ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with cultural differences in Europe in drinking, and particularly drinking to intoxication, during adolescence and young adulthood, roughly defined in terms of ages 13-25. A drinker’s first experience of alcohol intoxication normally falls within this age period, and in many societies it also roughly corresponds to the age group in which drinking to intoxication is most common, even if the total volume of drinking is often greater at older ages. Thus, for instance, in the ECAS surveys (European Comparative Alcohol Study, Leifman, 2002; Ramstedt and Hope, 2002) drinking at least the equivalent of a bottle of wine on an occasion was more common in the age group 18-29 than among older respondents among men in Finland, Sweden, Germany, the UK, Ireland and France, and among women in the first five of these countries. Only in Italy were such occasions more frequent for an older group (those aged 50-64 among both men and women).
