Fringe of a Binge

It seems yet another report has come out showing that England is a nation of binge drinkers. Once again binge has been described as five (5) drinks, which means that just about every time I drink, I binge. Every football match I watch is capable of pushing me over the edge (pre-game drink, first half drink, second half drink, post game analysis drink).

Some of the stats suggest, though, that either someone's drink a huge amount of alcohol to make up for any amount of teetotalers or the rest of Europe is lying about how much they drink. See, a quarter of England's population admit to binge drinking, one of the highest, and yet the article concludes:

Europe remains the heaviest drinking region in the world, with the average adult consuming about 11 quarts of pure alcohol annually, or the equivalent of the alcohol content in 1,400 beers, according to figures provided by the Commission.

Now, 1,400 divided by 365 is roughly 4. So the above paragraph is saying that the average European drinks 4 beers a night. Obviously 80 percent of them are very careful about it because if they slipped from drinking exactly 4 every night they would move from "average" to "binger".

Just like every time before the idea of binge drinking has been defined as to be almost meaningless and, as such, useless in helping those with genuine problems.