Growing up in a culture of alcohol

Throughout my primary school years the headmistress had always preached with ferocity against the dangers and immorality of illicit drugs. However what became apparent to me later on, is that there was a culture of heavy drink amongst the teachers of that school. I also subsequently realised that this obviously had a negative impact on my education and an even deadlier toll on the teachers (unsurprisingly few are still with us). It was only when I grew up and my friends and I started dipping our own toes into the murky world of alcohol consumption that I put two and two together. The smell of stale drink and cigarettes on someone’s breath, in their hair and clothes is not easily identifiable to a 7-year-old child. Young children are the easiest people took trick in this situation, as they are culturally unaware of alcohol and are even less aware of why it would be unacceptable for a teacher to top up his tea with whisky at break time.

As time progressed and my friends and I obtained some peachfuzz and fake ID’s, we also started to become men. Men do what men do and therefore boys trying to be men had to do what men do. This involved going to the pub and drinking beer until we talked loudly and didn’t think rationally about anything.

A friend of mine who is a teacher’s assistant confided in me that one day after a night of heavy drinking one of the kids he was helping with his homework turned around to him and said “you smell like my dad.” This is what brought that suppressed thought back to the front of my mind. Thinking back on it my teachers did smell like my dad and I have since seen with my own eyes why my dad and probably many other dads smell like that. This means that my teachers must have been doing the same thing that my dad did most evenings.

Today many British eighteen year olds stand on the edge of an abyss looking down at years of heavy drinking. Pub crawls, 2 for 1’s, Snakebite, “work drinks,” vodka jellies, student union’s, happy hour, Carlsberg and Tetleys Bitter only one pound a pint and big bottles of Strongbow for £2.89.

Regrettably I succumbed to most of those temptations, because I thought it was normal and because everyone else did it. I am not sure if I enjoyed it. I presume I did and that’s why I kept doing it. Do I have regrets? Yes of course I do. Do I still drink as much? Yes I do. But long gone are the carefree days when I thought that I was just a young spirit and that one day I would never suffer from problematic alcohol use.

Some times I drink because I might find myself in awkward situation and alcohol eases the awkwardness, sometimes I drink because I am happy, sometimes I drink because I am sad, sometimes because I am bored. I like to drink when I cook, red wine for pasta, lasagne, red meat etc, white wine for fish and beer for curries. Sometimes I cook because then I know I can drink. I like to drink on the bus because bus journeys are boring; the same goes for the tube. It excites me when I sneek my beer onto public transport. Victimless crime I say, but that’s what alcohol does, it makes you not think of others only yourself. Oh and of course like many other red-blooded males I think that drinking alcohol makes me more forward, funny and somehow more attractive to the opposite sex.

Is this bad? Well I suppose everyone has his or her favourite drug. It doesn’t have even have to be a drug. It could be anything from spray tan to eating junk food or playing computer games. All innocent in moderation, dangerous in excess

The negative toll that the vices mentioned can have on someone’s health/appearance are well publicised, so why do we still do it. Probably about four nights a week I spend trying to counteract the negative effect that three nights drinking might have had on me. Exercise and my five a day, early nights and no red meat. Am I fighting a losing battle? Hopefully I will grow out of it, but I can’t help but notice that some people don’t. Why are people more susceptible to vices than others? Maybe if I had been brought up in a different world things would be different.