[Maru]

Originally Posted by Zizu

Many countries simply laugh at our excessive drinking
..

For what that's worth, I've never really heard of the UK being part of that culture. We know about the prevalence of pubs and how much drink is relished (as a pass time), but not binge drinking per say... it's more often connected to Irish culture more than anything because of St Pattys

Binge drinking is very common with parts of Mexican culture though, so it's certainly a thing culturally. We have an alcoholic (prone) family member who travels well and could make a nice living here, but then to move this direction, because of the proximity to alcohol we couldn't recommend it because they'd almost certainly be a part of that with their job (they work in a luxury brand dealership)... It's mostly for the young though... there are older people who obviously cling to that in their spare time, but it seems less and less the more well-employed they are. So it's not like there aren't huge swaths of that culture that work very hard and don't have time to sit around be drunk because they have to get in the morning. So it's just in balance...

As for death, unfortunately, most of our alcoholic deaths are going to be connected to vehicles and mixing with Fentanyl. Cars are absolutely required here. There's Uber, obviously, but it's not like there aren't people who get brazen and in the car all the time and drive despite whatever they have taken or have had to drink... in TX, it used to be more normalized and some of that stigma still hasn't gone away from the 80s... so I'd say that's our alcoholic curse in the South, is there are still remnants of a relaxed mentality with driving vehicles while impaired like it's just a basic thing we laugh about... many of us don't, thankfully.