Sheriff Kathryn Mackie said Stuart Foster's death in 2004 could have been avoided, The Scotsman reported.

"No-one believes that the stories of alcohol causing ill-health, brain disease and death will ever happen to them," she said. "But it did happen to Mr. Foster while his colleagues watched in ignorance."

Foster began drinking heavily on the night of his death after finishing work at The Chairman, a nightclub in Edinburgh's Tollcross neighborhood. By the time he collapsed, he had been drinking alcopops, shots and wine for about three hours.

When they could not wake him, his colleagues loaded him into a car belonging to a woman he shared an apartment with. She found him dead the next morning.

Colleagues described Foster as a binge drinker who had passed out on previous occasions. They all said they regretted not doing anything to help him.

"The real issue in this case is the acceptance by certain people of a culture of 'binge' drinking to the point of a state of collapse," Mackie said.