In short: the more and strictly something is prohibited, the more tempting it is for some people.

Tinkerisk:

 

In short: the more and strictly something is prohibited, the more tempting it is.

 

Not really. Incest and Heroin are both pretty prohibited but neither have ever tempted me....

MikeAqua:

 

Geektastic:

 

If it's very cold, Clausthaler from Germany is passable (Bitburger Drive not so much).

 

 

Clausthaler I would put in the category of sex in a canoe i.e. ing close to water ...

 

Most low/no alcohol beers seem to be pilsners or lagers.

 

If I'm drinking beer I would normally choose an IPA/APA or darker.  Ideally I would drink an American Brown Ale, but there aren't many around.

 

 

 

How can you tell? It's all served cold here, even when it shouldn't be! 

Rikkitic:

 

I drink a fair bit, usually a few glasses of wine at home in the evening. I don't drink every night, but more than once a week. I never get drunk. I never drink and drive. If I'm going to drive, I won't have even a single drink. I find that easier than trying to figure out how much is too much. When I want to go out, but not drink alcohol, I often have tonic, which I also find satisfying. It wasn't always this way. I did plenty of foolish things when I was young, but some of us do learn from experience.

 

Europeans do seem better at managing alcohol, though I have read some things that suggest there may also be problems there, just better hidden. But the only falling down drunks I ever witnessed in Amsterdam were from Scandinavia and the provinces. Public drunkenness is rare, or at least it was in my time. 

 

At the time I applauded the decision to lower the drinking age on the principle that State nannies are a bad idea. Since then I have regrettably come to the conclusion that it was a mistake. Young kiwis just cannot hold their liquor. I don't know why. I don't have an answer, other than just maturity. I don't know why people think that getting pissed to the point of humiliation is funny or cool. I don't know how to fix this. I think it is too late to put the drinking age back up. That idea was considered, then rejected. I can think of only one possible thing that might help a little: Create drunk tanks in every city and town. Not jail cells, but secure facilities with basic amenities. Anyone of any age (other than a child) who is deemed by a police officer to be incapacitated by alcohol goes into the tank for a week, no excuses, no exceptions. After a week the person is released. No criminal record or involved bureaucratic process, just a week in the tank and then free again. I think something like this would very quickly make young people think long and hard about their weekend intentions.

 

  

 

This keeps happening. I keep agreeing with you. It must stop, I tell you! 

Geektastic:

 

Not really. Incest and Heroin are both pretty prohibited but neither have ever tempted me....

 

But not just because it's pretty prohibited - I hope.

Rikkitic:

 

I drink a fair bit, usually a few glasses of wine at home in the evening. I don't drink every night, but more than once a week. I never get drunk. I never drink and drive. If I'm going to drive, I won't have even a single drink. I find that easier than trying to figure out how much is too much. When I want to go out, but not drink alcohol, I often have tonic, which I also find satisfying. It wasn't always this way. I did plenty of foolish things when I was young, but some of us do learn from experience.

 

Europeans do seem better at managing alcohol, though I have read some things that suggest there may also be problems there, just better hidden. But the only falling down drunks I ever witnessed in Amsterdam were from Scandinavia and the provinces. Public drunkenness is rare, or at least it was in my time. 

 

At the time I applauded the decision to lower the drinking age on the principle that State nannies are a bad idea. Since then I have regrettably come to the conclusion that it was a mistake. Young kiwis just cannot hold their liquor. I don't know why. I don't have an answer, other than just maturity. I don't know why people think that getting pissed to the point of humiliation is funny or cool. I don't know how to fix this. I think it is too late to put the drinking age back up. That idea was considered, then rejected. I can think of only one possible thing that might help a little: Create drunk tanks in every city and town. Not jail cells, but secure facilities with basic amenities. Anyone of any age (other than a child) who is deemed by a police officer to be incapacitated by alcohol goes into the tank for a week, no excuses, no exceptions. After a week the person is released. No criminal record or involved bureaucratic process, just a week in the tank and then free again. I think something like this would very quickly make young people think long and hard about their weekend intentions.

 

  

 

Fully agree. Yes, its cool, but is it? Yes it is, as to be cool I need to join in. I feel thats the mantra of todays young. Obviously not all of them, but the ones exposed to drinking via parents and friends. Even great parents cannot compete with friends, peer pressure. 

Know when to hold and know when to fold as the song goes. You wont learn that at 18, or 20 etc.

Tinkerisk:

 

In short: the more and strictly something is prohibited, the more tempting it is for some people.

 

Tinkerisk:

 

Geektastic:

 

Not really. Incest and Heroin are both pretty prohibited but neither have ever tempted me....

 

 

But not just because it's pretty prohibited - I hope.

 

Relatively speaking! :-) 

Pretty prohibited? It is or it isnt. When I robbed a bank, I kind of did but not really??

tdgeek:

 

Tinkerisk:

 

Geektastic:

 

Not really. Incest and Heroin are both pretty prohibited but neither have ever tempted me....

 

 

But not just because it's pretty prohibited - I hope.

 

 

Relatively speaking! :-) 

 

Pretty prohibited? It is or it isnt. When I robbed a bank, I kind of did but not really??

 

This leads to the relative OT question: Was Robin Hood a robber or a hero? Well, it depends. 

Seriously, I used "pretty" because of @Geektastic's use only. Some People not resilient enough will always select (from start) the "easy" way to prevent confrontation with their problems finding themselves later in the worst situation of all possible. We have to get our kids "resilient" instead of keeping everything any possible danger away from them.

OT: Some day, I came into situation with my son who was VERY interested in the kitchen tech, especially the heating plates. How do you learn a kid that heat plates could be very dangerous without hurting them at the same time? What is burning heat? Luckily I had the opportunity to have a very accurate temperature sensor available and figured out, that I could adjust and fix the platter temp to 50°C. At that temp nothing dangerous can happen but it is hot enough to let you quickly pull back your fingers. He played around under my supervision and experienced himself what heat is (without the bad effects). This was never a point anymore and I was grinning afterwards, when he tried to warn me with his few available words that's not a good idea for Dad to touch the heat platters!  

networkn:

 

Is Drinking in NZ a serious issue do you think? Where do you think the Major blame for this lies? What do you think would help? 

 

Yes. But contrary to the media hysteria, it's probably getting better, not worse. I looked up the stats on per capita consumption (pure alcohol available per person 15 years and over) here. It looks to have been declining steadily over the last decade. We appear to be drinking less, not more.

networkn:

 

I am a big believer that the drinking age should never have been raised. As I mentioned in the other thread when 20-year-olds could drink, they would give alcohol to 17/18-year-olds, but when 18 years drink, they will give alcohol to 14/15-year-olds, which is much worse.

 

The decision making isn't as good in most people at 18 as it is at 20. I consider lowering the drinking age to 18 one of the worst pieces of legislation passed in my adult lifetime. 

 

That doesn't square with my recollection. The age may have gone down, but they are more strict about it now. Last week I saw a supermarket checkout operator ID a man who looked old enough to be a veteran of the Great War. He was at least 80 and probably over 90. On the other hand, back when the age was 20 I used to be able to buy in bottle stores, get served in pubs and get served at work functions when I had just turned 15. I never got asked my age. Not once!

Geektastic: I absolutely support a zero limit. I've always imposed that on myself.

Many drivers here are appalling enough when sober, so allowing drink into the mix is just insane.

I'm the same. I'm not a heavy drinker, and never have been. I have been properly drunk maybe 2-3 times in the last in my drinking life (30+ years). And I won't drive after even 1 beer. Mind you, nowadays I run at around 4-5 beers glasses of beer or wines a month, in total.

DaveB:

 

I was in hindsight quite fortunate in that I started drinking when I was 15. In those days we would pop into the pub for lunch. It taught me to have a drink and stay under the radar, which I do to this day 45b years later!

 

That's pretty much my experience. Or when I went to a party dad would get me a six pack. I only ever came home drunk once, and never heard the end of it for months. We were not a boozing household (Dad was a moderate drinker, a beer on saturday night and I never saw him drunk, mum basically didn't drink at all).

tdgeek:

 

Fully agree. Yes, its cool, but is it? Yes it is, as to be cool I need to join in. I feel thats the mantra of todays young. Obviously not all of them, but the ones exposed to drinking via parents and friends. Even great parents cannot compete with friends, peer pressure. 

 

Know when to hold and know when to fold as the song goes. You wont learn that at 18, or 20 etc.

 

I don't think that's universally true. I never had a problem resisting peer pressure if I didn't want to drink, even years before I turned 18. Mostly, my peers didn't press me if I just said no. On one or two occasions when peers were pushy I just said I couldn't as I was taking antibiotics - which worked every time.

I think the first thing we need to address is the culture of 'drinking to get drunk' rather than alcohol being a social lubricant that makes an evening enjoyable by making people more relaxed. We also need to move away from this puritanical view that far too many New Zealanders hold of 'no alcohol until you're 18' resulting in a skewed view of alcohol and now to enjoy it responsibly.

matisyahu:

 

I think the first thing we need to address is the culture of 'drinking to get drunk' rather than alcohol being a social lubricant that makes an evening enjoyable by making people more relaxed. We also need to move away from this puritanical view that far too many New Zealanders hold of 'no alcohol until you're 18' resulting in a skewed view of alcohol and now to enjoy it responsibly.

 

Interesting. That reminds me of the stories I heard about the "6 o'clock swill".

For those younger folk, this was when the pubs closed at 6 o'clock. I have heard so many stories about this, but the common one was basically that everybody would get into the pub about 4.30 to 5 pm and drink as much as they can while the pub was still open! In other words, get as plastered as they could while they still could. A great but short social interaction in the pub. Many people in those days would then socialize after 6pm, often in friends homes. Social interaction would often involve whole families. Note: we/they didn't have the internet in those days and social interaction was face to face.

Extended hours, introduced through the mid 70's to early 80's changed that habit and people in NZ appeared (in my mind) to drink a lot more responsibly - because they could. We socialized in pubs / bars / restaurants, often with friends and families, and we socialized at a time that suited us. I am quite sure that most of the population could afford some form of social interaction in pubs / bars / restaurants, and from what I recall, for the most part, it was not abused. This became more obvious in the 90's. In fact we still had a culture of work hard and play hard. And most of NZ were paid quite well. Sky was the main "must have" technology.

Skip forward to the 2000's. With technology pulling at a shrinking purse string and the introduction of a minimum wage economy, we started to experience a lesser disposable income. This was not unique to NZ, but was a worldwide trend. Drinking habits changed worldwide at this point in time, hence the introduction of RTD's and lower prices. All of this was designed to capture the rapidly reducing disposable personal income $$. Social interaction changed dramatically at this time as well. Us older fellas would continue to go down to the pub to socialize, but the kids would use other methods such as social media, often staying at home until they needed to go out.

Hence the word and actions called pre-loading. Cheap nasty high octane booze.

For many youngsters, the only way that they feel that they can go out and socialize with their immediate social circle is to pre-load first - cheaply at home. They cannot afford to socialize like we did, quietly throughout the evening. There is still pressure on them to join in socially (in real life), but this now involves much later hours and much reduced (real life socializing) available hours. 

Now, to my way of thinking, that is not too far removed from the reality of the booze mentality of the 6 o'clock swill NZ had in the early 70's. At times I think we have gone full circle. 

MikeB4:

 

Like a lot of us I guess in my early twenties I went through a brief period of trying to destroy myself with alcohol it didn't last long. I am a non drinker now and have been for around 20 years. My sons are very light social drinkers and my wife only drinks wine with dinner. These days I am on too much medication to even slightly contemplate having a drink.

 

In our home it wasn't a focus and wasn't an issue we just educated our sons and they could have social drinks at home so I guess it was not an issue for them.

 

Ok, off topic, but I just wanted to say - Welcome Back MikeB4.

Geektastic:

 

How can you tell? It's all served cold here, even when it shouldn't be! 

 

Philistine.

I've been very drunk three times in my (57+ years of) life. I won't go into all the details, they're probably not important, but suffice to say all three times were out of the public eye I didn't have to drive. There have been a handful of other times I've had "a few too many", to the point where I'm a little light headed and wouldn't trust myself to drive. But not for many years, particularly lately. After an illness, and a quest to lose some weight (down almost 20kg now) I've pretty much given up drinking. I allow myself one alocoholic drink a week, and often don't get around to having it.

I guess there have always been alcoholics and others with different drinking problems. But it seems to be much more of a problem with young people today than it was when I was in my teens/20s. Take a walk down Courtenay Place at 11:30pm on pretty much any Thursday, Friday or Saturday (and a few Sundays) and you'll be walking past dozens of very drunk young people on the streets. I'm guessing there are plenty more in the bars. The question is why? Why is being drunk a seemingly essential part of a good night out? Why can't people go out and enjoy each other's company without drinking excessively?

New Zealand has no minimum drinking age, but it is illegal for someone under 18 to purchase alcohol, or for someone to supply alcohol to a person under 18 without the consent of their parent/guardian. I'd support rasing the limits back to 20. I'd support limiting the hours alcohol can be sold. I'd support a zero drink driving limit. But until the underlying issue of why people seek to get drunk (and they do seek it - they do set out with the specific goal of getting drunk) and why it's seen as "cool", or whatever, and address those issues, then other measures won't really have much impact.