Yeah, I had to dig out my diary for the piece and I couldn't read most of my three years

at university because I think I wrote it at like 4 a.m. and it was just like the, a

full sick drunk or, you know, just going the first time I got drunk and my mum picked

me up in the car with my boyfriend in the back of the car and the next day she was like,

I don't want to see you like that again. And I cringed, I put it in the piece and I think

it came out because I was like, oh I just don't think I can, oh I don't know I can't.

It was embarrassing.

It was horrible.

My diaries from college, well, okay, they're not particularly filled with drinking stories

but I think I'd probably die if anybody read them. I have not yet used them for a reporting

project, but Chrissy Giles did.

This week we'll be talking to Chrissy about her story, which is all about peak booze.

I'm Nicola Twilly and I'm Cynthia Graber and you're listening to Gastropod, the podcast

where we look at food through the lens of science and history. This week is all about alcohol,

how much we drink, why and what it's doing to us. Plus we get a sneak peak at the synthetic

alcohol of the future.

Chrissy Giles is a British journalist. We went to the same university actually, leads

university in the north of England and she was a couple of years beneath me. She recently

wrote a story from Ozeic and she starts that story with a very graphic and honest description

of her drinking career. Like most Brits, she started at 14 or 15, just sneaking drinks

with friends. But things really got going at university.

Fresh is weak, the first week at uni was all about getting drunk so you could kind of,

...