How much drink is too much

To be old and wise you first need to be young and stupid

 

Femaldeheide is what males get by hiding from females. You mean formaldehyde, possibly?

 

Years ago i never went down the M5 without popping into a cider farm to take 5L home. I have never had a good pint of cider in a put. Penance you living in the southwest should be in the ideal place for cidar.

 

Indeed

 

as the great men sang:

oi am a zoider drinker
oi drinks it all of the day
ooh aah ooh aah ay
ooh aah ooh aah ay...

coming out shortly on SACD and 180g virgin vinyl?

 

Nice set of numbers. Nowadays my drinks come in cups. :latte: Unfortunately, some people claim too much of these are also not good for you.

 

One of the main by-products that make you feel really bad is acetone, related to formaldehyde in that it has a double bonded oxygen, but 3 carbons instead of one..

Anyway, talking about safe limits, a m8 of mine is currently on a drunk driver rehabilitation course (he's lucky to be on it, or alive - he rolled a car outside Swansea town hall!) and they were asked to work out how many units of alcohol they had every week, taking into account the strength of bevvy..
He's partial to Stella (or Wifebeater as it's also known), and his count was 136...
The chap on the course said that a safe "realistic" limit is more like 35 (not the ridiculous 20ish that the Chief Government Nanny has decreed)..

 

Is that 136 units a week?

I dont drink that much, but I am partial to a few cans of wifebeater on an evening! I probably drink 35 units on a night out to be honest, my total is probably more like 80 or 90 units a week.

 

So that'll be 10-12 pints of Stella - bet you have a hangover after that!

Personally I drink about 1/2 to 3/4 bottle of red wine a night (it's for my heart ), and a max. of 6 pints of Shropshire Gold (3.8%) if I'm in the pub.. So mebbe 40 units a week..
Apart from the once a year local "Ironman Challenge": the ironman bit is cycling between 6 local pubs over a distance of about 10 miles, the challenge bit is drinking at least 1 pint in each pub (the record's 23 altogether)...
Luckily the local policeman takes part

 

Sorry, but to my mind the safe limit is zero. Is it really worth the risk just to have a pint or two with your mates? ANY amount of alcohol impairs your judgement to some degree, so I just don't see it being worth it.

And yes I do practice what I preach. I won't even have a glass of wine with a meal if I know I'm driving home.

 

I assumed it was a measure of blood alcohol, given the context. I can't see how a drunk driver rehab instructor is qualified to comment on safe weekly intake, unless he happens to have a med degree and 20 years practice behind him?

 

With drink and drive I think the only policy is simply not to drink. The problem is the morning after, how do you know if the alchohol is still in your blood. I mate often has 6 pints the night before then about 11:00am he has to drive home still less than 12 hours after his last drink.

 

Not 136mg/l of blood!
That's 136 units in an average week's drinking - he won't be driving for some time..

I don't drink and drive either, especially not on the motorbike..
But I don't agree with the arbitraryness of the law.
For some folks 39mg/l is enough to get them quite drunk and very incapable of driving, though it would be the legal limit.
Other folks with a higher tolerance can drink significantly more, and still be a better driver than, say, the sober lad out with a few mates egging him on, or the father/mother with 3 kids fighting in the back, or the Dot Cotton-alike who can't concentrate and has no mechanical skills at the best of times.

I'd say a better test would be one of reactions and motor skills rather than a one-size fits all..
And I'm also a great believer in making the driving test tougher, like including motorway driving, and some sort of understanding of how your car handles - that would probably make more difference to road deaths than blanket bans on things!

 

Oh you'd really hate the US driving test then. It's a frikking joke.

20 minutes, no maneouvers (unless you count reversing 15 feet in a straight line) nothing past a 35 zone. No questions from the instructor.

There is a really crap 15 question theory test which you can pass by guessing quite easily.

Oh and you can retake as soon as there is a slot free, quite often the same day. You could take a test 5 times in one day, until you basically get lucky and pass.

I was marked down for one error on my US test - not stopping half a car length from the car in front. I personally was disgusted by the standard of my driving on the test and I know I would have failed in the UK!

 

I got a Libyan driving licence some years ago (I was working there). It was pretty straightforward: do an eyesite test from half way down the corridor where everyone else was waiting, hand over US$200, and you're done. No driving involved at all. Roadsign test? What are they?
How it should be.
Then again, there were way more driving fatalities than work (oil)related...
I still carry it when I go to the US, just in case I get pulled over....

 

I ride my bike much better when im pissed, oshifer

 

Nah, no way I could drink that much Stella. No I tend to stick to trebles, makes the act of consuming 30+ units in one night a LOT easier.

And yeah, I do usually have a hangover after, but oddly its never as bad as some peoples, although my appetite is pretty shitty and I still feel like crap for a good while after.

 

Stella is a poor drink.

I used to drink it occasionally but just couldn't take the hang overs.

Nowerdays I stick with real beers, my favorite being Badger Golden Glory, which actually tastes of something which stella does not, because stella is a bag of chemicals.

 

Gary, have you tried Butcombe bitter?

 

No Penance, why do you recommend it?