Observations on Americans, Part ... 4?

[tealin]

Americans 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?

Comments

[last-archangel.livejournal.com]

It's all our stupid federal government's fault. If we were allowed to drink with our families in our own homes without fear of punishment, we'd be more mature about alcohol and less likely to binge when our bodies are not used to it.

[heidi-wiggin.livejournal.com]

People do drink before they're 21, but because it's illegal and done quickly (in back alleys!) and taboo, they tend to get smashed asap. That's their goal; stumbling-inebriation. If the drinking age were lowered more people's first brush with alcohol would be while they were in high school, at home, they WOULDN'T be in college going crazy. And by the time they got to college the novelty would've worn off.

Yes, American beer sucks.

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with my learned friends' comments above. When I was in HS, I liked hangin' with the foreign exchange kids we had from Europe...and they all said they found American kids' attitude toward the watery beer that was all we could get horribly babyish. Their idea of fun didn't include just obtaining a six pack of Milwaukee's Best or some other low-octane beer, and swilling it down as fast as they could before they were caught; most of them had been drinking beer and wine with their families for years.

[poisonedwriter.livejournal.com]

Above drinking comments are true.

But I have to point out that the toilet praising humor is most certainly not exclusive to American culture. I point most seriously to James Joyce's Ulysses. See? Some people make talking to the bathroom appliances high literature. :P

[paruretic-kitty.livejournal.com]

How true that is. Whenever something is forbidden, it becomes that much more appealing. The government always talks about teenage drunk drivers without ever even considering that it could have something to do with the fact that alcohol is treated like some great "forbidden fruit", if you will. Obviously, we don't want little kids getting drunk at bars or anything, but shouldn't it be the family's job, not the government's, to teach kids about alcohol and responsible drinking?

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Chalk another one up to the list of Issues Which Cannot Be Legislated But Require Massive Internal Societal Change Which Is Much Harder. It's getting depressingly long.

[last-archangel.livejournal.com]

There's many, many things that American kids should be taught by their parents but that the federal government has deemed should be taught by disinterested, underpaid "experts".

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Well, that and the parents don't seem to be terribly motivated to do the teaching themselves in the first place. If they did, there wouldn't be any need for disinterested, underpaid experts. When did the parenting skills of the nation suddenly evaporate? The more I get to know people here the more grateful I am to have been raised by two anomalies, though they were both raised outside the country themselves so that might have something to do with it...

[last-archangel.livejournal.com]

My parents too are "anomalies", but I think they are that way because they were baby-boomers born into working-class families and taught by their own good fathers that you never get anywhere if you don't not work your ass of for what you want. As a result, they're both pragmatic, hard-working, and taught my sisters and me about actual life and how to think critically.

[jesskat.livejournal.com]

I sometimes hear stories of teenagers desperate to be cool being offered "alcohol" (really just apple cider) by big brothers or sisters and later claiming to be "sooooo wasted". Some of them may think they've drank so much they should logically be drunk by now even if they don't feel like it, so they act like they think one should act when drunk, but I don't think all of them are faking it. I think some of it may have to do with the power of suggestion. People think they should be drunk, so their brain convinces them they are drunk. It may work the other way around, too. People in Europe are used to harder stuff. They tell themselves a few bottles can't possibly be enough to get properly drunk even if there's ten times more alcohol in them than in American beer. So they're able to keep themselves sober longer, by convincing themselves they're not drunk yet.

[mincot.livejournal.com]

LOL, Poisonedwriter.

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.

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

Alcohol is overrated.

Then again, I really don't like the taste, so I've never been a big drinker. Just one fancy tropical cocktail with a meal every now and then (you know, like once a month or less, or just on holidays).

I also take medication that can react with alcohol, so I have to be careful anyway.

And the idea of getting roaring drunk doesn't appeal to me. I like being in control of my own mind, thank you. I've never been drunk in my life, unless you want to count one or two times when I took too much cough syrup.

[spence137.livejournal.com]

Observations on Canadians, Part 1:

They love to talk about how much better, smarter, more cultured (et cetera) they are than their American counterparts.

[fani.livejournal.com]

Wait what...I thought you were American then Canadian then American again....SO CONFUSED!!

[quesrah.livejournal.com]

So you live upstairs from me, then?

Oh, you are in Burbank. I'm somebody else's horribly inebriated sick-being neighbor then.

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

My dad is an engineer. He went to the University of waterloo.

Now, my dad is a sleepy drunk, I inherited that from him. However, he and some workmates went to Minneapolis on a work trip.

Their hosts invited them out for beer.

They had beer.

And they left because they were full. not because they were drunk.. FULL.

I taunt my american friends with that. American beer! Low alcohol, more filling!

[sydpad.livejournal.com]

At least in LA, which is most of my observation of Americans, they don't drink that often during the week-- like routinely having wine with dinner for example. For one thing you have to drive everywhere, for another it's a surprisingly puritanical, hard-working place. So they don't get the cast-iron livers that, say, oh, Londoners have; if you only drink on every third weekend I don't know if you'd ever develop a resistance. It's funny though, I wouldn't have said Angelinos drink less than Canadians, or is that just the prairie?

The British of course drink more than I would have thought possible... it takes a good 8 pints to get a small London female drunk, so they generally have about 32 on a night out, this being Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, with toilet-worshiping sessions evenly spread out between. And nice middle-class women's magazines caution that you shouldn't have more than a half-bottle of wine A NIGHT. o_O

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have said Angelinos drink less than Canadians, or is that just the prairie?

It's hard for me to say; I moved to Canada from Utah and anywhere is wetter than Utah. The people I know from the prairies or the North tend to drink more than the others, in my limited experience, possibly as a result of growing up with nothing to do. :) I haven't known any Maritimers, though, and I hear they have a bit of a reputation. There is 'happy hour' at work every Friday, here, with freely available bottles of beer, but I don't know how much people drink when this is not available to them.

But yeah, Canada ain't got nothin' on the UK. Holy smokes.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Yup, born in the States to mixed parents so I grew up with a foot in both countries, moved up there for college, now down here for work. I still count myself a Canuck, though, as I've never felt really at home in the USA and so many of my values come from the Canadian side. If it wasn't for Disney I'd still be up there. Darn California studio. :P

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Um ... yup, I'd say you'd have that about right.

To be fair, when I moved up there I thought the rhetoric was a bit overblown. While some of it still is, I lived in Canada for long enough to come at the US with a foreigner's eyes, and I can definitely see their point. I am continually surprised at what I find down here.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

See, these are the values I thought America was founded on ... what happened?

[frabjous-mimes.livejournal.com]

Studies have shown that college students act more drunk than they really are. That's probably part of it. And plus, American kids are trained that drinking is for getting drunk as fast as possible, so they don't want to hold their liquor, really. I get extremely loopy and spinny from five beers, but then I'm really small and also a girl. And also unused to it.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

These weren't college students, and while I'm sure there was a fair amount of mob psychology involved, it certainly falls short of explaining some people...

[frabjous-mimes.livejournal.com]

My ex-roommate's ex-roommate got way too smashed from one or two beers to be realistic. I think there's a placebo effect going on, and also maybe some people were just acting stupid because they just are stupid. You can never count that out!

[last-archangel.livejournal.com]

Most of the people in our parents' generation were spoiled rotten by the post-World War II mentality of untouchable-ness. It got to the point where it became "we're Americans, we can do whatever the hell we want!", which has led to a complete decline in the sense of responsibility and the work ethic which built this nation in the first place. And there's another reason, much as I hate to sound like a "traditionalist", but a lot of that mores was based upon God-fear - people stopped going to church and temple - and that changed everything, too. Finally, the American family structure is in decline, and not because of homosexuality, but because of the fact that more than half the children are not being raised by their fathers. Boys never learn to be men, women become hypersexualized in their quest to fill that gap created when their fathers left, and we're all left with a society where children aren't being raised by anyone at all, but left in a room with a TV and a box of frozen fishsticks and made to fend for themselves.