'It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people," goes a line in 'The Great Gatsby', but I can't imagine F Scott Fitzgerald was referring to Christmas party time in Ireland when he made such a bold statement. As far as I'm concerned, there's no reason to be sober amongst the severely inebriated.
I'm going to try to avoid Christmas merriment as best I can this year, because I'm temporarily not drinking.
Rather than being a loyal participant, I've become a reluctant observer and, like anyone thrust into my position, I haven't liked what I've seen. In fact, I've become severely intolerant. There are many levels to the irritation you have to endure if in the company of drinkers. From the banal, like having stories about someone's children shouted in your ear during a gig, to the annoying, like sitting in a taxi with the door open while a drunken member of the group conducts a largely irrelevant conversation on the street.
I've been taken aback by how many people get really aggressive for no reason and pick fights, often because they misunderstood something. I've been robbed, had laptops broken and my passport and driver's licence ended up in north London, even though I was in France at the time - all due to drunken negligence - none of it my own.
I'm bored of the cliched drunk women making a tool of herself and men coming up to around 1cm from my face shouting nonsense. I've nodded and said "no way, that's mad" while listening to people regale war stories, which I've heard a million times and weren't that funny to begin with. When a guy I know locally asked me what he'd done the other night, I just said: "The usual, you picked fights and stole people's pints." "Oh right," he said in disbelief. "I had a blackout." After all, if you can't remember, it didn't happen, plus I must be making it up.
Though some people are coherent and funny after drinking large amounts, they are few and far between. Seeing a complete personality turnaround happen in front of your eyes after too much drink is quite frightening, especially when people write it off so easily the next day.
Source: Barbara McCarthy, Irish Independent, 08/12/14
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