Keeping up with Kyle: Nobody needs forced drinking

I drink at my own pace, not at your will

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Welcome to another instalment of our weekly column Keeping Up With Kyle, where Kyle, the most miserable of all Tab writers, delivers to you weekly short rants about the state of our campus and it’s surroundings.


 

I love drinking. Particularly wine.

Nothing pleases me more than sitting down at the end of a long day of uni with a glass of wine. It stays in my hand, I sip it regularly and I socialise with friends, flatmates, or peers.

But as soon as you rope me into some godawful drinking game or start up a chant of “weeeeeeeee like to drink with…” rest assured I will be putting my drink down.

I’m not drinking for you; I’m drinking for me, thank you very much. One of the many reasons I didn’t join sports societies – other than my chronic fear of exercise – is their notoriety for brutal drinking. So what if I’m 30 minutes late to the social, the only thing binding me to this ludicrous notion of ‘penalties’ is social compliance – something I lack.

I’ll drink it in my own time, thanks

People know how much they can drink. They’re practised in the art of knowing their own limits. You’re not.

So I’m expected to down a pint then have three vodka shots? No, I won’t do that because I will throw up. I don’t like throwing up, nobody does. I’m perfectly capable of drinking that much, but at my own pace.

Who even wants to end up blind drunk and unable stand, see or remember the night? That’s not what makes drinking fun, that’s what ruins drinking and earns us the title of a nation of binge drinkers.

This is the life

People join societies to make friends and enjoy their hobby / sport / fanaticism . Sure: a lot of that is drinking based but something about the idea of your freedom to say no being taken away from you makes me very uncomfortable. The word consent gets thrown around a lot these days: but shouldn’t it extend to the substances you pour down your throat?

So here’s my sound advice on the perils of drinking games and enforced drinking. Ignore the people who tell you you have to drink. Embrace the sips. Cherish your straw. Drink because you want to drink, not because some gobshite in third year thinks it’s funny to get you so hammered you have to have your stomach pumped.