Binge drinking – what’s wrong with us?

The Sunday Star Times said that 40 per cent of all alcohol sold in New Zealand is consumed in a “heavy drinking” session, where men drink at least eight and women six full strength drinks. The liquor industry describes such people as super customers, and indeed, they keep the booze business as profitable as it is. This, however, makes me, whose total booze consumption would hardly register in any statistics, wonder what's wrong with people, who can only be happy when they are blotto, whose preferred form of social interaction is getting sloshed with others. At the root of this culture is alienation, the nature of a colonial society, in which everyone is rootless. Friends, family, are left behind in the old country, or for that matter on the Marae far away, there is no circle of people who you grew up with, whom you knew all your life, with whom you can have a few drinks to celebrate an occasion, or with whom you can drown your sorrows. You don't have a few drinks to free you up to sing songs that well up from your childhood, to dance, to relate to people whom you knew all your life. You live among strangers, and all that you know is that if you drink together you are mates for life for the evening. This must delight the Japanese brewing barons who own most of our large breweries and liquor outlets. As long as their super customers are “happy “ they are even happier.