About Time: Situations Where You Shouldn’t Drink AlcoholBy Angelica Malin

Millions of adults around the world love to have a drink. Hell, why not. Most people spend most of their week trapped in a job they detest, working for people they’ve come to despise, for just over the pay threshold stopping them from calling the boss on Monday morning and telling him where to stick his annual sales reports.

Having a drink when you finally get some free time to yourself is perfectly reasonable given the monotony of wage slavery. However, there are some occasions in which you should never drink alcohol. Here are just a few of them.

Some are a bit silly and it’s generally advised that you shouldn’t be drunk to do them. Others, meanwhile, are a more serious. Like, you’ll go to jail, kill someone, or injure yourself or others by partaking.

Rank	Country	Liters of pure alcohol consumed per capita
1	Belarus	17.50
2	Moldova	16.80
3	Lithuania	15.40
4	Russia	15.10
5	Romania	14.40
6	Ukraine	13.90
7	Andorra	13.80
8	Hungary	13.30
9	Czech Republic	13.00
10	Slovakia	13.00
11	Portugal	12.90
12	Serbia	12.60
13	Grenada	12.50
14	Poland	12.50
15	Latvia	12.30
16	Finland	12.30
17	South Korea	12.30
18	France	12.20
19	Australia	12.20
20	Croatia	12.20
21	Ireland	11.90
22	Luxembourg	11.90
23	Germany	11.80
24	Slovenia	11.60
25	United Kingdom	11.60

 

Driving

Obviously, you should avoid driving while intoxicated on anything. Alcohol impairs reaction times and makes people generally less careful. When combined with driving, this is a potentially lethal cocktail.

You will be considerably less handy on the brakes than when sober. This makes the likelihood of stopping in time for another vehicle turning into your path or braking suddenly much lower. Of course, any other potential hazard on the road could pose the same problem for an intoxicated driver. Could you live with yourself if you knocked down a pedestrian because you were drunk? It’s really not worth the risk.

At the Casino

This one sounds like it should be one of our more light-hearted suggestions, but it can be really quite serious.

Casinos love to ply customers with free drinks just to loosen them (and their wallets up). If indulging in one or two is going to make you start playing in a way that you wouldn’t usually, you should be incredibly careful.

Consider only taking a set amount of cash to the casino with you. That way, what you can limit your losses significantly. If you must take a bank card along with you, maybe let a significant other or trusted friend guard it after making a withdrawal from the venue and converting it to chips.

Online, this is a little trickier. Although the drinks are unlikely to be free, there may be no one to stop you getting absolutely wasted and with a credit card at your fingertips, and you might end up betting way more than you can afford to lose.

If you want to gamble under the influence of alcohol, make sure to play online at a regulated online casinos that offer no deposit bonuses. These also allow you to set a loss limit and are constantly monitoring for erratic gambling behaviour.

 

Shopping on eBay

From the potentially destructive, to the potentially pointless. Online shopping is both a blessing and a curse. Although you can get just about anything delivered to your door in just a few days, selecting which trinkets from this endless bazaar is a task best left to the sober mind.

I’m sure we’ve all arrived home mid-week before now to find a mysterious Amazon package awaiting us. “Oh! A gift for me, from drunk me,” you might think. This is all well and good but traditionally drunk you has much more questionable taste and less regard for your financial well-being than sober you!

Getting a Tattoo

Search Google for images of “worst drunk tattoos”. That should be all the warning you need to horrify you into never partaking in the late-teen holiday ritual that is getting a tattoo when smashed on booze.

The better idea is to never get a tattoo ever.

Do you really want “Benidorm ‘19” tattooed on your butt for the rest of your days? How about your then-partner’s name on you? It might seem like a great idea because all your friends are onside. However, a life commitment like a tattoo is another purchase that’s best reserved for sober you.

 

When Pregnant

Alcohol when pregnant is a serious no-no. We all knew that already, though, I’m sure. Just to hammer it home though, here are some of the detrimental effects of getting on the booze when you’re expecting.

Since alcohol passes directly to the baby while it’s developing, it can have all sorts of health implications for both your son or daughter and yourself. These include stunted growth, trouble with coordination and attention, bad memory and learning difficulties, and intellectual impairment. In the worst-case scenario, it can also cause miscarriages and still-birth.

Given the grave potentially implications, you can see that it’s really not worth indulging in a drink when you’re pregnant. Don’t worry though, that glass of wine will be waiting for you when baby is finally out. You’ll have earned it too!

Text Your Ex (or the person you fancy)

Smartphones are a wonderful invention, aren’t they? They allow us to stay constantly connected with everyone we’ve ever known, and you can talk to them right from the palm of your hand. We can chat to that girl we met in the bar in Mexico City three years ago, a distant aunt, or a love interest; instantaneously and for free.

However, with great power comes great responsibility. Whereas in yesteryear, the only person hearing your pissed-up rambling about how you “never should have let him/her go” or how you worship the ground a fellow human being walks upon would be friends or perhaps an apathetic barman.

Today, by contrast, you can let the person know themselves. It might seem like a good idea to espouse to the object of your affections that you want to have your wicked way with them, but it’s probably best to approach this one with a clear head. The booze might give you just a bit too much confidence and no one likes to lie in bed with a bad head and a case of the drunk-text-induced cringe.

Worse still, you can make that oh-so-low mistake of texting your ex for a bit of late-night hanky-panky. You know they’ve still got it bad for you and they’ll be awake. Drunk you might be in the mood but consider sober you’s feelings and avoid making that booty call!