A Drunken-ness of Doctors

Aside from the fact that i think the word 'drunkenness' is very appropriate for a gathering of Doctors (actually, what is the real word for that. Is there one?), yesterday was the annual department of medicine Christmas party (obviously it's annual but then Doctors rarely need an excuse to party). Whilst i'm not in the department of medicine, my boss' collaborator (and wife) is, and so her research group falls under that jurisdiction. Long story short, i was invited by a friend at work to go along as her guest. As i went last year, and it was fun enough, naturally i jumped at the chance. Free food, free drink, a nice setting (the Charleston Aquarium after dark) and generally some good company (a few other people from the lab/group were going to be there, thankfully). You can probably gather from this that a good time was had by all, and you'd be right.

One thing, though, that i find surprising, is the amount of drinking that a lot of doctors (medical and otherwise) do. You'd think that, given their awareness of the potential problems of excess alcohol consumption, that they'd be somewhat more concerned with overdoing it. But, oh no! They can knock it back as well as anyone else. And then some. In some ways, i can understand it to a degree - with such high stress jobs, the chance of having a night off to relax may come very rarely - even more so when someone else is paying for it, so they grab it with both hands whilst they can. But in some cases, i suspect, it may be more than that (like with the guy last year who was berating his wife as he'd promised to drive, and he wanted more to drink). Anyhow, not wanting to get all serious around this time of the year, i'll wrap things up. But given the tendency of medical students to go on big pub crawls as well, i think 'a drunkenness of doctors' applies well.