Firstly, welcome strangers and friends! On my site over the following months I shall be sharing intimate insights, observations and first hand accounts of the highs and lows of the drinking culture within a Portsmouth students life. I intend to explore it both as a ‘mature’ student of 25 having already experienced it once before as a 19 year old at university in Cambridge, whilst also ruminating on the possible social insights I am able to observe in both my younger peers and its rippling long term effects on others within my life- both in Portsmouth and my own immediate circle.
Alcohol and alcoholism are subjects I have always found both mysterious and highly fascinating, and something that holds an enormously powerful presence in all our lives, both good and evil. Being an arts student and a young writer, one is never short of anecdotes and stories of great authors, poets, journalists and artists who at one time or another, for long periods and short, indulged in bouts of heavy drinking, successive partying, hedonistic lifestyles and dangerous substance abuse, giving a mythological and glamorous tint to the lens through which many of my peers and myself viewed and vies a lifestyle that revolved around, as the great actor Peter O’toole phrased it- ‘going out on the lash’.
I intend to study the social rituals and aftermaths I have observed during and after the fabled and often beguilingly fun ‘night out’, a concept that can be planned months in advance or appear unexpectedly in the middle of a quiet Wednesday evening spent sorting the underwear drawer. These shall be accompanied with a few photographs taken by myself, first hand interviews with students, health experts and entertainment workers, with assuredly a humorous anecdote slipped in for fun…
I hope you enjoy coming on this short and slightly off track little journey with me… I’m sure we’ll have some fun!
By The Sea. 