Already the wall-to-wall advice on how to cure the Christmas hangover is becoming grating. Articles and tips ranged from blending asparagus smoothies to swallowing the ibuprofen. None of the tips included self-restraint. Now, having one too many at Christmas is nothing new, but what's shocking is how normal and acceptable it now is.
As soon as the round of parties starts, instead of a few drinks to get merry, most of us seem hell-bent on oblivion. Why do otherwise sane individuals suddenly feel compelled to make such fools of themselves at office parties? Instead of alcohol being a pleasant facilitator, getting steaming drunk is the only objective.
The 12 Pubs of Christmas is now a firmly established tradition, an ill-advised bar crawl where participants down a drink in a dozen different bars and all over the course of a single evening.
A male participant in this binge-fest will surpass his weekly recommended alcohol intake by one and a half times and a female will drink double her weekly limit in one go. Yes. We've reached peak booze and all in the name of a dubious new "tradition".
We drank 1.3 million litres of spirits during the first quarter of this year, a 16.5pc increase over the same period last year. Wine consumption is also up by 6pc. Meanwhile, beer consumption is up only marginally by 2.2pc. That's an overall 5.2pc increase in consumption during the first three months of 2015. Plus we are already among the top five heaviest drinking nations in Europe.
The World Health Organisation's global status report on alcohol and health 2014 found that 39pc of all Irish people aged 15-years-old and over had engaged in binge drinking, or "heavy episodic drinking", in the past 30 days. This puts Ireland just behind Austria (it's at 40.5pc) at the top of the 194 countries studied and well ahead of our neighbours in Britain who are at just 28pc. December is when we justify this behaviour in the name of goodwill.
Source: Lorraine Courtney, Irish Independent, 09/12/15
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