Binge drinking definiton comes up short

Published: 24 February, 2011
by JOHN GULLIVER

DO readers know the definition of binge drinking?

I suppose, like many readers, I assumed that binge drinking is all about teenagers filling themselves non-stop with alcohol and then vomiting it up – often in the streets.

Well, it may for you and me, but the NHS sees it differently. Its definition, according to its website, is that if a man drinks four pints of beer a day, or a woman two glasses of red wine, they have been binge drinking.

Using that definition, millions of people in Britain must be binge drinkers!

When I used to disappear into watering holes in the North years ago it was quite common to share a table with miners who would down seven or eight pints in a short time just to cleanse their lungs of coal dust. But they were not binge drinkers.

Using the silly NHS definition, public health expert Sarah Price told a meeting last week that 23 per cent of residents in Islington were binge drinkers. What a load of tosh!

Then in waded Theresa Coyle who confessed to the meeting that she too was a binge drinker. By idiotic NHS standards, she may have been. 

But by common-sense standard she isn’t. It’s about time the NHS found a more scientific definition of binge drinking – or use a different expression, and not one loved by the tabloids.