Friday 30 July 2010

Units, units everywhere and far too much to drink.

I wish.

I am still in the throes of setting up for a massive sample load and none of the scientific suppliers put prices on their websites. Except Sigma-Aldrich. Thanks, folks, that saves me a lot of phoning. For all the rest I have to hunt down the components, record the catalogue numbers and phone their sales desk in the morning to get prices. I won't order tomorrow, I don't yet know when the samples are likely to come and most of the stuff has a short shelf life. Ah, the joys.

There is a bottle of Laphroaig prostituting itself here (as in, I paid for it) and one of my good crystal glasses, so imbibing is restricted this evening but not zero. I have to get my recommended ten units per day, or I might turn into Don Shenker in the night. A horrible prospect, almost as horrible as waking up as the Dreadful Arnott. I couldn't write a story that scary.

On the back of the bottle is an interesting thing. A drawing of a bottle with '28 UK units' written in it. Whether this refers to the bottle in hand, or bottles in general, is not declared.

A drawing of a glass which looks like a pound-shop cheapie, not suitable for this particular beverage, labelled '1 UK unit per 25 ml serving'.

Unfortunately all my volumetric measuring gear is at the lab and I wouldn't want to drink from any of it anyway. 40% alcohol is not enough to be sure of killing Clostridium difficile. I have no idea of, nor interest in, the volume of serving, only of the state of the bottle at bedtime. I don't want to drink my whisky like you do, Righteous, with carefully decanted aliquots measured to the last drop. I have a glass and a bottle (bottle-glass, glass-bottle, aha ha ha) and I'll stop when I've had enough.

Next to these pictures telling us what a bottle and a glass look like (bottle-glass, glass-bottle, aha ha ha - damn, I'm still being haunted by Tommy Cooper) , is a little box headed 'UK Government's Sensible Drinking Limits'.

Read that again. It's straight out of Monty Python, or Spike Milligan's Q series. 'UK Government' and 'Sensible' in the same sentence constitutes an oxymoron anyway and since I have paid for this bottle, including their filthy levels of duty, I will not be told how to drink it. If I wanted to put the neck of the bottle in my mouth and down the lot in one go, I would. I'm not going to because that will make me feel a lot of pain and I'd be incomprehensible on the phone tomorrow, even if I woke up before the suppliers closed. The point is though, this bottle of lovely smoky drink is mine now. It's not my first. I don't need an instruction leaflet. Really. I've done this before and I'll do it again.

I am experienced at drinking far more than is recommended by 'sensible' drinking guidelines and I'm not dead. I have never been arrested for anything ever. I have never smashed a phone box. I have not peed on your dog nor have I tried to borrow money from your cat. I have not chatted up your pet pig (well, on that one I'm not so sure). I have spent an evening on the Glenfarclas 105 and woken up at home. I was younger then, it might not be an easy feat to repeat. But it's my life, nobody else's and if I choose to be continually surprised when it all flashes before my eyes at the end (That really happened? I thought I dreamt it) then that is nobody else's problem.

As for costing the NHS money, well you can sit on that argument and enjoy the thorns. The NHS has so far cost me enormous amounts of money and I have rarely even popped in to say hello. Yes, I expect them to fix me if I break. I've already paid for it. If you want to exclude me from NHS treatment then in all fairness, you must exclude me from paying for it. Otherwise, you have no argument at all.

The little text box continues...

Men - 3 to 4 units, Women - 2 to 3 units per day.

Leaving aside the blatant gender discrimination (yes it is, I know women who can drink more than me, and yes, they are scary), that only allows me 100 ml of this bottle of organic goodness for the entire night. I estimate that this crystal glass, even only a quarter filled, holds more than that and I've just reloaded it. Pour it down the sink and go to bed? Take a look at the price of this stuff and then dare to make such a suggestion! I'd wring out the bottle if I could. Wasting a glass of Clan Macgregor would be only mildly annoying. Wasting a glass of this would be heartbreaking.

It would be like telling smokers to leave a long stub when they're paying £5+ for a pack and therefore 25p+ per cigarette. Waste half of it? Not likely, is it?

So. My recommendation, which is only for me, is no more than 3-4 units per glass. More than that and I risk nodding off and wasting it. Note that my recommendation only applies to me. If you want a recommendation, invent your own. The alcohol control Righteous invented theirs, after all. It's all just made-up numbers so we might as well make up our own. They are just as valid.

Next up on the Text Box of Righteousness...

'Don't drink and drive.'

No problem. I don't drive. Those who don't drink are free to drive as much and as often as they like. Therefore, logically, those who don't drive...

Finally there is a website.

'For more information see www.drinkaware.com'

I won't bother. I am drink-aware. I'm looking at a bottle of it right now. I am well aware of what would happen if I drank the whole bottle tonight. I would spend all day tomorrow feeling as if I had lost an intellectual discussion with fifteen skinheads, I'd say 'argh' and not much else and I'd crap like a power-washer filled with nitric acid. I would also have wasted £22 (special offer, Morrison's) because I could have done that with a blend at half the price. The pain would be the same.

If Don Shenker is around, I've just reloaded the glass again. There are no more than three units in there, so don't be alarmed. I won't be calling on the services of that NHS I've been paying for all these years just yet. I'll leave that to those who enjoy hospital-acquired infections.

I mean, why put all that simpleton-level instruction on the Laphroaig? Binge drinkers and alkies won't touch it. There is an ex-alcoholic who visits, and I'm sure he'd agree that an alcoholic wants as much alcohol as possible at the lowest price available. Alkies do not peruse the shelves deciding which to buy. They do not agonise between the Tormore and the Laphroaig when both are reduced to much the same price. They do not wonder whether a Singleton might be a better choice this time even if it is a few pounds more. Alkies go straight for the own-brand stuff and buy as many bottles as they have money for. Not the own-brand malts either.

An alcoholic will not pay £22 for a bottle of whisky when he/she can get two bottles of own-brand firewater for that price.

I won't finish this bottle tonight but I will make a dent in it that would have Don Shenker outraged. Nobody buys single malts for guzzling purposes. They are too expensive for that. These are sipping whiskies, not gulping whiskies. They are to be savoured and enjoyed.

I like to enjoy a tad more than the average at one sitting. I do not get into a state where I am incapable the next day. Well, unless it's a particularly excellent Smoky-Drinky and I have nothing important to do the next day but being a generally unsociable swine and one who considers holidays as an inconvenience, that's rare. I have never been drunk in the lab - to hell with the Elfin Safety rules, this is my safety I'm concerned with here and to me, that matters.

We don't need these silly little boxes of text. Not on the malts and not on the cheap stuff the alkies like. They are irrelevant when you're paying over £20 a bottle because irresponsible drinkers don't buy those bottles. They buy cheaper ones and they don't care what's on them because they don't read the labels. It is a complete and utter waste of time and money.

But hey, it's their time and our money.

The concept of 'individual people are different' is lost on the Righteous. They can't see it. There is no point trying to explain it to them because they will never see it. They are not capable of seeing it.

To them I am a problem drinker. Not because I cause problems - I don't - but because I ignore the guidelines. The problem is that I am not under control. The Righteous must bring me under control. They must make me fit the standard format.

All I can say, as I recharge my glass again, is good luck with that, Righteous.

2-3 units per day. Bottle-glass, glass-bottle, aha ha ha. Make it 2-3 per hour and we'll get somewhere.

20 comments:

Bill Sticker said...

Who reads the rear label on a single malt anyway? Besides, they're only guidelines, not rules don'cha know. Drink up. Cheers!

Laphroaig; nice tipple but a little too much iodine in the flavour for my palate.

banned said...

"There is an ex-alcoholic who visits..." dunno if you are referring to me L-I but the description fits.
"an alcoholic wants as much alcohol as possible at the lowest price available."
An alcoholic is at the nearest convenience store at 8am trying to work out if there is more alcohol in a large bottle of White Lightning or two small bottles of 'premium cider' or, if he scrabbles around for a bit more loose change, if he can afford one of each which would be a real result.

But not today.

Anonymous said...

I seem to remember a T shirt that had on it, 'I'm an adult, my sensible drinking limit is as much as I fucking well like'. Or similar.

Makes sense to me.

hangemall said...

I dug the following off my hard disc. It's from an article I copied from the Times site some time ago. The original now seems to be hidden behind a paywall.

.....The disclosure that the 1987 recommendation was prompted by “a feeling that you had to say something” came from Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party that produced it.

He told The Times that the committee’s epidemiologist had confessed that “it’s impossible to say what’s safe and what isn’t” because “we don’t really have any data whatsoever”.

Mr Smith, a former Editor of the British Medical Journal, said that members of the working party were so concerned by growing evidence of the chronic damage caused by heavy, long-term drinking that they felt obliged to produce guidelines. “Those limits were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee,” he said.....

I do wish that people with nothing to say would just keep quiet.

hangemall said...

I originally got this from The Times website. It's now hidden behind a paywall.

....The disclosure that the 1987 recommendation was prompted by “a feeling that you had to say something” came from Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party that produced it.

He told The Times that the committee’s epidemiologist had confessed that “it’s impossible to say what’s safe and what isn’t” because “we don’t really have any data whatsoever”.

Mr Smith, a former Editor of the British Medical Journal, said that members of the working party were so concerned by growing evidence of the chronic damage caused by heavy, long-term drinking that they felt obliged to produce guidelines. “Those limits were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee,” he said....

I do wish that people with nothing to say would just keep quiet.

hangemall said...

Oops. I though blogger had not accepted the first one.

Furor Teutonicus said...

Look, you are doing this all wrong.

Laphroaig??!!??!! PULEEAASSEEE!

Do yourself a massive favour. Try some REAL whiskey;

http://www.bruichladdich.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapa

Anonymous said...

hangemall

Try these.

Drink limits ‘useless’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article2697975.ece


How ‘safe drinking’ experts let a bottle or two go to their heads

The recommended maximum intake was set 20 years ago by doctors who simply plucked a limit out of the air
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article2698024.ece


I saw this coming and collected everything I could find on the subject, that might be of some use.

My notes
http://www.forces.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=363&t=1633&sid=5ea62fbe6bf650ab7bd1bb6f728e0427

Sadly alcohol doesn't suit me, I go all quiet after just a small sip, but that is very much not the point.


Rose

PeterJ said...

You'll find the T-shirt mentioned above, as well as others - notably, "It seems to me you have confused a safe drinking limit with what I like to call 'lunch'" - in the Daily Mash selection here.

Dave H said...

Good old Sigma-Aldrich. They sell a range of 'body scents', intended for training Ghoul's dogs, though I keep thinking of malevolent alternative uses for them. The one that used to be called 'distressed person scent' made me smile. Surely it must vary according to diet.

Their catalogues are great for stopping bullets too.

Re. units. The striking thing is the realisation of just how much pure alcohol it takes to get pissed. In terms of efficacy it's a truly piss-poor choice as an intoxicant. We really ought not to be surprised that there might be organic payback for regularly adding so much foreign stuff to your blood.

(Personal DIY breathalyser tip: try smelling pure alcohol from a small container (I use a 2 mL resealable sample vial) by the classic chemist's way of wafting teh vapour from a cautious distance towards your nose. If you can smell it, you don't have any alcohol in you at all. Something to do with aroma fatigue, I suppose)

hangemall said...

Thanks, Rose. Your first link was the one.

I wonder why/how I managed to get through to the article without hitting the paywall?

The first time I tried I did a search for ""richard smith" alcohol" and got a list of about 11 articles. The top one was the most likely candidate but when I clicked on it I hit the paywall. Oh well. Thanks again.

Anonymous said...

hangemall

If you click on the link that appears on The Times search page, you get the paywall.

If you copy the title then put it into a search engine, the article comes up and you can get straight in.

At least for now.


Rose

hangemall said...

Yes. That's how I got it to work. I also noticed that the address appears at the bottom of the window above the task bar when hovering over the link.

Remembering/writing down most links is impractical as they are too long.

What we need is/are two mice/mouses. One to hover and one to copy. Only joking.

Anonymous said...

What does a bottle of Bushmill's Single Malt go for there?

The price is outrageous in NC where booze stores and prices are all state controlled.

Furor Teutonicus said...

"Bushmills" is NOT whiskey. It is Irish tinks hores piss.

Shug Niggurath said...

Back when they first started telling us what to do with our fags (when it was colour co-ordinated with the brand, and printed on the side) it used to say:

If you do smoke, take longer between puffs and leave a long stub

Back in the 80's I think. You know, under those anti-socialist Thatcher tories.

Leg-iron said...

banned - in that case, there are at least two ex-alcoholics... ;)


Furor - Bruaichladdich is one of my favourites, as is Ardbeg but buying them all the time would be like having steak every day. It would become a staple, not a treat.

I like to vary my whiskies, although I prefer to have less of a good one than more of a cheap one.

I'm just too snooty about it to be an alcoholic ;) Buckfast and cooking sherry? Puh-lease.


Bushmills single malt is good. The blend is pretty good too but I'm not all that into Irish whiskies otherwise. Nor am I a fan of American bourbons. At whisky prices, you don't buy them unless you really, really like them. I wouldn't pay £20+ for Jack Daniel's when there's a Singleton at the same price on the next shelf.

It's all personal preference though. At last night's Smoky-Drinky, someone brought Teacher's. I wasn't taken with it but others were. The bottle was empty at the end of the evening and it wasn't me. I was at the Whyte and MacKay's and the Black Bottle.

We only have good malts at small Smoky-Drinkies when we know certain 'guzzlers' aren't there. No point forking out that much when certain people can pour it straight past their taste buds.

They'd be happy with surgical spirit. It's a wonder they don't belch flame when they light up.

Leg-iron said...

Bill Sticker - I read labels since the absinthe episode. It was my first bottle, I didn't read the instructions and wasn't aware you're supposed to dilute it.

It was about three hours before I had any feeling in my tongue.

Must get some more of that.

Leg-iron said...

Shug - I doubt anyone paying current prices would be willing to waste half of it.

The costs encourage smokers to smoke the filter too.

Leg-iron said...

DaveH - I still remember the annual Sigma catalogue delivery day. Everyone had an individual copy, even people who didn't work there any more and those who were long dead.

You could have built a house out of the pile that arrived.

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