Name your time and place. Perhaps you’re doing it wrong :)

The beer is both weak and expensive by US standards. I actually like it, you really can sit around drinking all day and not feel like a truck hit you the next.

Try the rough cider instead… you can reliably forget a whole day for under £15.

This made me chuckle

> really can sit around drinking all day

11am to 11pm, 12 hours. Standard drinking rate of 4 pints an hour. 48 pints, and maybe a fish finger sandwich and a bag of pork scratchings to soak it up.

... otherwise known as "going pro"

Monday night at the pub, thats when you see the true pros at work.

The problem is not just that the alcohol is expensive in pubs (it’s actually cheaper than a lot of European countries) but that also the alcohol in the shops is very expensive. I think that is why alcohol use has become so unpopular. Not only is it a less pleasurable drug than others, but it’s actually becoming more expensive than them, even at home

Never been there, I tend to live in countries where the average price of a bottle of ~4-8% beer or a shot of booze is around 80 cents to 2.50 USD though and I am sorry to report the drunkest shit-disturbers in the bars are British, Australian, American and Canadian tourists in that order. I think some of these lads see the price and just go insane on it, but they can't really hold their liquor, and it causes a lot of problems with them thinking they can fight people over the pettiest of reasons (There really isn't a casual bar-fight culture in most parts I hang out around in Latin America), when it often at best just ends them getting kicked out, maybe worse targeted to get robbed at gun or knifepoint on the beach, or violently mobbed on by people having none of it at worst (go home injury or the rare death). Disagreement over the rules of billiards is a consistent one surprisingly, the pockets are marked for certain balls and when you point this out they think you are trying to hustle them or something when the numbers are pretty clearly right on the table.

(Most) Local men don't make enough money to get drunk at the bar, and chances are they have a woman (mom/wife/girlfriend) waiting around to give them a hard time if they do, if they don't they're trying to find exactly that so getting too wasted spoils the mamacita-mission, and a lot of it is economic and cultural relativity for sure. Like there are some pretty heavy drunks out this way but I mostly notice that with expats, especially those who don't speak very good Spanish. It really varies from country to country though (Often when I hang out with Colombians for instance they're drinking straight shots of this stuff called aguardiente and it's HORRIBLY sugary and a guaranteed hangover, no idea how they get used to it, I won't go near it). I think more of an issue for the local binge drinkers is adulterated liquor with weird holographic labels and the occasional mass methanol poisoning [1], actually, you find a bottle of that garbage for about a dollar for 350mL and it's the worst, killed someone I knew in quite a horrible way. Home-made fruit liquor causes a lot of problems too. No idea why people continue to drink that stuff other than a lack of education.

Internationally I notice the trend however is people becoming more health-conscious and I think that's pretty great.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46423180