"do NOT tell me that is normal behaviour which has always happened throughout life, because it has NOT. I know, I'm 54, and once, you could walk into ANY city centre at night and only see the very occasional drunk"

That may be so, and I'm hardly encouraging drunkness, but there's some evidence that the 50's had unusually low levels of drunken behaviour, rather than now being abnormally high. Look at the history of Gin sales, Hogarth's etchings, and so on. It is worth remembering the battles of the mods and rockers as well - golden ages are few and far between.