Science Says You’re Not Drinking Enough Booze

In order to achieve happiness and success, you need to be drinking more, earlier.

It’s hard to believe, if you enjoy an active Newport social life and spending any appreciable amount of time around the Newport Buzz staff, that you’re not drinking enough alcohol but new research says you should be consuming more alcohol earlier to make the most of your time in our seaside resort.

Over a decade ago, the satirical newspaper The Onion, announced to the world that “New Study Finds College Binge Drinking To Be A Blast”. It was a fun article, with such in-depth reporting as:

“Data collected at bars and fraternity parties on the UMass campus has yielded unexpected conclusions with regard to the practice of binge drinking,” study head Dr. Albert Greaves said. “Over the course of our research, a consistent pattern emerged demonstrating that binge drinking seriously kicks ass.”

Imagine our surprise this week when US News and World Report, a somewhat less satirical news source reported  “College Students Who Binge Drink Say They’re Happier”. It turns out that our young people aren’t acquiring fake IDs, playing drinking games, submitting to peer pressure and otherwise finding excuses to drinking a bid to recapture more of those feelings of inadequacy and misery that they experienced in adolescence.

So-called “high-status” and socially powerful college kids are more likely to engage in binge drinking than their less-wealthy, less-connected, lower-status peers, new research reveals. But lower-status students who do binge on alcohol say they are more “socially satisfied” with their college experience than their non-binge-drinking peers.

To put this in Newport terms, it means that folks pounding Hennessy at the Newport Heights and ‘Gansetts in the Fifth Ward derive similar satisfaction in life to those who are on their fifth round of Mt. Gay and tonics at the Clarke Cooke House. They are all aware of their own awesomeness, whether their hungover view in the morning will involve former Navy housing or 200’ multi-million dollar yachts with more bedrooms than most of the inns in town.

So, yes, it turns out that binge-drinking will make you happy, despite whatever medical and substance-abuse experts may say.

So it turns out that not only should you be drinking more, you should be drinking earlier. According to a study earlier this year…

Getting a buzz from booze may boost creativity. Men who drank themselves tipsy solved more problems demanding verbal resourcefulness in less time than sober guys did, a new study finds.

That’s right. Drinking in moderation helps you solve problems. Oddly enough, my experience at a liquor store tells me that painters are ahead of the curve on this. I’m not sure what verbal problems arise from painting walls, but I can tell you that if there’s one occupation ready to deal with them, it’s guys whose outfits are speckled in white. If you’re having your house painted, feel free to throw some word problems at them.

Men in both groups then completed a creative problem-solving task. For each of 15 items, volunteers saw three words — say, peach, arm and tar — and had to think of a fourth word that forms a phrase with each of them, such as pit.

On average, participants at peak intoxication solved about nine problems correctly, versus approximately six winners for the sober crowd. It took an average of 11.5 seconds for intoxicated men to generate a correct solution, compared with 15.2 seconds for sober men.

So you should be drinking more, earlier…and anyone if anyone complains to you about all this drinking, it turns out that they are actually unhealthy to be around.

-Tristan Pinnock, Buzz Staff