Hedonism and Intemperance - the new fashion

Headline: HEDONISM AND INTEMPERANCE – THE NEW FASHION

Stand-first: Women may be victims to fashion but what if the new fashion is to be inebriated and act like boozer role models: Pete Doherty, Amy Winehouse, Peaches Geldof and Calum Best? Irish women are becoming slaves to the new fashion that is Hedonism and Intemperance.

It may not seem like breaking news, but overt displays of intoxication has become common place in every town and village in the country. In a modern society, where I am one of the children of the Celtic Tiger, female drunkenness is no longer frowned upon, instead sightings of Irish women vomiting at the side of the street are prevalent.

It is ironic that there is a constant palaver made by women about the toxicity of synthetic chemicals, when we do not even qualm about consuming large quantities of poison, AKA alcohol.

The 'cannot wait till Saturday night' syndrome has been superseded by the 'living for the weekend', where Friday, Saturday, Sunday night and Monday for the cure has become all too common as social outings for Ireland's twenty-somethings.

For most college students, they like to be treated by parents as grown ups and live independent lives, however are they acting like grown ups when they are falling off chairs, staggering across the road in the early hours of the morning, shouting at the top of their lungs that they are 'merry', needing help to get unlock their front doors and finding themselves sprawled across the bed, fully dressed at 12am on Sunday morning, with a throbbing head-ache.

I received a text last Sunday; “I am dying with a hangover” exclaimed my friend, which I will call Donna for the purpose of this article. Another text rolled in “ I got sick multiple times last night. I had two drinks today, for the cure. It was no use. At-least I have not got sick in ages”. I retorted; “Didn't you decorate the local taxi a fortnight ago?”, to which the reply was a giggle. Vomiting on regular occasions is now a societal norm. Moreover I have often heard girls telling their peers on a night out to vomit so they will feel better and be able to start drinking again!”.

These are not little teeny – boppers but twenty-somethings that are; post university status and in their careers. Furthermore these nights out were not special occasions, the bingeing for hen parties and holidays consists of quadruple the amount of the normal drinking consumption.

The pre- hen party talk consists of how sloshed such a one will be and how much craic the hen will be, because everyone will be stupefied. If you are ever sober and out socialising and a hen party arrives in, the atmosphere of the pub changes and mayhem and anarchy breaks out. Grown women wear hideous accessories; fairy wings, devil horns, cheeky outfits to name a few, they fall all over the bar, pinch mens behind and flaunt themselves – all in the name of “mighty craic”. These are the young women of our society, the future mothers of Irelands children. They are a disgrace to the female gender and mankind.

If it is not Hen parties, it is booze holidays and I am not just harping on about the teeny boppers who are attempting to blow off steam after the slog of the leaving cert, but young women who jet off to Ibiza to soak up the sun and the cheap grog. Lest I forget, they make sure they are inebriated by the time they are on the plane, just to start the holiday as they mean to go on. Then as if that is not enough liver damage, they make it their mission to spare enough coins to cover the 10 litres of spirits they can bring home on the plane, or the 20 litres of wine or the 110 litres of beer.

The morning of the Oxegen festival, I was commuting to work and I spotted a crowd in the main street of the town, some were the sweet 16's, others were college students and a few even graduates, and all of them with tins in their hand. 7.52 am and already setting the pace for a four day booze-athon as I call it. All I managed to utter was; “Their poor livers”. I gave a second glance to see 2litre Coca Cola bottles filled up with vodka and be assured it was not just one or two bottles, but five or six topped up with crates upon crates of beer.

I dread to think about all the alcohol related problems and crapulence the women of this nation will endure in years to come. Despite sobriety rearing its head in Vogue and Celebrity Land, women in modern Ireland are not just tippling their fancy with a glass of wine, but knocking it back like it was an anti-ageing potion. Too much of anything is not good, but too much of alcohol is catastrophic! Intemperance is the fashion today, and very few women do not follow fashion. Many most women are slaves to fashion and ultimately they will be slaves to the grave.