Americans drink faster listening to slow music — study

Press, 5 December 1988, Page 22

Americans drink faster listening to slow music — study

NZPA-AAP San Francisco Anthropologists have discovered that most Americans who visit bars drink faster to slow music and leave too drunk to drive legally. The statistics turned the most common theory on its ear — that people drank more quickly as the 'music became more lively. Researchers working with anthropologist, Jim Schaefer have just completed what to most barflies would be the dream assignment — a 10-year study of the American bar scene. Although he is still correlating the data, preliminary findings show Americans drink more than expected, stay longer, and are a traffic risk when they leave a bar.

For example, about 54 per cent of American bar patrons come in alone. They stay for an average of 56 minutes and consume about 4.1 drinks an hour each — taking them quickly over the legal driving limit. All three figures are higher than previously expected. Couples who frequent bars stay an average 67 minutes and consume 2.8 drinks an hour —- putting them potentially over the legal driving limit in some states. In contrast, larger groups stay longer but drink less. Schaefer, who used to drink regularly as a student before he developed his interest in the habits of his boozy peers, concluded from his research that more than half of the bar patrons were drunk after consum-

ing at least three drinks an hour, and that one in eight was unable to drive or function normally. Over a decade, he and his researchers watched more than 2000 drinking groups and interviewed bar employees in 65 bars to produce the volume of statistics and information upon which he bases his conclusions. As the director of the Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Prevention at the University of Minnesota, Shaefer told a meeting of the American Anthropological Association that in some bars when the jukebox ran out, the place came to a standstill. He discovered that the heaviest drinking occurred in Country and Western bars, and that most drinks were con-

sumed in those bars during slow songs. Some jukeboxes gave away their patrons’ tastes. The letters on the buttons for certain songs were all but rubbed off. The alltime favourite was Lucille by Kenny Rogers —- a song about a farmer’s wife who left her husband “with four hungry children and a crop in the field.” Any Merle Haggard song was guaranteed to spur the drinking tempo in direct proportion to its slower mood. What he also learned was that bar employees knew, down to within one or two percentage points, the average number of drinks consumed and'the degree of intoxication of their patrons. He told the association that this group of people

could be educated to improve America’s bar habits, for example, by something as simple as serving a glass of water with the third drink. Mixed drinks in American bars tend to be double the size of those served in Australian bars. As he put it, “by the time a person is drinking a third drink, it really doesn’t matter whether there is alcohol in it or not. What they want is the physical act of lifting the glass, they want to be sipping something liquid.” He argues that while this may seem to be counterproductive to bar owners, it would improve bar atmosphere by reducing the number of outright drunks while minimising bar-room brawls. This could entice more people to go to bars.