How much is too much?

Dinner parties, balls, fashion shows, movie nights, flat parties, club socials, Sinners, pub-crawls, pre-drinks, and nights out. All of these events make up the typical social life of a St Andrews student— arguably, of any Uni student in the UK and beyond. Each one presents a different kind of fun and purpose, with a distinct dress code and friend group associated with it.

However, in most cases, they all share one common theme: a prevalence of alcohol.

We bring bottles of wine to friends’ dinner parties, drink flute after flute of “free” champagne at the balls and fashion shows, get cozy for a movie with some beer, guzzle (and spill) whatever mixed drink our flat party hosts have provided, throw back shot after shot of Tesco vod at the command of our club captains, don’t even consider entering Venue 1 and the slimy chaos of Sinners Sport unless we are sufficiently schwasted… and the others, well, they’re pretty self-explanatory.

I’m not condemning our alcohol culture—believe me, I was definitely among that mass of Americans that greeted the Tesco alcohol aisle with kid-in-a-candy-store awe when I first arrived here in the land of the lower drinking age. What I am doing, though, is taking a step back for a minute and looking at our beverage consumption through a more critical lens.

Thinking about our social lives, it’s not far-fetched to say that we may sometimes drink six or seven nights (or days, in the case of the boozy brunch) a week. That doesn’t mean that we’re partying hard every night: I’m accounting for a few intense evenings alongside the casual cocktail dates and the possible wine with dinner.

In the ‘real’ world, this amount of drinking would surely warrant excessive use status, and some might even brand it alcoholism, although that term is tricky as it implies a psychological and emotional addiction. Most of us really aren’t addicted, though: we just, well, like alcohol. But why? Do we rely on it to take the awkwardness out of social gatherings? Does it make us seem cooler, or bolder, or more friendly? Do we use it for stress relief—as a way of forgetting about those deadlines? Is it the allure of the shared experience of being out of our element? Do we like being drunk? Is it just what Uni students do?

There is something about our age and our situation here that somehow makes it ok for us to drink as much as we do. If someone had a week where they drank almost every night, I don’t think their friends would be too concerned. And I guess it is fine and well here at St Andrews—as long as we still show up to class and complete our coursework, no one cares how much we drink.

It’s after we graduate that problems may arise, as drinking every night of the week is not exactly conducive to a nine-five job. Prince William famously quipped that St Andrews students either leave married, or as alcoholics. I guess it’s up to all of us to make sure that our friends don’t go down the latter road.