If only I could truly describe the drinking I have seen. I have seen young women so drunk they are on the verge of unconsciousness, utterly unaware that half their clothing has fallen off them, leaving them naked and pathetically vulnerable. I have seen young men helplessly vomiting into gutters while their mates literally howled like wolves around them. Living near a pub as I have for many years, I have seen intoxication levels that are frankly mad – except for the fact that they are bog-standard common. Just another Australian night out with friends and family where if you don’t drink until you fall over you didn’t have a good night.
This is what we do, it’s what we do all the time, and it’s time to admit that it’s killing us.
This week, the Australian National Council on Drugs released figures on youth drinking that should be to our eternal shame. Figures that show a staggering one in eight deaths of young people can be attributed to alcohol; that nearly two-thirds of people under 29 surveyed said they drank specifically to get drunk; that half of all alcohol-related road injuries involve young people. And that 20 per cent of Australians now drink at levels that put them at risk of lifetime harm from injury or disease.
Note that the organisation releasing these distressing figures is the council on drugs. We simply refuse to acknowledge that alcohol is potentially as dangerous a drug as many others and demonstrably costs us more in health, monetary and social terms. We’ve all heard the hypocrisy line from our argumentative teens: that drugs are outlawed while booze is freely available. Well, I reckon they’ve got a point.
Like many others, I’m close to complete capitulation over the entrenched and quite terrifying drinking behaviour that is not just a part of our culture, but must finally be admitted actually IS our culture.
And we are all a part of it. It took until a friend admitted she was an alcoholic and started to openly deal with it for me to realise just how my behaviour is part of the problem: when someone around you stops drinking you finally realise how much of an alcohol pusher you are. I caught myself again and again saying, “Oh, come on, have a drink” to friends and visitors, unable to let their demurral go by without … what? An argument from me? Why would I argue with someone who didn’t want to drink? A good question. I chose to change, and I hope I have now shrugged off the reflexive Australian gesture to want to pour booze down everyone’s necks.
John Herron, the former federal health minister and now chairman of the council, spoke with real exasperation about how we Australians simply cannot come together for anything without alcohol – in birth, death, celebration, commemoration, commiseration.
I felt defeated by my own complicity when I heard that. That’s me. Is it you, too? Do you ever sit down in celebration with friends, family and not have a drink? Are we that addicted?
It’s a dreadful environment in which to raise young people, and that, I believe, is the biggest challenge. When we make alcohol and its excessive use normal, then the battle to improve our health and ensure the safety of young people is over before it begins.
The Christmas season is about to begin: think about that amid all the tidings of comfort and joy.
Virginia Trioli is co-host of ABC News Breakfast on ABC1 and ABC News 24, 6-9am weekdays.
Follow Virginia on Twitter @latrioli
