Dialogue: Getting trashed a national pastime

By SANDY BURGAHM

By chance I happened upon the university campus one afternoon during last week's orientation event, just as a young lad had taken to the karaoke stage completely starkers to sing I'm Too Sexy For My Shirt.

While I am no stranger to drink myself, as friends will attest, and as much as I enjoyed the show, I found myself uncharacteristically glad that I was no longer young, and so had passed my years of waking up the next morning and hoping it was all a bad dream.

Of course, the naked crooner may have simply been a free spirit rather than a happy drunk, but I should be forgiven for assuming he had had a couple of drinks, as some consider orientation a loose facade for drinking.

While this is not unique to New Zealand (in most Western countries it is a teenage rite of passage that one should attempt to drink one's lifetime quota of alcohol in a few short years - I certainly did) there is something a little more intense about the drinking culture in our country.

Sure, we have a burgeoning drug scene, but it's not part of our cultural identity, as is voluminous drinking.

Some proclaim that binge drinking is merely the domain of insecure early teens, but I consider quantity drinking a key expression of Kiwiness, which extends way beyond the antics of 14-year-olds whose parents aren't home.

For many 20-somethings, the obligatory London-based OE is less about experiencing new cultures and peoples, and more about drinking heavily with fellow Kiwis at specialist Australasian pubs - often troughs of beer and spew.

And then, at the end of two years overseas, these experienced drinkers may return home never to travel much again. Oh, but the memories.

And one only has to go to smalltown New Zealand to experience the spirit of heavy drinking for the sake of it, still thriving well beyond the years of tertiary education.

We have taken the bold and pragmatic step of lowering the drinking age, recognising that young ones were doing it anyway, and now have a more liberal approach to retailing liquor, so one might have assumed that we were throwing off the shackles of a past rooted in the six o'clock swill, to adopt a more sophisticated attitude towards alcohol in our everyday lives.

But, alas, it is not to be. Getting totally trashed is a national pastime that seems to cut through all sex, age and race barriers. Even teenage girls have been helped along by the emergence of alco-pops (or "tart fuel" as they are sometimes dubbed).

Every country has a national drink, some of which are both potent and exotic, but in the spirit of "quantity not quality" we seem to relate well to bog-standard, cheap and cheerful beer.

A first-year university student I know ordered a round of more palatable alco-pops for herself and friends at a pub during orientation week only to be chastised by surrounding blokes: "What are ya doing drinking those, ya stupid Dio girls!"

Instantaneously, their drink of choice became beer in large jugs, "even though its not very ladylike", said the Diocesan old girl.

Yes, even the girls are not immune to the quantity beer consumption that blurs gender behaviour even further.

I was once in Paris with friends to see the All Blacks play France. As we walked towards the stadium we came across a bunch of real sheilas wearing rugby shirts and swigging on stubbies while performing the haka for a bemused and slightly appalled French audience. It was enough to get me adopting a faux French accent.

I have seen various reports proclaiming that other nationalities drink more than we do, but I still believe we are out front when it comes to drinking for the sake of drinking.

We know the British knock back a few, but the British pub is a pivotal community meeting place, the primary function of which is not necessarily based on getting totally trashed. They say the French drink more than we do, yet they are renowned more for their fine wines than fine winos.

Maybe it's because we still feel socially awkward, or maybe we have nothing better to do. Or maybe it is simply the remnants of my own cultural cringe.

Discussing the germ of this column with someone, they commented that maybe it could all be a media invention - in other words, my imagination.

I was prepared to take this on until I caught my daughter, not yet 6, and her friend acting mischievously and strangely.

When I asked the nature of the game they were playing, she replied sheepishly, "Um, we're playing drunk teenagers".