Drinking alone at home is always going to be more fun than clubbing

This absolute renegade is done with your nights out


Drinking alcohol is, as most of us know, brilliant. But doing it with others, or outside of your own home, can really put a dampener on the whole experience.

Nightclubs are mostly pretty bad. Certainly in comparison with your own sofa – unless you have a leather sofa. Clubs do of course offer the thrill and excitement of drunken, sexual pursuit, an opportunity to replicate the Hotline Bling video, buying lollies in toilets (why is that a thing by the way?) and asking strangers for ends of their cigarettes.

All valid excuses for going out, I’ll concede. But we must also consider such facts as the cost of buying entry to a club, the potentially life threatening shame that comes with being denied entry into a club, fog machines, DJs playing a lot of Lethal Bizzle, your New Balances being utterly ruined and the horror of having to ride up front in a taxi and miss out on the #backseatbanter. Is it at all worth it? Depends how much you want a kebab really.

Birkenstocks x Cotes Du Rhones. DSTRKT certainly would not approve

An almost inexorable part of the going out process is the time honoured tradition of drinking games. Amidst the chaos of a drinking game, there is drinking that occurs, but it’s never drinking on your terms. It’s drinking while other people chant at you, it’s drinking a grim amalgam of everyone else’s splash-backed-in-beverage.

I don’t want to drink Blossom Hill ever, and I especially don’t want it to drink it when it’s been combined with Foster’s and some off-brand peach schnapps. No, drinking games are not the way alcohol was intended to be consumed.

They’re rowdy, they’re messy, and no one can even agree on the rules. Flying solo, under your own command, there are no rules to follow. You’re a renegade, dancing to the beat of your own drum, drinking as many fingers of your own drink at a comfortable and civilised pace whilst giving the finger right back at society.

One finger for me, one for the world

At your house, on your own, there’s no reason to fear judgement for your beverage choices. You don’t have to try and impress a barman with your wide and extensive knowledge of ports, you don’t need to pretend to a girl you fancy that you really love microbrewed IPA from Staffordshire to seem a bit more interesting.

Instead what you can do is watch Gogglebox and swig glasses of your box wine. Or anything really, as high or low brow as you want. VKs taste just as sugary in the living room as they do at the SU.

‘I’m trying to watch Gogglebox here!’

Pubs: better than clubs. That’s the official tagline of pubs I think, and it’s true. They are better. Sitting down is encouraged, they’re quieter (unless a sporting event is on, GO SPORTS), you can get a passable burger, sometimes there’s even a cat or a dog knocking about.

The reason we like pubs is because they’re a bit like your house. However, your house is even more like your house than a pub, so do yourself a favour and just stay put. There’s no possibility of buying rounds in your house either, so it’s way more financially sound.

Nothing wrong with a bit of toilet wine (if you’re at home)

Glassware is almost as important as the drink that goes inside it. Which is why there are few things more disheartening than being directed to the glass cupboard at someone else’s house (or worse – the draining board) only to find a tragic selection of coloured IKEA numbers, perhaps those ridiculous jar-with-handle things or the worst of all drinking receptacles: the white plastic tumblers that they have in places like DSTRKT.

The thought of having to put any of those to your lips and take a sip doesn’t even bear thinking about. Don’t take the risk, stay at home and make use of your favourite glass. Unless it’s one of the ones I just mentioned, in which case throw it away and just go straight from the bottle.

Things it’s okay to put in jars: Anything but alcohol.

I’m not saying never leave the house, I promise I do it sometimes. I’m not saying dive headfirst into alcoholism either. But do consider the joys of drinking alone at home. It’s cheaper, it’s quieter, it’s more relaxing. You can get dressed up if you want to, you can even do it naked. And that’s the beauty of it: everything is fair game. Apart from the jars with handles though, they’re still bad.