To rant about alcohol and the way it's normalised?

[CheapSausagesAndSpam]

It's EVERYWHERE and it's poisonous. People normalise it..."Oh...wine o'clock already tra la la!"

And all that shite.

It's responsible for thousands of deaths and injuries and trauma every year and yet it's the first thing people think of when they want to celebrate something.

Get this

3 May 2017: New figures released today show that hospital admissions due to alcohol are at their highest ever levels.

The data, summarised in a release from NHS Digital, shows that alcohol-related hospital admissions in England have increased by 64% over the last decade, with an extra 430,000 people being admitted due to alcohol-related causes in 2015/16 compared with 2005/06.

This takes the total number of alcohol-related hospital admissions to over 1.1 million in 2015/16.

And this

Alcohol is linked to over 60 illnesses and diseases, including heart disease, liver disease and cancer. Figures from the local alcohol profiles for England show that admissions due to liver disease have gone up 57% over the last decade, and that the number of people diagnosed with alcohol-related cancer has increased 8%.

How is this a lovely drink? How is this something that is ok to do in front of children and even to allow children to partake of?

People on MN often say "Oh I let my 12 year old have half a glass of wine...it's a good way to introduce it!"

WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO!?

And new research points to the fact that it causes irreversable damage to stem cells, scrambling DNA and eventually causing cancers.

www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/03/alcohol-can-cause-irreversible-genetic-damage-to-stem-cells-says-study?CMP=fb_gu

Think about it. Society is not doing itself any favours.

@Iusedtobecarmen - who said it should be banned?

Er,OP was hinting at it i think with her rant.

OP here. I certainly never said it should be banned or hinted at it.

Citra, the article at www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39785742 shows that alcohol consumption per head has doubled since the 1950s. A fall in alcohol consumption per head since 2004 still means that it's double 1950s levels.

Given that the UK experienced a population surge around the time of the per-head decrease and it's likely that recent arrivals to the UK drink less alcohol on average, the article provides no strong evidence that individuals with long term exposure to UK drinking culture are reducing their alcohol consumption.

In other words, the compelling info in that article is the 2x per head increase in alcohol consumption since the 1950s.

There's not really any comfort to be found in that article from the differences in alcohol consumption by age group. The article suggests that the differences are generational "habits" and "attitudes". If you replace "Age" with "Length of exposure to UK alcohol advertising", you'd perhaps draw a different conclusion.

OP you are definitely not being unreasonable. Rant away. If anyone has any doubt that alcohol use is promoted constantly in this culture, just count up the number of times alcohol is mentioned on each episode of Escape to the Country.

"There certainly wasn’t a culture where people drank at home like this when I was growing up"

When was this? Complete bars with bar stools, counter, and myriad bottles were quite the home decoration staple back in 1970s when I was growing up

Bars at home were around way before the 70s!

Though, I must say one set of my grandparents had an alcohol free household. They were from a strictly religious family though where alcohol was forbidden. One of them ended up addicted to prescription drugs though! Definitely wouldn’t touch alcohol but had Valium and zopiclone coming out of her ears. Ah, my family! “Shit life syndrome@ I think.

Wasn’t ale safer than water for a long time? So everyone would have had to drink alcohol every day. Not saying it was good for them, but just wondering about the whole “drinking regularly / at home is a modern phenomenon” argument.

YANBU. While I don't think prohibition is right, and most people drink responsibly, the thing that bugs me the most is how it's still socially acceptable to advertise alcohol. It's fine to drink, but I don't think companies should be allowed to push their socially destructive product. Same with gambling and soft drinks. They advertise, and spend millions on advertising because it works. Don't let them. That would be a start.

The problem IMO is not alcohol in itself, but the fact that drinking to excess has become normal and expected. Some of my (middle aged professional) friends are quite open about the fact that they gear their lives outside work around drink. Up to a bottle of wine a night each is not unusual and they will decline invitations which means one half of the couple would need to drive.

I think this is the same trend which extends to over eating. Most people can now afford to buy more "treat" food and alcohol than is healthy, so it's easy to slip into bad habits, which then become the norm.

I agree OP. It seems more socially unacceptable to not drink!
A lot of my work is phone based and the number of customers/suppliers who say I can have a nice glass of wine at the end of the day...I always put them right and say no, I’ll have a cup of tea thanks.

I think people who are rude about people’s choice not to drink alcohol are being massively defensive. It’s like when someone says they want to give up meat or have started a new exercise regime, there’s always some wanker who rolls their eyes. Their problem, not yours.

"I agree OP. It seems more socially unacceptable to not drink! "

Drinking too much is also socially unacceptable though. It's the extremes.

"Wasn’t ale safer than water for a long time? So everyone would have had to drink alcohol every day."

I think it was very weak in those days, not like beer now.

Drinking too much is also socially unacceptable though. It's the extremes.

Well that makes no sense, does it?

Why would NOT drinking alcohol be considered EQUALLY UNACCEPTABLE as drinking to excess? That's just perfectly bizarre.

Battleax - because they're both extremes compared to the norm I suppose. I don't think not drinking is considered unacceptable really, but I know there's pressure on people to drink at social occasions so I suppose tee totallers can feel that their choice isn't a popular one.

socially unaccpetable not to drink, peer pressure, advertising?

maybe people should take responsibility for themselves instead of blaming everyone else. self indulgent weakness

give yourself a knock on the head to wake up and grow a spine

Yanbu op. Our society is geared to drinking and people are under immense pressure to do it to excess. You realise this if you ever try to give up, cut down or go for a night out and say you're not drinking.

Equating over eating to alcohol abuse is not even comparable. Alcoholism is a family disease, affecting people for the rest of their lives. It doesn't just kill 'some' people, it kills thousands and thousands - not only through its effects on the body but through its social impact - deaths on the roads, fights in pubs and clubs. The pressure it puts on our emergency services, including the police, is incomparable with obesity.

Of course alcohol is not the problem, and i don't want it banned. But op is absolutely spot on that normalising heavy drinking through our collectively lax attitude to it is to blame.

I think it was very weak in those days, not like beer now.

But even drinking weak shandy in place of water every day wouldn’t be great, I imagine! I don’t know how they got anything done tbh. All those historical figures we know so much about must have been permanently shitfaced!

This thread has got an awful lot of "but everyone else is doing it", "other people do other unhealthy stuff" type waffle ara. You might have hit on something there, calling it peer pressure.

Op I completely agree with you. It’s frightening the normalisation. My friend has a tough time at home (she doesn’t have a drink problem) and occasionally posts a picture of a glass of gin or wine in her hand with the jokey title ‘think it’s this time already’ and everyone piles on saying - definitely, lol, me too etc. Wouldn’t be the same if she showed herself snorting a line of coke or taking a Valium tablet but that’s essentially what she’s doing, medicating a tough time. The big pat on the back she gets for doing it is worrying.

I once asked a friend who’s husband is a GP (they enjoy a drink) if she thought it was ok to be pissed up when in charge of their dc, what if there was an emergency. She said her husband said ‘it’s fine, that’s what ambulances are for...’

I drink very occasionally - I don’t like the taste. I do like the edge it takes off my general anxiety. That’s why I rarely drink. I think it would be too easy to become reliant. I find it difficult on social occasions being a non-drinker because it’s far less acceptable to be the non-drinker than being the falling about pissed person which is BIZARRE if you think about it!

@araiwa

The op said she wanted to rant about the “normalisation of alcohol”, not the “normalisation of heavy drinking”. If she’d said the latter, my responses would have been completely different.

"it’s far less acceptable to be the non-drinker than being the falling about pissed person which is BIZARRE if you think about it!"

That's an exaggeration isn't it. Nobody will be talking about you saying your behaviour was shameful like they would about the person falling about. I think the worst you'd get is some people trying to change your mind because it's more fun when the people you're with are also drinking.

I agree with @Gwen there. The drunkest person at the wedding is always talked about unkindly. A girl from my school grew up to be a woman with a bit of a drink problem. I remember seeing her at a wedding and it was awful. I was embarrassed for her (and totally sober by choice at that wedding - nobody talked about me... I think).

OP I agree with you and I don't think you really see the whole picture until you live somewhere that doesn't have the same toxic relationship with alcohol that the UK has. I remember being really surprised that my neighbour who is in her 70s said that she likes going for a walk after dinner at night in the town centre (on nice summer nights!). Where my parents live in the UK, it is hell on earth at night in the town centre with drunk people throwing up left right and centre! Why should it be off-limits to sobre people?? In my twenties I worked for the probation service and a good 80% of our cases were for alcohol-related crimes such as drunk driving, assault under the influence etc. It's really baffling that it is so accepted.

My husband works in the emergency services - they refer to them as PFDs..... Pissed Fell Downs.

Account for a lot of their work..