Observations on Americans, Part ... 4?
Mar. 2nd, 2008 08:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinAmericans cannot hold their liquor.
Going out for drinks and having a selection of alcoholic drinks available at social gatherings is a standard part of life in Canada, so I thought I was familiar with its effect on people. But HOLY CRAP. I went to a party last night and was one of the first people there, so I got to see most everyone come in, and they went from jolly sober to smashed drunk in about fifteen minutes, apparently on wimpy American beer.* I am used to comrades downing six or seven pints and a couple of shooters still being able to walk straight and hold a decent conversation, but after what could only have been two or three bottles these people were finding stairs a challenge. There were some people who by the end of the evening had the cognitive powers of a slow five-year-old. How can this be? Is it because the higher drinking age prevents gaining a tolerance of the stuff in developing years? Do you seriously expect me to believe none of these people drank before they were 21?
And then this morning I was auditory witness to one of our new downstairs neighbours making comically exaggerated offerings to the porcelain throne. Lovely.
At any rate, I can understand, now, the attitudes towards alcohol of some of my more puritanical acquaintances, if this is the sort of context they have.
*American beer is 4% alcohol, as opposed to 7% in Canada and, what, 73% in Europe?
Going out for drinks and having a selection of alcoholic drinks available at social gatherings is a standard part of life in Canada, so I thought I was familiar with its effect on people. But HOLY CRAP. I went to a party last night and was one of the first people there, so I got to see most everyone come in, and they went from jolly sober to smashed drunk in about fifteen minutes, apparently on wimpy American beer.* I am used to comrades downing six or seven pints and a couple of shooters still being able to walk straight and hold a decent conversation, but after what could only have been two or three bottles these people were finding stairs a challenge. There were some people who by the end of the evening had the cognitive powers of a slow five-year-old. How can this be? Is it because the higher drinking age prevents gaining a tolerance of the stuff in developing years? Do you seriously expect me to believe none of these people drank before they were 21?
And then this morning I was auditory witness to one of our new downstairs neighbours making comically exaggerated offerings to the porcelain throne. Lovely.
At any rate, I can understand, now, the attitudes towards alcohol of some of my more puritanical acquaintances, if this is the sort of context they have.
*American beer is 4% alcohol, as opposed to 7% in Canada and, what, 73% in Europe?
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-02 07:01 pm (UTC)Maybe it is my age, but I grew up seeing 1) the damaging effects of alcohol (my father was an alcoholic) and 2) complete demystification. We were given a thimble cup of wine with fancy meals from the time we were seven or eight. Whether it was illegal or not, it was in our home and the hell with anything else :)
Mind you, I don't drink much--the effect of antidepressants makes one drink have the effect of two or three--and I tend to get violent headaches when I do. But all those factors meant that I never felt the urge to go out and get falling down drunk. I'd seen what that was like and had no desire to experience it for myself. On the other hand, I also knew what alcohol was and what I could drink without having a problem.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-02 11:40 pm (UTC)My mother's family, though, is sort of passively cool about drinking. When I started asking about it, my grandmother explained how one eases into the idea of alcohol (with watered sweet wine) and then moves on to harsher things gradually. I've always been allowed to taste whatever my grandparents and uncle were drinking, and no one freaked out when I started asking about it. Pretty cool, really.