It's been 20 years since alcohol reached its peak in Britain. Hangover is still with us | alcohol

Most people can vaguely remember where they were when the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2000. me? Severely jaundiced, I hugged the rim of the community hall toilet and spewed out 10 types of bile. I spent the entire month of December attempting to complete the Team 2000 challenge, which involved 20 friends trying to consume 2,000 units of alcohol, 100 units each.

Dipping into the spice You might think this is possible, especially during the festive season, but I was only 15 years old. That night, on a dark morning, I defecated in my friends’ sleeping bags, unconscious. Welcome to Generation Peak Sul.

Peak booze is a name that originated in 2004 and was popularized through a 2015 article by author Chrissie Giles. That year, drinking rates in Britain reached their highest level in a century. That's 9.5 liters of pure alcohol, which equates to about 100 bottles of wine per person per year. (In 1950, that figure was just 3.9 liters.)

I was in college at the time and was happily drinking alcohol, which had been a part of every social event since I was a teenager. Fast forward to last week, government figures show that alcohol-related deaths in the UK have surpassed 10,000 in a year (2022) for the first time. This is a 32.8% increase compared to 2019, with most media coverage focused on the impact of Covid.

Amy Winehouse drinks during a performance in Lisbon in 2008. Photo: Nacho Doce/Reuters

But what about peak sake? How did we reach this threshold of excess, and how much responsibility do we bear for these often untimely deaths?

If 2004 was the peak of alcohol, that era can largely be said to be the mid to late 2000s. Writer James Butler recently called this period an era of ironic, nihilistic, and hyper-sadistic popular culture, and in retrospect, he can relate. We certainly drank frequently while taking cocaine, and the devil-may-care attitude that permeated our cultural totems at the time caused cocaine use to roughly triple in this decade compared to 1995.

The most notable of these are the Libertines, punk poets who defined fashion for generations across cultures and classes. Their everyman charm was sealed by their enthusiasm for alcohol (and various illicit drugs). Being wasteful has never seemed so aspirational, romantic, or normal. This attitude permeated many genres, if not the large multi-ethnic music scene where drinking reigned supreme, including the Strokes, the Streets, Klaxons, LCD Soundsystem, Bloc Party, CSS, Hard-Fi and Amy Winehouse. She was mined by the tabloids until her tragic death from alcoholism in 2011. And it wasn't just music. TV shows like Skins and Shameless featured their infamous but lovable protagonist, Frank Gallagher, who celebrated booze and excess in their own way.

As always, the devil is in the details. This was a decade that metaphorically began with 9/11 causing levels of collective social paranoia to skyrocket and New Labor being re-elected on a promise not to introduce it. [university] Charged charging fees and enacted laws against them. They abandoned it by 2004, a year after starting the Iraq War, which was justified by a notoriously questionable dossier. Political parties declined, and the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank in 2008 set in motion a global recession that hit job prospects and took longer to pay additional costs. It is perhaps natural for people, especially young people, to seek escape.

30 years ago, most alcohol was consumed in bars. Before the pandemic, more than two-thirds were drunk at home. Colin Angus, Sheffield University

In the 2008 edition of Swimming with Crocodiles: Cultures of Extreme Drinking, criminologist and drug culture researcher Fiona Measham suggests: Young people growing up in modern late capitalist society [seek to] Balance the broader implications of lack of control with regaining control through controlled loss of control in leisure time as a means of negotiating the pressures of everyday life.

Measham also discusses how the night-time economy became a driving force in civic revival. This was the manna for those who liked a pint or eight pints, but it also fostered a range of licensed leisure venues with drinking as their primary purpose rather than as a backdrop to the creation of social spaces. This culture of addiction was helped by the famous Licensing Act 2003, which relaxed licensing hours to encourage a Mediterranean-style alcohol culture. Relatively few venues applied for the proposed 24-hour licenses when the new law came into effect in November 2005, but by April 1, 2006, more than 50,000 venues had been granted longer hours.

Mike Skinner of Streets performing in New York in 2003. Photo: Scott Gries/Getty Images

All this happened after 1990s Britpop deified rave culture, supercharged by cigarettes, alcohol and the drug ecstasy. The drug, a pleasure-inducing stimulant that didn't help bring down Stella Artois, has been demonized by the media since Leah Betts' 1995 death, and Measham and fellow researcher Kevin Brain suggest that brewers developed alcopops and later found that the ingredients He said it led to the development of other sweet alcoholic beverages. Things like guarana and caffeine are more appealing and gender-neutral mental alternatives.

The rise of wine also had a major impact on female drinking, ushering in a cultural shift that took alcohol from its heyday to its current crisis.

We see an increase in drinking among women that perfectly reflects overall wine consumption, says Colin Angus, a senior researcher specializing in alcohol policy modelling at the University of Sheffield. 30 years ago, more than two-thirds of people drank alcohol at bars. Before the pandemic, more than two-thirds were drunk at home. (Angus later says that 2022 statistics put this figure at 73%).

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Studies have shown that people who drink alcohol at home are drinking too much wine and spirits. Ian Hamilton, associate professor of addictions at the University of York, believes the pandemic has made drinking alcohol alone at home much more socially acceptable. Some of the shame around people drinking alone has disappeared, he says.

I grew up with the Spice Girls and Girl Power. Drinking was about independence. We can do better by joining men. UK Liver Trust Patient Advocate Emma

Proof of this is Emma, ​​38, who last year underwent a successful liver transplant after being diagnosed with stage 4 liver disease. Emma is a patient advocate at the British Liver Trust and says: I was a sociable person and a sociable drinker.

Her drinking journey began with alcopops around age 17, followed by cheap cider in college and her first career with vines. I have been drinking wine since my 20s. Always wine. When I moved to London, the after-work drinking culture became very prevalent. She describes networking breakfasts with prosecco and orange juice, weekend getaways and fun, boozy brunches with the girls. She also says that the media has definitely played a role, as there is a program called Ladette to Lady. But Id also grew up with the Spice Girls and girl power. Drinking was about independence, a way we could not only join the men, but do better. It was during lockdown that things started to unravel and she was drinking three bottles a day alone in her home.

Emma's story has a positive conclusion, but sadly it is not unique. Since the pandemic, the largest increase in alcohol-related deaths, primarily from liver disease, has been among women aged 50 to 54. There was a 48% increase from 17.8 to 26.3 per 100,000 people. However, this number is still dwarfed by male deaths, which are roughly double the number of deaths among women over 50.

Talking to anyone involved in alcohol policy, it becomes clear that drinking habits are difficult to predict and dismantle. For example, newly released World Health Organization (WHO) statistics revealing that British children are the largest alcohol users in the world flies in the face of the common narrative of young people. People who embrace moderation. But like most things, the rise in deaths is rooted in poor public messaging that may or may not have anything to do with socioeconomic inequality, lack of services and/or adequate health care, and the financial power of BigAlcohol. But what about Pikbooz?

These depend on the core group that consumes the largest proportion of alcohol, says Hamilton. They're not usually people who drink the odd pint or glass of wine. but [the current numbers] Show me the difference between drinking too much and risking your life.

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