(The Nationalist, 25 February 2000)
The poet T. S. Eliot wrote that ‘human kind cannot bear very much reality’. (Burnt Norton, I.) Maybe that is why we close our eyes to problems we don’t wish to see. Take, for instance, the problem of teenage drinking in Ireland.
In a recent article in The Irish Times, Katherine Donnelly wrote that drunkenness among Irish adolescents was as follows: among boys, 7% of 11 year olds, 15% of 13 year olds and 42% of 15 year olds said they had been drunk twice or more; the corresponding figures for girls were 1%, 8% and 29%.
The European School Project on Alcohol and Drugs conducted in 1995 found that Irish, English and Danish children between 11 and 17 years of age drank more than their counterparts in 25 other European countries.
Frances O’Rourke, writing last year in The Irish Times, reported that by the age of 17, more than 70% of Irish teenagers are drinking on a regular basis, and a growing aspect of this is drinking in order to get drunk. The law on underage drinking is broken routinely, with few prosecutions.
Drinking, together with smoking, are seen by addiction counsellors as the “gateway drugs” which open the way to hard drugs.
The truth is, surely, that we live in an alcoholic society. We find it hard to celebrate and stay sober. Such celebrations sometimes end either in hospital or in a morgue as a result of a road accident caused by drinking over the limit. We express shock at the annual road toll of about 9 deaths per week but is the shock real or is it posturing, simply responding as expected? Is it not a fact that we tolerate and even approve of drunkenness when, for example, we tell stories about the “funny” things someone did when he or she was “stocious”, or when we press someone to drink more, or buy them a drink, even when it’s clear they’ve already had more than enough? There’s a mock macho image surrounding drinking which conceals a lack of moral courage on the part of the drinker and also on the part of those who are silent accomplices in encouraging over-drinking. Peer pressure works among adults no less than the young and it’s a dogmatic dictator.
Parents can help their teenage sons and daughters mostly by their example, but also by stating what their own position is on drinking, offering guidelines to help a young person to learn about his/her limits and also by listening to their children so that problems can be prevented.
If you want to start drinking, that’s your own business; if you want to stop, that’s the business of Alcoholics Anonymous and they are ready to help. A list of local contacts can be had by phoning (01) 453 8998. Maybe it’s time to give them a call.