Sinking in ‘river of denial’

The issue of alcohol in Ireland is ‘riven with hypocrisy and double standards of all kinds’ , the Pfizer/‘ rish Times Health Forum is told

IRELAND HAS a specific problem in its relationship with alcohol, the Pfizer/ Irish Times Health Forum at the Waterford Institute of Technology heard last week.

The effects of drinking on women, the low-cost sales of alcoholic beverages and whether alcohol was the cause or effect of numerous problems were also discussed.

Chaired by Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole, the topic under discussion at WIT was “Alcohol in Ireland”.

Mr O’Toole said Ireland seemed to have an ambivalent relationship with alcohol and although “we get very angry” when other nationalities characterise the Irish as being drunks, we also “encourage it”.

Prof Joe Barry, chairman of population health medicine at the department of public health and primary care in Trinity College Dublin, said Ireland had a specific problem with alcohol.

“If we had the drinking World Cup, we certainly wouldn’t be knocked out in the qualifiers,” he said.

“We’re up there at the top of the world when it comes to our consumption of alcohol on a per capita level; people drink a lot in sessions.”

He said that Irish people start drinking at a very young age – on average 14 – which is younger than most other countries and that this causes harm later in life.

Prof Barry said a “big shift had occurred between the on-trade and the off-trade” and that “supermarkets have behaved disgracefully”.

Padraig Cribben, chief executive of the Vintners’ Federation of Ireland (VFI), said the abolition of the Groceries Order some years ago – therefore once again allowing below-cost selling – meant that “you can now buy alcohol cheaper than you can buy water”.

He said: “We now have a retail sector that is bumping up the price of staple products to compensate for the fact that they’re selling alcohol below cost.”

Brian O’Connell, journalist and author of Wasted: A Sober Journey through Drunken Ireland , said he was “not anti-alcohol” or against pubs, but added: “The manner in which alcohol is being sold in off-premises, supermarkets or garage forecourts is appalling.”

Citing a conversation with the director of the Rutland Centre in south Dublin last week, he said he learned that “chronic alcoholism” existed in an under-20 age group.

“That wasn’t there 15 years ago in Irish society.”

Prof Barry advised parents to talk to their children about alcohol, and said that a discussion between parents and their children “is better than not raising the issue at all”.

Mr O’Connell, who has recounted his issues with alcohol in the past, said the political will does not exist among our leaders to tackle alcoholism, compared with the head shops issue.

Mr Cribben believed that targeted interventions were the answer to tackling problems with alcohol. “Any industry responds to the market; the market dictates. I think we have a much bigger problem with substance misuse than we have with alcohol.”

He said that “our alcohol use is back to European norms; it’s back to what it was 10 years ago, probably due to economic factors”.

Rolande Anderson, alcohol and addiction counsellor and national alcohol project director for the Irish College of General Practitioners, asked about the Irish definition of binge drinking.

“There’s a lot of ignorance about what a standard drink is in Irish society because if you ask somebody, ‘How many drinks did they have?’, they’ll say, ‘Oh, we had a bottle of wine’, and you say, ‘How many drinks is that?’ they will say, ‘Three or four’. There’s a lot more than that in a bottle of wine.”

He said that the “global” drinks message, which could be accessed by children on radio, is “enjoy alcohol sensibly” and that this “scattergun approach” is problematic.

“I wrote years ago that there is a river running down the centre of Ireland and it’s called ‘denial’,” he added, describing Ireland as having a “blind-eyed culture” with regard to alcohol.

The European standard of binge drinking (about five drinks) sounds so ridiculous to an Irish person and that is the issue, said Prof Barry.

Mr Cribben said alcohol should be separated from other substances, pointing out that alcohol was a legal product. “You need a licence to sell alcohol.”

Speaking from the floor, however, Martin Hayes said that “we actually separate alcohol from substance mis-use”, while alcohol is the “substance we absolutely have the most problems with”.

A link exists between alcohol and most substances, said Prof Barry. “Alcohol is a drug . . . the Government has accepted that it is a drug.”

Mr Anderson said advertising of alcohol should be banned, apart from possibly “in specialist publications and areas” and that he was “terribly concerned” about the blanket advertising of alcohol.

Local publican John Aylward, however, said that tobacco advertisement had been banned, but sales had since “gone through the roof”. “Education is the factor that I would be promoting strongly,” he said.

Some 70 people attended the forum, which is open to the public, the fourth of its kind of this year.

About half of those in attendance said they would prefer to see a total ban on the advertising of alcohol throughout the country.

Mr Anderson said people were often using alcohol with anti-depressants.

“At best, they’re negating the effect and, at worst, they’re making a perfect cocktail of a mess for themselves.”

Women were more susceptible to the effects of alcohol-related problems because of weight, proportionate body fat and so on, he said.

After drinking, many people were “crashing” into “zombie-like sleep” instead of getting restful sleep, the forum heard.

Prof Barry said that people who use heroin are very quiet; people who are drunk or who have maybe taken alcohol and coke or alcohol and head shop products, are very volatile.

Mr O’Toole closed the debate by saying that the issue of alcohol in Ireland was one “riven with hypocrisy and double standards of all kinds”, adding: “And I think that the river of denial is at full levels, constantly.”

However, he felt there was a connection with the “multi-dimensional” nature of the issue during the discussion.

Source: Ciaran Murphy, The Irish Times, 06/07/2010