Te Radar: The spirit is willing, and so are the boozy kids

COMMENT

The wailing of the wowsers lamenting our alcohol culture this week reminded me that alcohol abuse once saved my life.

I was to climb Mt Sinai. I wasn't seeking spiritual enlightenment, but I was certainly lightening myself of spirits. In this case a bottle of one of Egypt's finest whiskeys.

I consumed this pseudo-ethanol as if my life depended on it, which it did, for if I had realised how high I had to climb I may well have died.

But, in the spirit of Sir Ed, I knocked the bastard off. Then I set out to scale the mountain.

That I succeeded is a tribute to our culture of adventure, perseverance, and alcoholism.

This began with the actions of Captain Cook, who, upon arrival, transformed some local flora into beer - laying the foundations for a national love of brewing and consuming intoxicating elixirs.

This was confirmed in a recent study that made a Startling Discovery.

Apparently, since the drinking age was lowered, young people are consuming more alcohol, more often, and in greater quantities than they did before the age limit came down.

The logic of this seems inescapable. It is like commissioning a report to see if rain is wet.

Naturally, people demanded that the age be raised, to once again deprive the youth of the devil's urine.

Thankfully, some people are making more sense.

Nandor Tanczos argues that the true danger lies not in alcohol but in alcohol advertising. This is undoubtedly true.

I have often been physically imperilled by the plethora of alcohol advertising, as I find myself forced to spend long periods in beer chillers risking hypothermia while trying to decide which booze to buy (purely for research purposes).

My research into the effects of alcohol has been long and thorough.

At university it was a rite of passage to see if one could consume an entire crate of beer in a single sitting. Apparently, some of us could, but none of us could recall who.

While people may frown on this, it seems a more civilised ritual than spending a month naked in the jungle, before returning to the village to have the medicine-man hack at your manhood with a knife.

Still, if binge drinking is as widespread as they say, then perhaps it is the norm.

If anything, we have returned to the days of the 6 o'clock swill. The only difference is that our extended licensing hours mean that it now occurs at the more civilised time of 6am.

I predict that soon, the drinking age will be lowered further to combat the perils posed by the huge overproduction of grapes that threatens to inundate us with wine.

We need a cultural age of change, not a change of age, to deter the youth from their grog-guzzling predilections.

It is as difficult to keep the youth away from alcohol as it is to keep them away from each other, for where there's a desire to swill, there's a way.

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