To think that alcohol misuse is the elephant in the room in the uk?

[rogersmellyonthetelly]

Ok, so I'm not talking about alcoholics here, people who are alcohol dependant and their families have my sympathy. I'm taking about people who go out and get hammered week in week out, puke on the pavement, behave like boors, injure themselves, assault others and generally cause a nuisance. They also cost a fortune in extra policing, and you only have to walk into any a&e in the country after 9pm most evenings to see the effect its having on the nhs. Yet week in week out, I see supermarkets advertising how cheap their booze is, my local garage has 1 aisle out of 4 dedicated to the bloody stuff, its in abundance in every corner shop. Why is it that in the uk it seems to be that alcohol is perceived as necessary to having a good time? Isn't it time that the government stopped advertising alcohol like they stopped advertising fags?
I'm no stick in the mud, I go out with friends, I have a laugh, a dance and a good time, and I don't drink at all except the occasional baileys which I have because I like the taste. If people want to have a glass or two of wine, or a couple of beers to relax, fair play, but please could someone tell me what is relaxing about waking up with your hair stuck to your face with sick, having pissed in your bed, or worse, pissed in the bed in the police cell, having no idea where you were the night before, what you did and with who?

YABU... Heavy drinking may be an elephant but it's well outside any room, trampling around and stealing buns from Greggs.

Well I said 'Hidden" I suppose because I'm talking about the sustained drinking that goes on behind closed doors. It would now be completely normal for us to get through four or five bottles of wine a wine a week, plus beers, and in the summer we have cocktails too, simple ones but it adds spirits (home measures) into the mix.

I feel that's too much so I've cut down, and so has dh - my point is that that is a lot of alcohol compared to what we drank fifteen years ago when we shacked up together. It's a change in people's lifestyle, not just ours. Many people I know are the same (and worse, but that comes under binge drinking) and I find it worrying and basically unnecessary to drink that much. But there it is, eat well, have wine, wind down after a hard couple of hours with the petulant kids, have another glass...

If you look at the data, alcohol consumption in the UK doubled in the 60's/70's and has stayed by and large the same from the 80's, it hit a peak in the early noughties and is now declining again.

We are pretty average by European standards.

The issue is how we drink, and how poorly we handle drink.

I'm a recovering alcoholic and as such feel unable to comment...

BUT yes OP, there does seem to be a sleepwalking into misuse- just look at the egging on that goes on everywhere on Mumsnet, at childrens' parties. I was at Youth Hostel recently where they were selling alcohol at 10 AM.

20 years ago you couldn't even drink it on the premises. Thats quite a seismic shift in attitudes and normalisation

I believe that, although alcoholics are born not made, there is a tipping point when alcohol stops being a crutch and the drinker becomes dependent. Our culture is accelerating that process.

I think alcohol is a problem in the UK but people overstate the extent to which we have a unique problem. One thing that particularly gets my goat is this trope that only northern Europeans/Anglo Saxons have an unhealthy attitude to alcohol and that southern Europeans/Latins/everyone else are moderate and healthy in their drinking habits. This is balls. In most countries where alcohol is freely available there are alcoholics, people who don't technically meet the definition of alcoholics but who overdo it, to a greater or lesser degree, people who consume it more or less healthily and everything along the spectrum. But I've known and seen enough alcohol consumption among people from latin/Southern Euro backgrounds to know that its just as problematic there as it is in the U.K. I've seen elderly folk drinking wine at cafes opposite the church in rural Spain at just after 8.30 in the morning, and kids in Spain/France get bladdered just as readily as the Brits. I've seen the way South Americans put away beer. The difference is that because these societies tend to be more socially conservative than ours, there is less of the obviously dysfunctional, vomiting into a waste paper basket type binge drinking. Drinking tends to go on more inside the home, as opposed to in the pub etc. But that doesn't mean people aren't drinking to excess.
I think we should try to curb binge drinking and there should be more alcohol education full stop. But lets please cut this "we're the only nation in the world with a drink problem" bullshit because it obscures the reality which is that alcohol and alcohol problems are a near-universal.

I think one of the things I have loved about pregnancy is that it has shown me I do not HAVE to have an alcoholic drink when down the pub with mates for instance. It sounds stupid, but before, it was just an assumption I would get an alcoholic drink and if I didn't, the attitude towards it would be an 'oh come on' kind of reaction.

People in this country cannot have a good time without alcohol it seems, and at freshers and uni generally I think the alcohol abuse culture leads to stronger substance abuse.

I don't know whether these changes will lead to greater rates of alcoholism in the (near) future. As I say I'm an unreliable witness- but there is definitely a lot more alcohol about in situations it wouldn't have been a generation ago (CC's examples)

Whether that normalisation will lead to greater awareness of the risks -of alcohol dependency rather than the short term ralling over, puking variety remains to be seen.

Absolutely agree OP.

We have a shocking attitude to drink in this country, from the teenagers swigging in the park, the twenty somethings in the town on a Saturday night and yes as Custard says, the 30-50 year olds drinking begin closed doors every night.

It's endemic.

Personally I'd ban alcopops (work of the devil) and also the selling of booze with your spuds in the supermarket. And the 24 hour thing needs revision too.

And I'm not some none drinker - I've been the teenager in the park, and the twenty something in the town, and the 30 something behind closed doors. It's still an issue.

When I went out with my friends in the late 80s, alcohol was something to be enjoyed and was part of the mix of a pleasant evening. I can't recall ever seeing anyone throwing up in the toilets or on the streets as a regular event. I had a quiet time in the 90s and didn't go out much. When I started going out again around the start of this century I noticed that a lot of young people were downing alcohol with the sole intention of getting as pissed as possible as quickly as possible. The toilets were full of women so pissed they couldn't stand by about 10.00 p.m., lying there in pools of piss and vomit. It was not a pleasant thing to witness. A lot of the younger generation would start the evening tossing down shots and then have to go home early because they were too drunk to continue the evening.

I'm not sure what happened between the late 80s and early 21st century to cause this change? Alcopops and shots seemed to be promoted more? There also seems to have been a change in some people's attitudes from alcohol being an addition to a pleasant evening to something that is seen as essential, and I know many teens/early 20s who will share a bottle of vodka between themselves before they go out.

I do worry about the younger generation. I remember reading a newspaper columnist asking "What have we done to our children that they want to go out and poison themselves every weekend".

Gosh, just read that back and I sound really, really OLD!

The availability of alcohol is worrying - when I were a lass the only place you bought booze was the offy.

Now you can buy it in corner shops, petrol stations, the cinema (our local one has a bar), the bowling alley, supermarkets, bingo halls. It must be very easy if alcohol is a fundamental part of your life to pop out for a loaf of bread and pick up a few bottles of Chardonnay.

Are you sure you're not looking at it with rose-tinted glasses? I know that my dad had a scotch when he got home from work more often than not when I was a kid - they weren't pub drinkers, but there was always some kind of booze in the house.

Youngsters going out and getting trashed has always happened too - previously it wasn't in the town centres though - it was out in the woods with a few bottles of homebrew/cider that they'd nicked because they were too young to buy it - perhaps the age that people do this has stretched though?

A glass of wine (or two) a night with dinner really isn't the problem - it is common all over europe, it's not humungously bad for you (and many studies actually suggest it might be good for you).

I also don't think the price is the problem - booze here is still very much more expensive than on the mainland, especially out in bars.

Isn't the getting roaring drunk and fighting in the street mainly students / people in their very early 20s though? I'd assumed that that was something people might do for a couple of years and then grow out of.

The data says that from the 80's on, average alcohol consumption in the UK has been (more or less) the same except a sppke in the early noughties and is pretty average for Europe, including those naice wine sipping countries. This leaves 3 possibilities to explain all these anecdotes of rampant alcohol abuse:

(i) A smaller and smaller number of people are doing more and more of the drinking, while increasing numbers do not drink.

(ii) The behaviour of the small % who always drank too much is getting much worse now, so we see more of it. They could be more out of control now, policing could be less rough, etc etc.

(iii) Cheap booze means an increase in young people drinking a bit more each, they by and large can't handle it and that is what everyone is seeing.

But the statistics do not support a massive increase in binge drinkers AND a massive increase in behind-doors drinking AND a massive increase in social drinking since the 1980's.

I do wonder if far more restrictions on alcohol would help.

Does anyone know if the smoking ban has had any noticeable impact? (apart from making our lives worse by forcing the smokers at the institution next door outside so it all comes into our house - thanks guys)

I never go out after dark here because the streets are full of drunk, stupid people (mainly students) and it's just horrible.

And there is always loads of sick on the pavements in the morning. And broken glass. I dread to think what goes on while we are safe in our house.

It's really bad here but then we have got a half-people, half-student population. Walking through town yesterday was almost impossible in itself as they have all arrived back for term. Literally impossible to move without banging into someone every few paces with the buggy.

So town at night is now going to be much worse until they all feck off again.

yanbu

I did my fair share of over consumption in my teens, early 20s, then went to live in Italy and found such behaviour was simply inconceivable and that was the end of that.

At a wedding I went to recently, late 30s crowd, everyone was legless to the point of passing ou (actually it wasn;t just the 30 somethings, there were a few rellies in their 70s, totally incoherent, unable to walk). I was talking to a Hindu guest who was clearly utterly bemused by it all. I was . It's so uncool and it's placing a ludicrous burden on the NHS. Gah.

I'd definitely agree with points 2 & 3 MrsB.

My son spent last year in Canada at university and his drinking was curtailed by booze not being so readily available. They don't sell it in supermarkets and also seem to have stiffer penalties for being drunk in a public place.

I think that the 24 hour drinking thing was a bad move. The government hoped that we'd emulate European countries and develop a relaxed attitude to alcohol; drink the same amount but over a longer period, develop a cafe culture or some such nonsense. It didn't work for a multitude of reasons not least because the structure of the whole working day is different in Europe.

...and also seem to have stiffer penalties for being drunk in a public place

That.

I hate the idea that young people feel they have to get hammered to have a good time but my all time pet hate is when people habitually use alcohol as an excuse for their behaviour:

I hit you because I was drunk
I cheated on you because I was drunk
I came home at stupid o clock..... Etc etc

And they actually beleive themselves.

Exactly Saggars. We aren't the same as France. We don't have hot weather, we don't have a long lunch, a late start, wine isn't a thing we consume with meals - not so much anyway.

The whole thing would have had to be entirely different for 24 hour availability to be appropriate - you can't take just one element of a culture and stick it into ours and hope it changes the whole attitude.

btw I never drink, well maybe if someone offers me something at a function but that would be less than once every 5 years and I'd have a sip and ditch it in a plant pot. I wasn't brought up with drink or pubs and never liked it anyway...people used to say I didn't need to drink, I was daft enough as it is, but ALL my friends used to drink at 6th form.

I have been drunk once, well I think i was. just went a bit wonky and sat down. I had had about 7 shots. Was fine after.