not object to people deciding for themselves to get drunk. In fact, I'm more or less in the J.S Mill camp, in that I believe that, so long as you're the only one harmed, if anyone is, you can do whatever the hell you want. So I don't object to smoking, but I do object to people smoking indoors.

Thus, my reason for becoming annoyed with the binge drink culture is that it is starting to have severe impacts upon people who aren't taking part. Even if you leave out the fairly significant statistics that people who drink are more likely to be violent, and also the drunk driving stats, the binge drink culture is causing a massive shift in the priorities of most people. For instance, on a sunny day, I quite enjoy sitting in a park with a can of coke and a little company, and just existing. But I distinctly recall, back in high school, seeing my friends begin to want to do that less often, as their desire to go out and get hammered increased. Thus, my worry is that the more intense high caused by alcohol is beginning to outweight the smaller highs one can get from doing other things.

I suppose that there's no reason for this to necessarily be considered a bad thing. After all, if people are still enjoying themselves, that's all well and good. I suppose I'll leave it up to you to decide. As for me, I'm going to continue enjoying the sun. If nothing else, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than alcohol.