  We analyse the recent rapid growth of 'binge' drinking in the UK. This means
the consumption of large amounts of alcohol, especially by young people,
leading to serious anti-social and criminal behaviour in urban centres. We show
how a simple agent-based model, based on binary choice with externalities,
combined with a small amount of survey data can explain the phenomenon. We show
that the increase in binge drinking is a fashion-related phenomenon, with
imitative behaviour spreading across socila networks The results show that a
small world network, rather than a random or scale free, offers the best
description of the key aspects of the data
