Such an ugly word, ‘binge’. Why can’t we talk about ‘spree drinking’ or ‘frolic drinking’ or ‘extravaganza drinking’? But no, it has to be ‘binge drinking’, a term loaded (pre-loaded?) with connotations. Well you can stick your connotations: it’s binge drinking for me every time.
Or rather not every time. That’s the whole point: you don’t binge as a matter of habit, otherwise it’s not a binge. But the other thing you don’t do as a habit — and this is really what I’m getting at — is sit at home with a nicely acceptable Chilean merlot every night, tooting most of the bottle and patting yourself on the Boden-clad back for being totally in control. ‘Respectable drinking’ my arse; that’s just middle-class slang for ‘can’t get through a day without it’. Give me a good old-fashioned binge any day of the week, as long as that week doesn’t roll round more than once every couple of months or so. It’s a much more honest way of conducting your relationship with alcohol. It’s more fun, and it’s safer.
You’ll be relieved to learn, before we go any further, that none of what I’m about to argue will be backed up with statistics. Unless you’re the press officer for the British Medical Association, that is, in which case you’ll be disappointed, because it means you won’t be able to pick me up on my dodgy use of statistics. (Though no doubt your finger is even now twitching towards the keyboard anyway, ready to fire off a letter. At least that’ll stop you wagging it at us for a moment or two.) Instead of evidence I’m going to rely on gut instinct (given the subject, an appropriate phrase). The first thing to say is that binge drinking is nothing more than a pejorative new name for that noble British tradition, the sesh.
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