The general decline in standards today

[LizzieMaine]

I didn't think anything could surprise me. But I was wrong.

 

[AmateisGal]

I hate to add this, but it's not just girls. Boys are using the tampon method too.

I wish we could put these people's creativity to good use, like curing AIDs or cancer or something.

GOOD GRIEF. Unbelievable.

 

[noonblueapples]

http://www.snopes.com/risque/kinky/vodka.asp

This ones been around for a few months

 

[Flicka]

I dunno... The tampon trick was well known when I was a teenager. When I was 14-15 some girls didn't have lunch on Fridays so they'd get drunk faster on Friday night. People also took paracetamol to knock out the liver (crazy and dangerous and not very efficient).

On the other hand, that period was an all-time low in illegal drugs. We thought that if you looked at a joint, it was only a matter of hours before you lived on the streets, smelling of wee, and turning tricks. There just wasn't anything cool about that.

 

[Miss Golightly]

I have clearly lived such a sheltered life! Probably one of the most stupid things I have ever seen someone do to get a buzz was on a night out when a friend of mine opened the cleaning staffs cupboard in the pub toilets, took out some air freshener and started to inhale it - she was falling around, thinking it was hilarious (wouldn't have been quite so funny if she had collapsed and died which I believe can occur doing this stupid act).

 

[Feraud]

http://www.snopes.com/risque/kinky/vodka.asp

This ones been around for a few months

ah, thank you. I suspected this might be an urban legend..

 

[sheeplady]

http://www.snopes.com/risque/kinky/vodka.asp

This ones been around for a few months

Considering that it has been featured on national news outlets, then I'd consider that a decline in a different kind of standard.

Although I'm glad to hear that it is not true. Gives me a little faith back.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Police in some cities have been responsible for propagating the story, which suggests at least some idiot has actually tried it.

Nobody ever asks the really meaningful question though: no matter how old you are and no matter how you go about it, what's the point of making yourself falling-down-stupid drunk? How is throwing up into the houseplants and passing out on the bathroom floor *fun*?

Never been drunk in my life myself. I can stumble around and fall down stairs and get blindingly sick the natural way, with migraines. Don't need alcohol to accomplish that.

 

[sheeplady]

Police in some cities have been responsible for propagating the story, which suggests at least some idiot has actually tried it.

There's actually a blog where a woman tried it: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/danielle-crittenden/vodka-tampons_b_1105433.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008

Warning: You might want to not be reading this before, during, or after eating. Or drinking.

 

[Feraud]

Oh I don't doubt at all that a few idiots have tried it.

Nobody ever asks the really meaningful question though: no matter how old you are and no matter how you go about it, what's the point of making yourself falling-down-stupid drunk? How is throwing up into the houseplants and passing out on the bathroom floor *fun*?

The aftermath is not fun but unfortunately society has failed to instruct our young adults on how to properly handle their drink. The result is overdrinking.

 

[Flicka]

Police in some cities have been responsible for propagating the story, which suggests at least some idiot has actually tried it.

Nobody ever asks the really meaningful question though: no matter how old you are and no matter how you go about it, what's the point of making yourself falling-down-stupid drunk? How is throwing up into the houseplants and passing out on the bathroom floor *fun*?

Never been drunk in my life myself. I can stumble around and fall down stairs and get blindingly sick the natural way, with migraines. Don't need alcohol to accomplish that.

I've been falling-down-stupid drunk a decent number of times and IMO, there's nothing even remotely 'fun' about it. My ex - who I would say had a drinking problem - on the other hand was only ever truly happy in that state. He drank until he was barely coherent at least once or twice a week, and he didn't even have the excuse of being a teenager. Plus he was a really mean drunk.

As far as I know he still does it, approaching 40.

 

[Atticus Finch]

Police in some cities have been responsible for propagating the story, which suggests at least some idiot has actually tried it.

This may be true. I actually heard the story form one of our local School Resource Officers. But, to my knowledge, no kids here have been charged with any crime resulting from the tampon trick. Even though a high school aged kid would technically be in violation of the law were she to possess EOH in any amount, I can’t imagine how an “alcohol tampon case” would be proved once the deed was completed…so to speak.

And…when I first heard the story, I wondered how the girls could do what they were supposed to be doing. I remember once, when I was in college, my (then) girlfriend and I tried to smuggle a pint of gin into a Goose Creek Symphony concert by hiding it in her underwear. The predictable thing happened. The bottle broke. I’ll never forget the expression on her face as she ran to the restroom…positive from the intense pain that she had been badly cut. She hadn't been. Thankfully, she was totally unharmed…but she was very, very uncomfortable for the remainder of the concert.

Still...I have seen people do some damn crazy things in an effort to get a rush...pain and physical harm not withstanding. So I figured that there was some way the girls were doing what SRO said they were doing.

AF

 

[Miss Golightly]

I think one of the main problems now is that there is no shame in being drunk anymore - over here it's all "He's a gas man isn't he?!" or "He's hilarious with a few scoops on him" - no one is saying "The state of you last night - you were a complete disgrace". It's just seen as a source of fun - you haven't had a good night unless you get legless and can't remember the latter half of the evening. I've heard people say "I honestly can't remember how I got home" to which someone says "Ah, the sign of a good night" - seriously, what's so good about being that plastered?

 

[William Stratford]

I suspect the view of drunkeness as somehow "good" is part of the same infantilising of society that says we should dress and act like children - with little sense of dignity or self-restraint because in the age of "do your own thang", appetite is king. A process that is so blurring the boundary between the child and the adult that we also see children increasingly sexualised as well. When we infantilise the adult, in addition to bringing the adult into the realm of the child we also bring the child into the realm of the adult - with truly horrifying potential!

 

[Edward]

I think one of the main problems now is that there is no shame in being drunk anymore...

Partly... yet perhaps also, paradoxically, making alcohol taboo is equally a problem - forbidden fruit, and all that. The school trip I went on back in 92 where most of u had our first experiments with alcohol.... the kids whose parents would have given them the occasional beer barely drank - if at all. Almost every single one that got hammered was one with parents who wouldn't permit a drop of alcohol in the house. A big part of it is culture: I firmly believe this, looking to southern Europe. Of course, I'm sure they have their own examples of degeneracy too, but they don't seem to have the same binge-drinking tendency you see farther north. Kids in southern Europe grow up with wine on the table: it's not the big rebellion to go drinking.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I grew up in an absolutely dry household -- if my grandfather wanted a bottle of beer while listening to the ballgme, he had to drink in the garage -- and I never once saw any member of my family drunk. It just *wasn't done* -- drunks were those stumbling rummies who lived in shacks on the back streets, not respectable people "out to have a good time." We never saw drunkenness, except in goofy comedy routines on TV that made the drinker look like a fool (Foster Brooks was never anyone's role model) and we didn't associate with people who thought being drunk was all innocent fun. So the interest and curiosity was never cultivated.

The only member of our family to this day who drinks regularly is my brother, and that's the least of his bad habits. I'll have a beer occasionally, although I hear my grandmother cursing me from the grave with every sip, but I've never had any desire to have two or three at a sitting.

 

[Edward]

I grew up in an absolutely dry household -- if my grandfather wanted a bottle of beer while listening to the ballgme, he had to drink in the garage -- and I never once saw any member of my family drunk. It just *wasn't done* -- drunks were those stumbling rummies who lived in shacks on the back streets, not respectable people "out to have a good time." We never saw drunkenness, except in goofy comedy routines on TV that made the drinker look like a fool (Foster Brooks was never anyone's role model) and we didn't associate with people who thought being drunk was all innocent fun. So the interest and curiosity was never cultivated.

The only member of our family to this day who drinks regularly is my brother, and that's the least of his bad habits. I'll have a beer occasionally, although I hear my grandmother cursing me from the grave with every sip, but I've never had any desire to have two or three at a sitting.

Social perception of drunkenness as folly (as I believe the KJV has it) will certainly be a factor. Across Southern Europe it's seen as idiocy: in Palma, Mallorca, they are especially contemptuous of the binge-drinking English that come to have a holiday they can't remember save a few hangovers on the beach of some England on Sea resort.... (as told to three of us one night by a local academic who opened up once he realised the three English speakers he had in the car were a Scot, an Irish and an Aussie.... ).

FWIW, It's often seemed to me that the vast majority of American kids I see stupid drunk in London are over eighteen and under twenty-one....

 

[Feraud]

Partly... yet perhaps also, paradoxically, making alcohol taboo is equally a problem - forbidden fruit, and all that.

Agreed. It's a taboo on one hand while advertising sells the exact opposite message.
Is much question as to why this is a problem?

 

[sheeplady]

I teach some incredibly smart people who make it a habit to drink heavily (binge) at least 3 or 4 nights a week. It's part of the "college atmosphere" I'm told. (When I was in college, in between classes and work I had no time for drinking, although I saw it then.)

I also teach in an environment where if someone passes out and you call for an ambulance because you're afraid your friend is going to die, you and your friend will both be charged with underage drinking and possibly face punishment by the university as well. Even if you leave your passed-out friend with a sober friend, the person who is unconscious will still be charged. And the university punishment goes on your academic record and can result in suspension/ explusion.

Young people die or are seriously hurt all over the country every year because their friends are afraid to get their friend in trouble. It's incredibly sad. You should never be afraid to call the police if you think your friend may die because they drank too much. (Barring, of course, if your friend hurt somebody else, risked hurting someone else, or something similar. Drinking isn't that bad of a crime.)

 

[Flicka]

Here, I think drinking has always been a machismo thing. The more you drink, the more of a man you are. So drinking and fighting has been a Saturday night hallmark for hundreds of years. However, women didn't drink. That's new, as in increasing steadily since the 60s. Also, binge drinking used to be a class thing - it was something factory workers and farm hands did. Now everyone does it and the social stigma (as in class and/or something only fallen women did) is virtually gone. But the machismo thing lingers on, and it's more or less spread to women as well. We too want to drink like 'real men'.

My family was more or less dry when I grew up. I think all of my grand parents were convinced non-drinkers and my parents drank wine maybe four times a year, and very modestly too. I used to be part of the new generation of women who drink like men, but I've realised I don't much care to be intoxicated. Two glasses of wine is my max these days, and I drink that no more than once a month, tops. I'm a bit if a wine snob and so quality over quantity is my melody.