24th September - Who gets drunk at weekends?

December 2008. That was the last time I went 'out out' in my home City of Oxford on a weekend. I was 18 years old, and having skirted around small clubs which didn't bother with checking ID when I was 17, being of legal age was finally an opportunity to experience the 'bright lights' of the weekend clubbing experience, now that the world was my oyster. However, I soon realised, 'New York this ain't', and after hitting a few shambles venues like 'Lava & Ignite' or 'Bridge' soon after my 18th in the Summer, I waited a full 6 months to bother again, already tired of the underwhelming music and general idiotic vibe. In December, my best friend at the time, who had turned 18 whilst away in the States on a Gap Year, returned for Christmas and we decided to pop his 'Oxfordian clubbing' hymen with a trip to Kukui.

That was the last time I ever stepped foot in a club in Oxford on a Friday or Saturday night. The streets were paved with pissed up students who couldn't hold their alcohol, and the night buses home were filled up with trainwreck divorcee women in their mid 40s or 50s, staggering in heels and leather jackets with cheesey chips dropped down their cleavage. Any attempt to reignite their feeling of sexiness, self-worth, or decorum, had now dwindled away with such a manoeuvre, and perhaps they'd have been better off working on their mental state than their ability to scream excitedly over a bottle of blush Zinfandel? 

Don't get me wrong, I'm no 'party police', I spent my first year of Uni getting obliterated most nights, but even by the time my second year arrived, I preferred staying in and saving the £20/£30 per night my housemates were spending on terrible evenings in the Student Union, with the idea of a longer-term goal or a 'bigger' experience in mind. Later that Summer, 6 months on from those cold January nights with hangovers, they were all too skint to be able to enjoy the Summer, lodging up back in their parent's bedrooms during the 12-week break, whilst I used those weekly savings to spend time in Ibiza, sampling the nightlife of iconic venues such as Amnesia, Privilege, Eden, or Es Paradis. Post-the age of 21, nothing could compare to the broadened horizons I'd now sampled, and I flat out refused to go 'clubbing' in the quiet Hampshire suburbs during my final Uni year. 

Post Uni, the story was similar. Though I'd 'drink', I wouldn't be going out at weekends with the intention of getting hammered. I'd carefully handpick events or festivals around London etc where my favourite DJs were playing, and then wisely avoid £13 cocktails in 'Slug & Lettuce' or similar, by grabbing drinks from the local supermarket, gathering a bunch of mates around sofa, blasting out world-class EDM tunes on speakers to get us hyped, and bonding over drinking games etc. We created a 'family' vibe during this period, and I knew that none of us would dare enter a venue where we didn't know the music of the DJ(s) playing. (It is the music which dictates the quality of your night, after all). Certainly, my days of getting hammered every weekend for the sake of it were already retired from my lifestyle by the age of 21, perhaps even 18, but last night, I saw so many still failing to adhere to a high quality lifestyle. 

Any time I have to pass through Oxford's City Centre in the early hours of the morning, I see the same sight, which is frustrating to say the least. Drunk adults littering the pavements with their nonsense, arguing at Kebab vans, and awkward teenagers going in for 'goodbye hugs' with their peers of the opposite sex because they've not yet amassed the balls to assert that the only cuddle they really require from them, is a wet one. In my entirely sober state, travelling back home from London or suchlike at such a time, I see people who are inexplicably ending their night at 1am/2am (anybody within my own industry of dance music will tell you that this is the time you usually start to think about ENTERING the club, not EXITING it), and I hear conversations so readily lacking in intellect that I'm not quite sure how any of these people are managing to get laid? Personally, I've never engaged in any sort of actual relationship with a fellow human educated to less than undergraduate degree level (it's not that I'm a snob, but I just don't know how you could be possibly be turned on mentally, and hence physically, by someone who can't spell words accurately). 

Today, they'll wake up with hangovers, with regrets, and with wallets which are weighing considerably less than they did 12 hours ago. Despite this, it won't stop them doing the same next weekend, and the weekend after, and so on and so on. My Grandfather once warned my Mother: "You'll never go anywhere, with a drinker". He was spot on. My Mum spent her peak years by the side of my alcoholic Father, and the furthest they ever ventured was Newbury. Now, free from the shackles of his leash, she's starting to slowly travel the world, and loving every second of it. It's no coincidence that those I know who spunk away their existence in awful clubs every weekend, or drink excessively, are also the least travelled or cultured of all those in their age range. Other than some sort of escape from reality or their own existence, I want to ask... WHO gets drunk at weekends? And more importantly...

... Why?