Why has heavy-drinking become a barometer of status for the young?

A worrying study shows that young adults who drink most are most popular, says Ellie O’Byrne

Heavy-drinking has become a barometer of status for women, mimicking traditional male behaviour.

A Canadian study, ‘Drinking To Reach the Top’, has concluded that among young adults “higher social status is associated with riskier drinking patterns”.

The study of 357 young adults found that the more they consumed the higher their social standing within their group.

There was a narrow gender divide: “For men, more frequent heavy-drinking was related to higher peer-nominated status. For women, more drinking in general was related to higher peer-nominated status.”

Are Irish attitudes similar? Male friends of mine confirmed the association between being able to ‘handle your drink’ and being popular. This is a sign of hardiness and machismo. The phenomenon is newer for women.

I’ve been the oldest on nights out several times in the past couple of years, and I’ve noticed that ‘pre-drinking’ is prevalent among young women now. The drinks of choice in the student flat are bags of cans for the lads and cut-price vodka and mixers for the girls. This observation is backed up by the study.

Why would we look up to people who indulge in destructive heavy-drinking? Ireland has a long, and well-documented grá for alcohol, and the emphasis politically, and in the media, in recent years, has been on responsible consumption, yet seemingly to little avail.

Walk through town sober at 3am on Saturday night and it’s like peering into one of Dante’s lesser-known circles of hell; streets awash with bodily fluids and half-eaten burgers, brawls and tears and smashed bottles and laddered tights. Don’t stop to see what’s happening in that doorway over there. You really, really don’t want to know.

Given the normal reticence of Irish people, maybe the decisiveness of someone who’s half-cut appears admirable. It’s sad to think that for some Irish people drinking is a catharsis, a way of escaping repression and social anxiety, but I’ve no doubt that’s true.

For many people, drinking — within reason — is fun. Human beings have always had a fondness for intoxicants. In medieval times, when clean water was in short supply, brewing beer ensured that you (and your children, who drank ‘small ale’, which had a lower alcohol content) had a supply of clean liquid to drink, with the added benefit of B vitamins and calories. This meant, in the words of one historian, that “the normal state of consciousness throughout Mediaeval Europe was probably one of mild intoxication”.

Images of a large, bearded figure, probably heavily modelled on Brian Blessed in Blackadder, plonking his tankard down on a table and roaring, “Nonsense! Cut all their heads off!” spring to mind. But this may not be so far from the truth; many influential political decisions — ‘should we go on a crusade, or will we have another crack at France’? — were made in states of inebriation. And you can’t get any higher social standing than a throne in which to conduct your quaffing and blustering.

Maybe it’s a primate thing; vervet monkeys, on Barbados and St Kitt’s, have long been observed draining abandoned drinks at beach bars.

This prompted a study, back in 1990, and the monkeys were shown to have striking similarities to humans in their patterns of consumption. Four groups were identified: heavy, abusive drinkers; heavy, habitual drinkers; mild social drinkers; and teetotallers. Most of the troupe leaders fell into the heavy-habitual drinker category.

These monkeys are aggressive, drink heavily and get in fights, and yet they are in dominant positions socially. A lot like us humans, with whom they share 82.4% of their DNA.

Certainly, I’m right about everything, not to mention wittier, after a couple of drinks. My voice gets louder, I approach strangers with greater ease, and my dancing is clearly elevated to a nearly professional level. But that’s after a couple of drinks.

The worrying thing about ‘Drinking to reach the Top’ is that it mentions an upper limit of 12 drinks. After 12 drinks, the only people I’d be popular with would be the night staff of A&E.