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Alcoholism On the Rise

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09:03 / 14.01.03

DRINKS firms are calling for a Government-funded campaign to warn about the dangers of alcohol abuse.

The Portman Group, which promotes sensible drinking, says an initiative on the scale of the campaign against drink-driving is needed to tackle the issue.

It also urges all doctors and nurses to learn the early symptoms of alcoholism and for schoolchildren as young as seven to be taught the potential harms.

The recommendations were made in a submission to a Government study aimed at reducing alcohol harm.

The Portman Group is funded with £2 million a year from drinks firms such as Diageo, makers of Guinness and Smirnoff vodka, and Scottish Newcastle, pub operators Pubmaster and Enterprise Inns.

"It is vital that the general public becomes more aware of the dangers of binge drinking and drunkenness," said Jean Coussins, chief executive of The Portman Group.

"The message on drink-driving has achieved a massive turnaround in behaviour because it has been delivered consistently over 25 years, backed up by law enforcement and enough money to get noticed.

"The same commitment and perspective need to be applied to the task of cutting public drunkenness," he said.

-From AOL

Interested to hear Kim Howells response to this. No doubt UK Garage and PS2 are to blame for the high incidence of paralytic teenagers and young adults.

wembley can change in 28 days

09:11 / 14.01.03

Why not? Public drunkenness is pretty disgusting if you ask me. It's one thing to have a few drinks and another to be the slobbering idiot on my night bus who's puking on the seat in front of him. It's way too culturally acceptable to be wasted.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

09:22 / 14.01.03

Yes, but where does the compulsion to get 'out of your head' arise from.

Why should the inside of one's own head be such an uncomfortable and unpleasant place to be for so many people after a long day with unpaid overtime?

The most high-risk and high-spending area in bars and clubs, from any casual observation, is young professionals...not scumbags and clinically ill victims of a psychiatric illness. What is it about modern life that encourages this behaviour in the first place?

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:25 / 14.01.03

No topic abstract, of course. Must have been left behind the bar last night.

My main objection to this is that the drinks companies are demanding that the government foot the bill for a campaign against alcoholism, which is not only caused by their products but also likely to cause them bad PR. 2 million collectively on a conscience-sopping think tank hardly strikes me as equitable.

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09:29 / 14.01.03

And what about private drunkenness...is it somehow more acceptable to grab a couple of bottles of wine on your way home and blear out ina sodden heap over dinner or in front of the TV?

The British have a curious, and in my experience, fairly unique relationship with intoxicants compared to most of the rest of the World (not that I am Michael Palin or anything). Europeans certainly do not have the culture of getting wasted on a Saturday (Or Tuesday for that matter) night, nor do Americans, Japanese, Indians etc. It is a particular cultural habit of the Brits to be staggering about in the street, or drinking to the point of unconsciousness rather than in a measured and less devastating fashion. Whether or not this is tied up to the archaic licensing laws and 'naughty' image that is impressed on many in childhood, I don't know.

Your thoughts?

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

09:57 / 14.01.03

No topic abstract, of course. Must have been left behind the bar last night.

lol

10:19 / 14.01.03

Fairly sure the getting wasted on Saturday night is due to the licensing law situation. If you turn out at, say eight pm and don't want to go to a club you've got three hours in your local to chuch as much Old Peculiar down your neck and achieve the necessary state of enlightenment. Which leads to kebabs, vomiting, declarations of love, unwanted pregnancy and fisticuffs.

The Natural Way

10:28 / 14.01.03

But I think Mu's right when (s)he suggests that there's something about those pesky office hours, and the fact that the british are a bit too quick to associate booze w/ intoxication, that correlates w/ loads of big pissedness.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

10:52 / 14.01.03

The whole tone and attitude is just so typically obtuse...like, the reason that alcohol abuse and alcoholism is on the rise is somehow due to the ignorance of the public as to the destructive and damaging and addictive qualities of the drug, and if only people knew the dangers they'd be more restrained..

Just like in prison, if the inmates knew the risks, there would surely be less incidence of drug abuse..

Or could it be that modern routine is so mundane, soul destroying and pointless for many people that refuge at the bottom of a bottle/bag/wrap and higher risk of early demise is somehow preferable to a life of graft and hard work through and into retirement, and indeed, to the very grave...

11:16 / 14.01.03

Check out the Russians - and many of the Scandinavians. It's a cold-climate, few-hours-of-daylight kinda thing.

11:17 / 14.01.03

I've been guilty of this behaviour a lot, and probably will be again.

I don't think the licensing hours are the prime cause, there's plenty of time if you know what you're doing. I think work stress may play a part, but Brits have had a long relationship with booze, pretty much uninterrupted by reform. And beer, believe it or not, makes you happy. It melts away all that famous British reserve and deference, and, most importantly, gives us license to do the things we actually really wanted to do when we were sober. And most of the drinking public are quite well behaved, barring the odd piss in a doorway -- the violence and irresponsibility displayed by some is in them before they step into the pub. I think we're just practised drunks.

Don't Japanese salarymen, normally reserved and deferent too, like to drink as well? Or is that a stereotype?

wembley can change in 28 days

12:10 / 14.01.03

I think the funniest thing about the drinking-nationalist stereotype is that it seems to apply to just about every nation. I've thrown up in many different nations, spurred by the natives and their gluttonous habits. Ever watched a Canadian guzzle beer? Did vodka boat races in St.Petersburg? Seen how much cider is consumed in Helsinki? Drank like the Irish? the English? the Germans (oh! the Germans can drink!), etc etc ad nauseum and the spins. Is there any country where the people do NOT have a reputation for being able to drink? (Don't forget the italians, my god!) And of course, there's the rather dodgy idea that this should create a sense of nationalist pride. Although I will say that I was quite shocked by the early closing times in British pubs - I think it's the reason people there are wasted by 9 as opposed to 12:30.

Mu, drinking alcohol and alcoholism are not really the same thing, are they? The public should be far more aware of the signs of alcoholism (which I take to be alcohol addiction) (in their friends and family, say), because it's not a funny thing. If you're so flippant about the subject, my guess is that you like drinking but are not alcoholic, nor is anyone in your immediate family.

So do they want to cut down on drinking, or on alcoholism? Not everyone who drinks has a problem, obviously. But they have an excellent point when mentioning drinking and driving. Everyone knew the dangers - if the initial aim of the MADD campaign (and similar ones) was to educate the public, they were flogging a dead horse. But they did manage to make drinking and driving something that was socially unacceptable. Someone charged for drunk driving nowadays gets a bit more of the pariah treatment from his/her peers than before. And it's easier now for people to tell each other not to drive if they've had too much. It's become a collective problem, and people look out for one another. That doesn't seem obtuse to me.

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12:33 / 14.01.03

A fair point.

I also take your point about national stereotypes regards drinking, but there is definitely a major difference between a night out in, say Paris, or Tokyo and a typical stride down Soho in London, or, god forbid, Blackpool, where young ladies more than men can be seen to crawl along the pavement with their skirts hanging over their heads. I'm not being, flippant, that is what I see.

I would go along with Haus that the cheek of demanding a public spend on awareness from the very providers of the offending substance is a little hard to take...perhaps less should be spent on towering billboards suggesting Smirnoff would run the world like a perfect Utopia.

Damn, them Russians can drink though.And the Norwegians! Jesus!

18:46 / 14.01.03

Well, it seems to me that Americans do the Saturday night drunk thing but that could be just the circles I run with. That said, I will say drinking, and binge drinking does seem more acceptable in Britain than it is in the U.S. The pubs are ALWAYS busy after work - no matter what day it is! (OK, Sunday seems a bit slow but I'm sure that's due to people recovering from hangovers). I'm still a bit amazed by that. Also, it's not uncommon here to see a group of say four women out drinking and four bottles of wine on the table. (At least in America they have the decency to remove the bottle from the table so you're not sure how much you've drunk.)

But don't think I'm throwing stones, because I've certainly been an enthusiastic participant in "British Booze Culture" since I've been here.

19:09 / 14.01.03

the drinking-nationalist stereotype ... Is there any country where the people do NOT have a reputation for being able to drink?

Well, I don't remember seeing anyone shit-faced in Egypt. Or Spain, for that matter. Everyone likes to say they can drink. Only few can or do.

If you're so flippant about the subject, my guess is that you like drinking but are not alcoholic, nor is anyone in your immediate family.

Actually, I'm here to say one can have an alcoholic in the family without losing one's sense of humour.

I suspect your attitude to alcohol is derived in part from your education.

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19:43 / 14.01.03

The Portman group promotes 'sensible' drinking. What exactly (precisely) is this?

Should we be worried if people are drinking more? Does anyone care? Does it bother you if you notice you are drinking more than you used to, or your friends and family are getting arsehold of a weekday evening?

I know I am. I bloody like it though.

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19:46 / 14.01.03

Of course, that should be arseholed

Arsehold is something completely different.

20:11 / 14.01.03

The Portman group promotes 'sensible' drinking. What exactly (precisely) is this?

"Don't drink it all at once"? Seriously, it's a euphemism.

Though this campaign may engage people of a pre-drinking age, it will mean nothing to anyone old enough to visit a bar already. Isn't this what happened with the anti-drink-driving campaigns? It was only by putting the ads on TV and other places where kids could see them that they managed to convince anyone that it was all that dangerous. Anyone who's actually done it knows the odds of something going wrong, although unacceptably higher in a moral sense, are still pretty low. A car isn't that complicated to drive, drunk or sober.

00:48 / 15.01.03

Australians definately do the Saturday night drunk act too. I live a few doors down from one of the most popular pubs in town and you should see the state of the (usually underage) idiots that file past my place in the night, puking in the gutters and sneaking up my driveway for a sly piss against the side of the house. The pub's open till 4am and the sound of drink drivers doing burn-outs in the car park at 4.15am wakes me almost every weekend.

I also like to get drunk. I'll do it on a night out and I'll do it at home with friends and I'll, more often, do it at home by myself at least once a week. I almost never get arseholed though, just drunk enough to find the crap on TV funny enough to kill the boredom.

I understand the difference between being a drinker and being a drunk. My sister's a drunk. Her addiction has torn whopping great holes in the fabric of our family and our lives. We have all, at one time or another, been physically threatened by her, often weilding weapons (including pointing a rifle at my parents once and coming at me bit a knife and another time a pair of scissors). When drink wasn't enough for her to blot out her miserable existence from her own mind she moved onto other drugs that involve needles, although I've never known exactly what these are. The other drugs are more of a hobby though, drinking is her full time occupation. She's never had an actual job in her life, the government put her on a disability pension for her 18th birthday for alcoholism so she's never needed to work. As a further result of her lifestyle she now has every brand of hepatitis, scirrosis of the liver and brain damage among other things and is not expected to live another year. She's 38. I got beyond having any pity or even caring about what happens to her over 10 years ago. My real sister died when she way 18, this person wandering around being her ever since is a stranger to us all. I hate her and wish her a speedy demise.

I'm fully in favour of anything any company or government department might want to do to try to stop people ending up like her. Having a drink is fine. Getting drunk can be fun. being an alcoholic is something I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy, not even my sister.

wembley can change in 28 days

07:31 / 15.01.03

Actually, I'm here to say one can have an alcoholic in the family without losing one's sense of humour.

Yeah, I had a feeling someone was going to call my mile-high bitch. I can be funny. Really. Oh, and I forgot to insert the word "western" or at least "not prohibited from partaking due to religion" before the word country in the any-countries-cannot-drink part. Syntax. Sorry, I must be drunk.

I suspect your attitude to alcohol is derived in part from your education.
Do you mean mine, specifically, or one's? Either way, I guess that would support DRINK's campaign for alcohol education. But alcohol-specific education aside, how would you figure? Individuals in certain highly-educated professions are notorious for alcoholism (for instance anaesthetists), just as much as professionals who quit school at 17. One of the correlations seems to be a high-stress job - apparently roadies who do a lot of rigging and hanging lights 60 feet in the air are prone to alcohol abuse.

Kind of reminds me of a program I saw in Britain, where schools would identify young girls who wanted to get pregnant, and then they'd give them a doll for a week that was programmed to cry at 3 in the morning, and wouldn't stop until you'd "fed", "washed" or at least huggled it for some time. At the end of the week there was a record of how long it spent crying, but that usually wasn't necessary because the exhausted teenager was cured of the mothering instinct for the next ten years. Maybe kids should be allowed to drink after they've taken care of a big alcoholic realdoll for a week...

12:59 / 15.01.03

I suspect your attitude to alcohol is derived in part from your education.
Do you mean mine, specifically, or one's? Either way, I guess that would support DRINK's campaign for alcohol education.

I meant your education by DRINK's (as it turns out) campaign. It's interesting to me that you see beer in the same light as you see schoolkid pregnancy, and alcohol and alcoholism as pretty much the same thing.

I, on the other hand, am of an age that didn't receive this education, and so only have my personal experience to go on. I see nothing wrong with drinking as long as one doesn't fuck up other people. It's no one's business but my own, least of all an unelected advocacy group. To me, an alcoholic is not some poor unfortunate with a disease who wasn't lucky enough to have been enlightened by some campaign. An alcoholic is a self-destructive asshole.

Now, if someone wants to start up a "don't be an asshole and we're not talking about anything specific but in general" campaign, super. That might help. But telling kids that booze is the devil is a naive, possibly ideological interference with the truth that misses the point by a mile.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

15:35 / 15.01.03

Hurrah. And Bravo.

wembley can change in 28 days

17:11 / 15.01.03

An alcoholic is a self-destructive asshole.

Even my fictionsuit's jaw has dropped. Remind me to tell the next addict it's hir fault.

Well, you've put a lot of words in my mouth I think, but let's start here. Alcohol and alcoholism are not the same thing, in fact I was the first to bring up the fact that there is a distinction in this topic.

I never said I saw beer and pregnant schoolkids in the same light. I said "reminds me of", and besides, I don't see beer as bad, I see binge drinking and alcoholism as bad. I agree with you that indoctrination at the creche level is important - if you're going to get kids pregnant, you might as well get them drunk first.

But seriously. The campaign is designed to make the public more aware (as opposed to simply aware - nobody's saying that the public is ignorant of the dangers of binge drinking). What's wrong with that, anyway? So what if a bunch of children grow up with real livers? I just cannot see how a campaign aimed at the reduction of self-destructive behaviour could be such a bad thing. I have nothing against people drinking, but if there were fewer completely sodden idiots in the streets at night, I wouldn't complain.

17:16 / 15.01.03

If we're taking "alcoholic" to mean an individual who displays the features of actual alcohol dependence (as opposed to someone who drinks four units a week more than I do) then, generally speaking, I'd have to agree with the "self-destructive asshole" comment.

17:34 / 15.01.03

So would I, to an extent, and I speak as a self-destructive asshole. I am also uncomfortable with the disease concept of alcoholism if only that it can shift responsibility from the individual. Disease implies "cure," which would be a fallacy for alcoholism. That said, I pass a group of rough sleeping drinkers almost every day, and self-destructive asshole is not the first thing that comes to mind, and they are certainly pretty poor and unfortunate. I know what you mean though Ignatius J, and totally agree with But telling kids that booze is the devil is a naive, possibly ideological interference with the truth that misses the point by a mile. The notion of the substance itself as the problem, and pointlessly demonising it is ludicrous. That applies equally to drugs.

wembley can change in 28 days

05:21 / 16.01.03

I can't see alcoholics in the self-destructive asshole category mostly because the only alcoholic I know personally has been an alcoholic from the age of 8. At that point, she couldn't have known better, and while I think the impetus to change should come from her, it really looks like the drug has always been too strong for her. She's been visited by so many social services folks, and yet she manages to convince them all that she hasn't got a problem. Meanwhile her son, who is now 10, is growing up a basket case (albeit a basket case who knows how to take care of himself). When he was three years old he went for four days without food before he took a taxi to his grandmother's house. I just see the whole situation as really fucking sad. A lot of people in my family have tried to help her for 40 years, but nothing has worked. Yet I can't really blame her in my heart of hearts because she got hooked when she was so young. Am I just a bleeding heart?

I agree that the substance itself isn't the problem, though. The best way IMHO to educate people about the dangers of any drug is to start with the assumption that they're going to partake of it. I think that way you don't lose all respect right away.

05:38 / 16.01.03

Yes......, alcolholism is on the rise.......????????

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

08:31 / 16.01.03

I just cannot see how a campaign aimed at the reduction of self-destructive behaviour could be such a bad thing

So you pay higher prices than practically anywhere else in the world to obtain the drug, and in spite of being a mature, sensible tax-payer who works the odd nightshift, are legally banned from obtaining it after 11.00 pm (barring the odd even more expensive club), and much of the inflated price you pay is tax to the government.

The same government are then pressured by the companies that sold you the drug in the first place to use a chunk of the revenue gleaned from you in tax, including the tax paid on the sale of the drug, to warn you about the dangers of imbibing the drug you have bought?

I agree, the campaign is not necessarily faulty in its aims, but is there nothing about the design that makes you wonder?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:26 / 16.01.03

An alcoholic is a self-destructive asshole.

Speaking as someone who, while not quite an alcoholic, does have a serious drink problem (and yes, medical treatment has been sought on the recommendation of various doctors), I unfortunately have to agree with that statement.

The problem is, while there is nothing wrong with self-destructive behaviour, unless you actually care about the person who's destroying him/herself, try as you might, your (and yes, I mean "one's") drinking will almost certainly involve other people. I would never have gone to counselling or any of that shit were it not for the fact that I became aware that I was upsetting a lot of people, and alienating a lot of people I really cared about. If it was just about my own liver, I wouldn't give a fuck. Hell, it's my liver! But it isn't in a lot of cases.

Sure, there are a lot of pissheads who don't have any worthwhile relationships to cling on to. But I'd say that meant we as a society had failed them.

The road to assholery is paved with really pleasant, really small steps.

23:42 / 16.01.03

An alcoholic is a self-destructive asshole.

I like "Fear-Based Asshole" better, but that works, too.

The definition of alcoholism put forward in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, which begat all this twelve step stuff the world over, is two-fold. 1) When you honestly try to stop you can't, and 2) When you start you have little or no control over how much you drink.

The question, though, is whether alcoholism has anything to do with drinking. I've talked about this a lot lately, and the line "alcohol is a symptom of alcoholism" crops up a lot. Treating alcoholism as a disease, which is another of the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous, seems to imply that alcoholics are born that way - that they're fucked long before they take the first drink, and that the deck's been stacked against them from the get-go.

So, rather than fund an alcohol-is-the-devil campaign, wouldn't it make more sense to fund a 'if your life is falling apart, it might have something to do with the pint of cheap vodka you drink before bed' campaign?

04:26 / 17.01.03

I haven't read this thread but I'd just like to say that I am drunk right now. Hooray for drinking alone!