Heavy Drinking

The Brits are the nicest people on earth, seriously. As a group.
Taken all together, they're lovely: funny, polite, charitable, knowledgeable, interesting.
But -- and this is a big one -- they've got a serious, collective, nationwide, age-irrelevant, drinking problem.
Everybody knows it. It's in the papers all the time. All kinds of stories.
Every other week, there's some study out showing drinking is higher and more widespread here than in any other country -- and that's saying something. Stories about young drunken girls pulling their panties down in the street, profiles of middle-aged women and how much they drink, business stories about how supermarkets lure customers in with cheap alcohol. It's constant.
The Brits just love their booze. It's an important part of life here, whatever your age bracket. And they all seem to have a huge capacity for it, at least from where I'm standing.
Conversations tell it all.
This morning, a Wednesday, a thirty-something couple on the Tube on their way to work were discussing last night's drinking.
"I just peaked too early," the guy said to the woman. "Ahead of everybody else."
"I hate when that happens," she replied. "You really gotta time it."
And then the two friends on Monday. (Monday's a big day for this kind of conversation).
"I couldn't get out of bed until Saturday night," one giggled to the other.
"I just got so pissed at that party," she went on. "But then we started all over again later."
"Yeah," her friend replied. "I cannot believe it's Monday. I'm still hung over from Friday!" Peals of laughter.
One day at work, I started not feeling too well in the afternoon, felt a cold coming on. Nose started running.
As I was leaving, red-nosed and runny-eyed, a British colleague advised me, laughing, to just drink my way through it.
She was serious.
Not go home, have soup, take some aspirin, watch TV, read, be grateful it was Friday night, rest for the weekend.
Exactly what I was aching to do.
No way. Just go out and get drunk, man.
What else?