The economy’s one thing, but you know what’s really worrying me right now? The number of young people not drinking. In only ten years, the number of of 16-24 year olds who claim to have had an alcoholic drink that week has fallen from 71% to a paltry 48% - so what's happened? There was a time when you couldn’t move for tops-off teens ricocheting off the DJ booth, but in the past few years an alarming migration seems to have taken place. You - the youth of today - are no longer staining the pubs, bars and clubs of the nation. Instead you're posting as functional adults in in the coffee shops, gyms and juice bars (probably) instead. What are you thinking? Drinking, like smoking, really is a dying art, but as someone who spent her twenties completely fucking goulashed, I'm imploring you all to rethink your new-found teetotalism and hurl yourselves off the wagon as soon a possible. Here's why.
Think about someone other than yourself for once why don’t you?
What about us? The classic booze-hounds, stuck in the has-been haunts with only each other’s pimpled, wine-logged asses for company? Because another problem with this heartless brain-drain is a lack of sense of duty. I for one am desperate for a half-baked, slurred conversation with someone who still has the majority of their brain cells yet to slay. It’s more fun than half the crap on telly.
So, Youth, I think it’s about time you woke up and smelled the barman’s apron. Think about taxation. Think about the economy. Think about your future, not to mention the bigger picture. Get out of the coffee shops. Do the decent thing and start drinking. And I mean drinking.
Coffee doesn't count
Don’t even get me started on that. Hopefully they’ll have to start labelling it soon for what it is: Anxiety in a Can. Then those smug baristas can hear it straight. Hi yes, I’d like a Skinny Double-Heartbeat Panic Attack About My Career and Lovelife with a shot of Adult-Onset Diabetes – oh yes, and I’ll have it to stay in, thanks; might as well shake all this out here and feel Completely Fucking Ancient while I’m at it. Say what you like but the DTs have nothing on the caffeine tremors. It’s too early for the results of the clinical trials to be conclusive but in twenty years the most fucked-up people you’ll see tweaking their way around town won’t have been on ecstasy. They’ll have been on energy drinks. Mark my words.
You’re also too focused, you fool
I’ve seen the sea of determined faces shining through the milk-steam, jacking themselves onto whole new evolutionary planes of wiredness so as to enjoy things such as meaningful dates and lucid conversations with friends, whilst at the same time performing well on their expensive degrees and in their hard-come-by jobs. Whatever happened to being a layabout dickhead loser until a sense of your own mortality kicked in? See your average 21-year-old in 2014 and she’s steely-eyed, focused on making something of her life and herself. I couldn’t stand up straight for most of my twenties, and those who were with me couldn’t stand up either; we just sort of stood next to each other and propped each other up, or used a wall.
A genuine sense of hopelessness can be a good thing
We had everything to lose, and knew that this meant precisely nothing. We had a genuine sense of hopelessness. A real appreciation of the fact we were destined to come to fuck-all. Each night, and sometimes in the afternoon, we’d blithely surrender to fate – and by “fate” I mean a quarter bottle of rum decanted into a 500ml plastic coke bottle outside the offy. We didn’t need to talk; we communicated via a series of nuanced gurns. Tuesdays and Wednesdays were interchangeable with Fridays and Saturdays, and there was a beautiful futility in the repetition of those wasted weeks and years. We were vile and corrupt, deranged and depraved, catatonic and unstable – but at least we weren’t productive.
**Smelling (of) death teaches you how to live **
What the kids today don’t realise is that they’re also missing out on a valuable part of their development. It’s not just about fending off financial success. It’s about surviving as a human being with a physical body. How are you going to get anywhere in The Real World if you can’t hail a taxi with just one eye and no arms? What will you do when faced with a bona fide puking situation in later life when you don’t know how to gip neatly into a small Cutter’s Choice pouch on a busy street? (Puking is fun to do, and looks great. It’s also good for your teeth and nails.) Also, hangovers. Self-loathing. Existential horror. You need to learn how to take that shit like a champ. Plus: hangovers can be glorious. My friend Caitlin once described a hangover she was having as ‘burnishing’. Has anyone ever felt burnished after coffee? Or just apprehensive, and dangerously incontinent?
I drank a lot in my twenties. I still drink a lot. And you know what, I’m glad. Things could have gone very differently for me if I’d succumbed to the health warnings. I could be in Hollywood. Or astronaut college. Or less debt.
Yeah…
Follow Emma on Twitter at @emjaneunsworth
Picture: Ada Hamza
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.