Posted on 03/03/2014 10:04:05 PM PST by Olog-hai
A third of intensive care beds at weekends are taken up by patients critically ill from alcohol, according to the NHS’s head of critical care.
Dr. Bob Winter said it had become socially acceptable for people to drink themselves into an “anesthetized state” on Friday and Saturday nights, and he also warned of the trend of “front-loading”—becoming intoxicated before going out.
The prices at supermarkets and off-licenses were so cheap it was possible to buy enough alcohol to “die from” with a £10 note, he added.
Dr. Winter called for an urgent change in the culture of drinking and said the Government needed to take responsibility for the problem by banning cheap booze. Official figures show that alcohol costs the NHS an estimated £2.7 billion a year, including £1 billion in A&E alone. …
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Progressives know of no problem for which the solution is not giving more money over to the government.
“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”
Our neighbor’s son went to England to study for his Master’s Degree. He told me he was amazed at how much the British drank. Not a few cocktails either.. but LOTs and lots of them. He said it was very common even among the college professors. Believe it or not.. that was the image he took home.
I started November 5 2008. No matter how much I drink that jug eared manchild and his beard are everywhere I look.
Making crappy wine is pretty easy. Distilling the hard stuff, not so much.
It’s relatively difficult to get severe alcohol poisoning from drinking beer or wine, simply because of the volume of liquid that must be consumed.
Most of the people who die every year in the US from acute alcohol poisoning were doing shots, quite a few of them trying to down 21 shots on their 21st birthday. Many of them young women, who have lower body mass and generally a slower metabolic reduction of alcohol. Bad news when they try to match the guys drink for drink.
A lot more people would die of alcohol poisoning if the vomit reflex didn’t mean one usually unloads the alcohol before it can all be absorbed. And, of course, a lot of people pass out before they can get enough down to kill them.
Interestingly, one of the best ways to die of acute alcohol poisoning is to combine heavy drinking with marijuana, which suppresses the vomit reflex very effectively. As marijuana becomes more commonly used and socially acceptable, we can expect more deaths from alcohol poisoning
Even in your dreams?
According to wiki, the Brits consume 13.4 liters of pure alcohol per person per year. Americans are at 9.4.
The world leader is Moldova, at 18.2, with Ukraine, understandably, at #4, 15.6.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption
BTW, in colonial and early national days, Americans drank a lot more alcohol than we do today. 1830, 14.8 liters.
https://suite101.com/a/the-rise-and-fall-of-alcohol-consumption-in-early-america-a224180
At least in one health statistic, Americans are doing very well.
Moldova I can fully understand! I have some friends who came from Moldova (they are full blown Americans now). Sherman... by drinking... wow. I won’t get into details because they are beyond ugly but I attended my friend’s small birthday party. I am not a drinker... never have been really. They toast when a new person enters the home. They toast when someone leaves. They toast for today, yesterday, tomorrow and so on. My future plans include MAILING a birthday gift! (let’s leave it at that!!)
The minimum equipment set includes a bucket, a pot, a sheet of PE film, a rope and a cooking stove. Not very good quality product, though. 
.
They have a drinking culture. I actually like it, lol. When they come to NYC, they are shocked at how NYers don’t drink all that much.
Moldovans apparently drink a lot more than Russians, which is hard to believe.
They are really fun and we laughed a lot! Any celebration involves drinking and a lot of good food. That being said.. my tolerance is that of a seven year old. Russian vodka is good the first shot of celebrating a birthday. To not enjoy a shot is sort of insulting to them. Thus... my plans to mail any birthday gifts! There isn’t any sort of “sipping”. Downing is more like it. Let me put it this way: the first hour of the party was great.. wish I could remember the rest of the time!
Moldovians drink small quantities of wine at each dinner, it's a wine-making country like Italy or France. On the contrary, Russians drink occasionally, but hard alcohol and they tend to get to an extreme state.
It reminds me a birthday party of a Russian military cadet in a student dorm (I was invited to such event once in my life). Each male guest had a half-litre of vodka in first 40 minutes, than the party continued with a brawl with Vietnamneese students (at the time I had been already sleeping), and it was finished by armed police (who woke me up).
To be fair.. that is one heck of a party!! I’m still laughing at the image of it in my head!
We do that here just to deal with the reality of 3 more years of Obama. :-)
The British have been drinking themselves into submission centuries before any handgun ban and prior to any mass immigration so you’ll have to try harder than that one i’m afraid.
“To pass an entire day and night in drinking disgraces no one. Their quarrels, as might be expected with intoxicated people, are seldom fought out with mere abuse, but commonly with wounds and bloodshed” Tacitus, the Roman historian, reporting on the Saxons
Ha! Good one.
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