St. Patrick’s Day: Dawn of the Drunk

St. Patrick’s Day – that special part of the year when excessive swilling of yeast and hops ceases to be the entry quota to the Betty Ford Clinic and instead morphs into a joyous celebration of hedonism – is here!

It’s a day where gushing blood and stomach contents from both ends is not only socially permitted, but encouraged. It’s also a day of international harmony where everyone remembers their Irish heritage; twice removed on their cousin’s side and twice removed from the truth.

St. Patrick’s Day is just like Christmas – if Christmas was a slack-jawed fresher punching you in the arm at a bar, insisting that you’re his “mate” long after he has pissed all over your shoes and bought a dozen shooters out of your now-missing wallet.

For, you see, St. Patrick’s Day is a time to revel in continued punishment of our ancient foe the liver ‘til the early hours of the morning. Sounds fantastic, does it not?

Well, no.

In actuality, St. Patrick’s Day is a holiday mired in the overrated myth that having your stomach pumped is a sign of being a hardcore party animal, and not a failure to understand the simple maxim of “tank of vodka goes in, torrent of bile comes out”.

The unrealistic expectations created by the “party holiday” turns it into a contrived, annual chunder-fest that is not the fun-filled celebration of the end of Lent but an excuse to capitalise on the worst traits brought on by getting crunk [def. crazy drunk].

That is, all of these traits being representative of the Irish. This stereotyping cheapens what would otherwise be a noble pursuit of alcohol.

It will turn everyone you love, like, or maybe just tolerate, into paralytic, drunken monsters that screech their worst Father Ted impressions directly into your sick-encrusted ear.

Your world will slip into hazes of green and orange, which you probably won’t notice is actually a flag being wrapped around you by the UEA Rugby club, as part of some definitely-not-homoerotic bro-ritual that ends in you being violently dragged down Prince of Wales Road like Spartacus in a gladiator’s net.

Surely this is like any other night out but with a charming, Gaelic twist?

This novelty is exactly the problem with St. Stereotype’s Day. We toffee-nosed British folk use St. Patrick’s Day to drink ourselves into a coma in the belief that the Irish have some inbuilt, X-Men type ability to drink their body weight in whiskey in order to gain strength, like shamrock-wearing mosquitoes. It is this mistaken anthropology that leads to the loss of general sanity.

Conjure up the most psychotic crowd you can imagine… (try the swaggering arseholes in Pow! Carnival on a Thursday). Now throw in the toxic level of green paint-stripper grog consumed by those poor fools for sixteen hours straight, and introduce to it the belief that the Emerald Isle gives magical powers, and finally apply that on a mass scale.

Result? Hordes of violent, randy, drunks let loose into the city, fucking and eating anything in sight. Peaceful Norwich streets become identical to the ending scene of zombie film 'Land of the Dead'.

So, with this in mind, it only seems wise that I barricade every door, board up every window, and watch nervously from the confines of my bedroom as the Sambuca-drenched undead mass eat, drink, and puke their way through the Fine City.

I shall hold my liver tight and pray to whatever God will listen to guide me through the green-shirted storm.

Gosh. How traumatic. I think I need a drink.