What we celebrate as 'part of what we are' is also what leads to unspeakable misery, writes JOHN WATERS
YESTERDAY I was struck by a couple of reports in this newspaper that seemed in conflict over their respective treatments of the subject of alcohol. One told us about the impending reduction of the drink-driving limit from 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood to a new limit of 50 milligrams. The other was a report on the 250th anniversary of Guinness.
In their presentation and mutually exclusive approaches, the two reports seemed to suggest that two different liquids were involved. One referred to a dangerous substance, capable of causing death and mayhem. It told, for example, of a study of Garda statistics over the past two years revealing 36 fatalities in traffic incidents where drivers had alcohol levels between 50 and 80 milligrams.
The other report suggested a benign beverage which spreads happiness and good cheer wherever it is poured. Elsewhere in the same edition, an editorial urged us to “raise a glass to Arthur”.
Alcoholic beverages provoke in the Irish personality a form of sentimentality not directed at any other liquids. Water is taken for granted. Tea is patronised. Coffee, increasingly, is sneered at as an emblem of Celtic Tiger excess. But a pint of plain, it seems, is still “your only man”.
Yet, nobody doubts that our culture of alcohol consumption is unhealthy and damaging. Our rates of binge drinking – defined as drinking with the primary purpose of achieving intoxication – are several times higher than in most other countries, with the notable exception of our nearest neighbour.
Half of Irish men and one-fifth of Irish women binge at least once a week. More than 100 Irish people die every month as a direct result of alcohol. A few deaths from swine flu result in a national mobilisation but alcohol-related mortality attracts hardly a passing thought.
Guinness is not a squash or a soda – it is a liquid drug, a mind-altering concoction.
Although some perverse souls insist otherwise, it doesn’t even have a pleasant taste. The whole point of downing a pint is to do something to your mind – to reduce anxiety, to increase self-esteem, to shake off inhibitions and, in extreme (but in Ireland not unusual) cases, to achieve a temporary annihilation of the consciousness.
A pint of Guinness has a certain iconic appearance, but really it amounts to a container of fluid exhibiting pharmacological properties calculated to relax, sedate, disinhibit or stimulate.
Why should a culture choose to celebrate these objectives?
Why do we take for granted that it is a good thing that so many of us use alcohol to loosen ourselves up and become more convivial, that drink liberates our vocal cords and enables us to talk more? Why should it be necessary to employ a drug for these purposes?
Should our culture not be interested in enabling people to seek relaxation and interaction in a natural way?
The same mind-altering process that relaxes and disinhibits is also the one that impairs judgment, destroys co-ordination, sparks explosive oversensitivity, induces violent rages and sometimes leads people to arrive at such a dismal view of their existences that they immediately destroy themselves.
The same phenomenon that we celebrate as “part of what we are” is also what leads to unspeakable misery, madness and death.
Alcohol has many consequences the drinks companies prefer us not to think about: death, disease, violence, grief, pain, mental incapacitation. Our society is dishonest about the misery inflicted in our alcoholic culture on innocent third parties – for example, the spouses and children of people who drink too much. It is ignorant about the long-term damage to be traced in the emotional, psychological and social underdevelopment of people whose interior lives become frozen because of their use of alcohol as a crutch to get them through life. Sentimental celebrations of alcoholic beverages are in Ireland about as appropriate as Colombia deciding to hold a National Cocaine Day.
Our grossly unhealthy drink culture carries messages to our children that the use of a mind-altering agent is not merely acceptable but essential to their total enjoyment of living. This is what the advertising and sponsorship tells them, and also what our denial implicitly acquiesces in.
Our culture has also developed various stratagems to dispose of uncomfortable voices seeking to alert us to the abnormality of Irish drinking patterns.
We have to hand a barrelful of labels for such unwelcome interlocutors: “prohibitionist”, “killjoy”, “puritan”, “holy Joe”.
It’s obvious – isn’t it? – that nobody would question the way we use alcohol other than with a view to spoiling everyone’s fun.
Invariably, when the subject is raised, we default to the “rights” of the ordinary decent drinker, the guy who just “enjoys a drink”. Why must we always be reminded of the minority who abuse drink?
Answer: Because this minority is what defines the enormous Irish problem with drink, and because the problem embraces also the denials of those who mount strident pleas on behalf of the “ordinary drinker” as a means of drowning out the truth about these deadly liquids.