The Metropolis

Do we need to talk about East London's drinking problem?

Mike Pollitt | Wednesday 1 August, 2012 10:42

Margot Huysman, writing for tech blog Kernel Mag, has a common problem. She’s in East London and she keeps getting pissed.

“Since I arrived on the start-up scene, my liver hasn’t had a moment of rest. Networking events, after-work cocktails, office parties… you name it, I’ve been invited to it – and got riotously drunk at it, along with everyone else. But why is London’s Silicon Roundabout so completely fuelled by alcohol?”

Her answer:

“But more than just taking the edge off work, alcohol is there to take the edge off, end of. It’s easy to forget, but the tech scene is populated by smart… nerds… And, just as you may have thought at university that alcohol would take the edge off approaching your crush, or simply help you to interact more fluently with a group of new people, the tech scene turns enthusiastically to alcohol as social lubricant.”

But this isn’t solely a nerd thing. Hard as it is to believe, attractive and articulate people get drunk too.

Do we need an intervention here? Does the constant peer pressure to join in the drinking get you down, creating inside you an empty pit of self-loathing which, with poetic inevitability, you turn to alcohol to fill?

Or should we just relax, order another round and enjoy the ride?

Kernel Mag – Why is East London so goddam booz?y

See also:

Wanted in London, a football pub for the connoisseur
The five best places in London to drink alone
The best pub names in London ever

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