[dspillett]

I should have left the second paragraph out, we could trade anecdata until the cows come home. My point is that I think you judging a whole by the standards of a very loud and obvious few.

Our big drinkers are a problem at home as well as aboard. Unfortunately our other stereotype comes into play in that for every loud idiot, there are many of us quietly tutting at them and hoping they'll get bored and bugger off if we don't interact with them… One of the reasons I drink a lot less these days is that I grew tired of apologising for other people's behaviour when someone in or associated with our group had "one too many" and couldn't regulate himself¹ after that, or making excuses to leave early before that happened. In the generation after mine (and the next so far, but many in that cohort are not yet old enough to, so more time is needed to see if the pattern holds) are drinking a lot less, both in the sense of having a healthier attitude to drinking when they do and in many cases simply not taking alcohol at all, in part as a reaction against all this too.

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[1] Not all unpleasant drunks are male of course, but in my experience a higher proportion of us that drink much have an unhealthy relationship with it, and this is exacerbated by a lower proportion of women drinking a lot. I'm not sure how other types fit into this, certainly none of the out trans people I know are that sort of problem but this is probably too small a sample to be making generalisations from.