Anglo-Saxon drinking is the worst kind of drinking. In places where being fall-down drunk is not socially acceptable we drink differently and nobody is racing to puke on the sidewalk. It's not that difficult, just use moderation.
Binge drinking is defined as 4 drinks for women or 5 drinks for men in a 2 hour period [0]. That's hardly falling down, puking on the sidewalk levels of drunk.
That's the minimum amount i.e 4.99 drinks within a 2 hour period is not binge drinking. Also, I have a drink just about every day or every other day, and I haven't had 5 drinks within a 2 hour period in at least the last decade. It would cause me to fall down and puke on the sidewalk.
That's fair. I suppose I'm just used to my own (probably unhealthy) drinking habits. I only drink one day a week, usually at some event like a football game or wedding, but I drink a lot when I do.
I suppose that varies by person and by what qualifies as a drink, but if I had five pints of microbrew in two hours I'd be drunk, and done for the day.
People over-attribute the impact of culture on drinking habits. In reality genetics plays the largest factor in problematic drinking. Just look at the epidemic of alcoholism in American Indians, despite that culture having no prior traditions of drinking.
The thing is Northern Europeans are probably more genetically prone to alcoholism than other European populations. For example British Jews, even the non-religious subset, binge drink at much lower rates than the rest of Britain. Predictably the population has a much concentration of genes associated with resistance to alcoholism.
