Where are all the drunks?

OK, so it’s the week before Christmas. A time for last minute shopping, preparing for the relatives to come and stay and most importantly a time to go out with your friends/workmates/clients and get absolutely slaughtered.

Or at least that’s what you would do if you were a binge drinking Brit.

Last Saturday we were coming home on the subway after going to see a basketball game. It was about 10.15 and the carriage was very busy when it suddenly occurred to me. Everyone in the carriage was sober. We were in full blown “party season” and no-one was pissed.

There were no loud drunks falling all over the place singing “Merry Christmas Everyone” or giggling girls telling their mates how they really really loved them.

In fact, you can walk around Manhattan at midnight any weekend of the year and you can probably count the number of drunks on the street on the fingers of one hand.

Now think about Leicester Square at midnight on a Saturday and what do you see? Yep, girls falling over and showing their knickers, blokes pushing out their chests and showing off in front of their mates. Men and women fighting. People being sick, urinating, singing, swearing. My, aren’t we a pretty sight?

A few people have asked me why I think our relationship with alcohol is so, well, strange, and I don’t really know the answer. Brits are a lot more reserved than Americans. It takes a lot more for us to talk to strangers, dance or even just loosen up. New Yorkers tend to smile more, are more polite and much less reserved and maybe that’s one of the reasons.

Maybe we are so reserved that we just can’t enjoy ourselves without getting drunk. Scary but perhaps true. Lots of my friends (me included) won’t dance unless they have had a few drinks – I think it’s called Dutch Courage – see even the word courage implies that alcohol has some qualities that help us become braver.

I don’t think we’ll ever really understand why we love to binge drink and make fools of ourselves. It’s just something inherently British (and Irish and Scottish….). In the meantime I’m going to enjoy my nights my drunk and fight free nights out in a City just as diverse and crazy as London.