alcohol
18 Apr 2008
Bingeing Youths are not the Issue
As Nick D'Arcy pays the highest price for a drunken night out, Jeremy Bass shares some brutal truths on the search for a lasting solution to alcoholism
I'm thinking many years back now. It's my post-HSC muck-up day, and the Year 12 class of my respectable, middle-class State high school has taken over Sydney's Warriewood beach. There's a couple of hundred of us, and we're armed with enough alcohol and weed, just, for Hunter S Thompson's breakfast.By dawn, the scene like Hieronymous Bosch's take on Dunkirk. The beach is littered with bodies. Most lay still, some twitch occasionally, or roll over to throw up their last on their towel, the person next to them, or on the sand, much of which is now soaked in a sticky mix of booze and bile.
A young man edges out of the toilet block. Coming to a halt, he leans against the brick wall in an effort to stabilise his wobbly boots. But no, his knees give way and he crumples, bottle in hand, like Robert Capa's falling soldier, rolling down the grassy verge and over the low retaining wall with a fleshy splat on to the rough tarmac of the car park. The bottle flies from his hand and smashes somewhere nearby. There he stays, and no one cares because no one's sober enough to.
Zoom out a bit. See a solitary figure sitting up on the south-end headland, removed from the gross vulgarity of all below. Ask him what his thoughts are and you'll have to inject him with a special serum to get the truth - which is that he's feeling utterly disconnected from all that humanity on the beach, who've spent the night having so much fun, even if they are paying the price now. And while he has a bottle of something with him, from which he sips steadily, he's not particularly drunk. He imbibes evenly, just enough to take the edge off.
Most of those bodies on the beach came to, hosed themselves down, collected their HSC and sallied forth into life. An education, a trade, a job. Love. Career. Marriage. Loss. Mortgage stress. Children. Changes in direction. Renovation. Acceleration. Deceleration. Fluctuation on an upward curve. Along the way, as their core solidified into an identity and a sense of place in the world, alcohol lost its importance. By the time many were in their thirties, anything more than a glass or two was but a memory. Pot, too, fades into history for most of us as we ripen.
Of course, no such group of a couple of hundred kids escapes untouched by the mortal scythe. Several of that crowd went by way of road accident. A couple were taken by cancer and the like. Someone's supercool boyfriend from another school went to Bangkok for an affordable repair job on his heroin-ravaged teeth but rediscovered affordable heroin and came home in the hold of a 747.
Having completed the exercise in bewilderment that was fitting in at school, our loner descended from the headland, got on the bus home with the others and embarked on the seemingly insurmountable task of fitting in with the rest of humanity. To him, it was as if everyone else had some knack for living that somehow eluded him. It took its toll at school - you're weird, mate - and at home - God, you're so aimless.
In the absence of the real thing, he tried his best to emulate the knack. Sometimes he pulled it off. Mostly he just botched it - you're such a tryhard, mate... yeh bullshitter. For some such kids, the mere business of living in their own skin is intrinsically painful. It's a pain from which there's no escape. Wherever they go, they take themselves.
Until... they pick up a drink. Which was what he did, many times every day from the moment he left school, for a decade and a half. In the course of roughly 5200 days, you could count on one hand with fingers to spare the days on which he didn't end up with a skinful (there were a fair few such days before he left school, too). It was his reward for surviving the sensory assault of another day's life in a hostile universe. It lubricated celebration. It salved a grazed heart. It cured guts aches and flu, anger and panic attacks. When you're born a couple of drinks short of normal, a couple of drinks is what it takes to ease you into the way most people feel without a couple of drinks: normal. Okay. After that, every drink's a bonus, an entrée into the realms of the kick-arse supernormal.
This is why the whole 'drink responsibly' agenda is bunkum: because for that small percentage of the population, responsibility dissolves in the first drink. Most teenagers are 10 feet tall and bulletproof. This little lot, lubed up, are 30 feet tall and nukeproof. The guy on the headland happily drove drunk virtually every night of the week for more than a decade.
For those working on curbing teen drinking, this is where the real problem lies: with that limited number of people who seriously can't drink. They're the ones who find, normally in their teen years - when we're all at our most vulnerable to such promises - an instant solution to problems of identity, sexuality and the like. Crack a can of creativity. A magnum of personality in every glass.
Take our man on the headland. It's the ones like him who, decades later, clog our hospitals with pancreatitis and cirrhosis; our psych wards with all manner of psychoses and delusional behaviour and denial, and our post-psych wards with wet brains.
Here and there, one or two land on their backsides hard enough for their minds to crack open. They go through detox units and rehabs and to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and an even smaller subgroup of them walk free of the clutches of alcohol for any length of time. And then only subject to the right conspiracy of circumstance and intuition.
Because once they lose their impulse control in the face of a drink and slide into the territory of regular blackouts or hospitalisation, their chances of scrabbling back out are very, very slim indeed. A few lucky ones will rise to the challenge inherent in that statement. And they'll only succeed for as long as they remember there's no cure for what they've got, and that it's the first drink that does the damage.
Our man on the headland got lucky. But his luck will only last until the day he starts taking it for granted. No rolled gold guarantees there. Day at a time and all that. For him, there's no such thing as responsible drinking. There's no such thing as "one or two drinks". When you're in it, the pain of not being drunk will fuel that drive for the first drink. That's the one in which responsibility dissolves. Thereafter, something takes place in their central nervous system that drive them to the second, the third... I know all this, because that loner on the headland was me.
Rubbing teenage noses in reality will work for that huge majority in the way that preaching to the converted always does. In its own time. But that doesn't work on people who've discovered a way to make reality optional. For them, perhaps the only viable strategy is to make sure they don't kill themselves or anyone else and hope that one day they get a tap on the shoulder from forces far more powerful than any government.
Low-key loners might be campus massacres in the making or nothing more than short-term emos. Nick D'Arcy might be nothing more than a two-pot screamer. While they're discovering whether they're alcoholic or not, kids like him might kill themselves and others. Or they might simply get away with it and grow out of it.
But this serves only to extend the scope of the problem. Particularly for youngsters who've yet to accrue the necessary drinking experience to gauge their true reaction to the stuff and to process it into insight.
Australia's modern foundations are drenched in alcohol, just as America's are planted firmly in gunpowder. There are plenty of obvious parallels there. Probably with solutions to match, if only it were the problem we were really trying to fix, and with long term solutions.
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I was ready to write off D’Arcy’s fight as just a drunken brawl until I saw pictures of his alleged victim: that wasn’t just a fight it was a brutal bashing. Interesting that D’Arcy did not appear to be damaged in any way.
When I left school in the 60s muck-up was as innocent as a few water-balloons and similar things. No schoolies week, no alcohol - I never went into a pub until I was 19. My friends and I didn’t have time for bingeing with school cadets, compulsory sport (after school and Saturdays), surf club, CMF (or National Service and possibly Vietnam) in late teens etc.
When we did drink we usually had a meal out and the pubs closed at 10pm. Today teenagers don’t even go out until 9, 10 or 11 and they’re already pissed by then.
There is no real alcohol history for today’s youth to blame. The fault lies with the power of the alcohol industry and weak government.
Three things: seriously curtail pub & club hours, stop the sale of the sweet alcoholic drinks and ban advertising (alcohol should be treated in many ways the same as cigarettes).
Despite what the young generation believes (or is led to believe), today’s youth is better off than any before yet they seem less motivated, more self-destructive (I can’t believe the number of teenagers I see smoking, and drinking in public during the day). I don’t have all the answers but decreased access to alcohol has to be a start.
Yeah too many vomits in my youth. 12 months work in a pretty sophisticated grog shop too. Also silence about alcoholism in my family was very stupid in retrospect. How many other Australians get that I wonder.
So more focus on exposing all that to the better.
A few thoughts as per my incessant media analysis and blogging:
- the full adverts for grog, on some days more than 3 in one edition, of the Daily Telegraph tells you the culture in our nation. But not just, see full pagers in ‘superior’ SMH too;
- Rudd as PM is surely acting now in the top job to the death of his dad in a rare binge, in a demanding tough job as a dairy farmer. Quite right too. In other words the agenda is not going away on his watch;
- the fate of Nick D’Arcy today may not have been avoidable given the alleged facts, but the timing is almost certainly around the well worn big business/political management tactic known as ‘Taking out the trash’ of West Wing tv series fame, as evidenced here
http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1807005/john-coate…
That is the associated damaged brand due to an ex Olympian facing criminal charges all over the two Sydney daily press here in NSW, totally unrelated, which was an ideal time to get out any other dirty laundry - including controversy with D’Arcy. John Coates has always been so clever, but maybe a little too clever this time?
- the drinking culture of youth is surely the whole life experience of testing this newfound grown instrument of the adult body. Totally logical to test such a thing out to see what it’s limits are, and can do. So how best to do that without all the carnage and damage? Positive activities for such yoof are surely the answer. But mostly education about how wickedly deceptive alcohol is and absolutely no replacement for sound functioning emotional equipment which has to be grown and developed like any other skill. Booze is the biggest cop out from that challenging exercise, not least with the nerve wracking gender relations and sexuality at the young age.
I’m amazed that neither Nick d’Arcy nor Barry Hall are in jail. Assault, I thought, is an offence punishable by either a heavy fine or a jail term, depending on the severity (in d’Arcy’s case) and degree of unprovocation (in Hall’s case). Do the crime, you do the time. At least start the clock on suspension when the other guy is completely healed, in the view of his doctor. Or, in Hall’s case, when his wrist heals. Whichever is longest.
How did d’Arcy do that damage with just his fists ? Did he stomp on the other bloke’s face ?
They both remind me (especially Hall) of the biggest kid in school who also happened to be the biggest bully, and who made the lives of littler kids pure hell, and he could because his father was the headmaster. Both pure trash.
Fantastic article.
The realities of why people drink heavily is too often over looked and the focus is more on harsh penalties or misguided beliefs. As Jeremy pointed out, only a small group are problem drinkers as most people grow out of it. We seem to add these people into the mix of the more general problem of hooliganism.
You may have noticed that public statements about curbing "binge drinking" is usually associated with an event of violence or unruly behaviour. People involved in these situations are way past the point of sensible drinking. Putting health warning on containers or banning advertising is the last thing on their mind. It might please the politicians and the moralists but it is targeting the wrong people. Even the term "binge drinking" has been loaded to include "getting drunk" and has been successful in pushing their agenda onto the public. Drinking is part of the problem, the added fuel on an already burning fire. A fire needs to be attacked at the base, the core where the fire starts and burns hottest. The government deserves praise for acknowledging that alcohol is a dangerous, addictive drug but the problems that are magnified by drinking are where they should be targeting.
It’s too easy to target the sensational stories and public events the MSM feed on. Too often the MSM entice politicians into taking the easy path, the vote friendly social issues that get the readers columns buzzing. Researching and listening to experts is too slow and tedious for modern politics. Not blaming "binge drinking" is also bound to upset the religious right and moralists who will take every opportunity to push the government towards a drug and alcohol free Australia, even if it’s not the problem.
Bad parenting and more freedom for kids will in evidently lead to what we did when we were young. It’s just a few years earlier. I remember my father telling me he didn’t drink like my generation until his was 21. But it’s not just alcohol, it’s smoking, drugs, social events, sex, responsibility, education etc. Teenagers do everything a bit earlier every generation and this seems to be a pattern for the last 50-60 years. Of course we also expect them to be more realistic and responsible as we try to give them our wisdom at a younger age. If they are growing up earlier so will their indulgences.
Thank you so much Jeremy Bass for your honest article about alcoholism. We all forget way too soon that alcohol (especially alcohol-related illness) —whether it be Cirrhosis (like my uncle) or Alcohol-related Cancer (like my paternal grandfather) or mental illness (like my maternal grandfather and brother) or just plain meanness like my mother and father and many others — is a serious killer and destroyer of lives and families. All of us know or have heard of someone who gets drunk, violent and mean, including many men and women who are then violent towards their children or husbands or wives or friends.
However, alcohol is not just a problem for young people on the weekends. It is a serious social, cultural and Health problem that is taboo (like Mr Bass points out) in the same way that gun restriction is in the US.
My best friend died from an illness known as Necrotising Fasciitis (NF) in the medical world. Most of us know it as Flesh-eating bacteria. He died from this illness because he was an alcoholic. It is not surprising that the highest incidence per capita of NF in the entire world happens in Darwin AUSTRALIA and the highest proportion of people who get this disease are Aboriginal. This is of course not only because of the alcohol problem amongst Aboriginal communities —but the figures speak loudly.
The government spend lots of money on trying to get Australians to quit smoking. We all feel sorry for smokers who are now dying because they did not know that smoking causes Lung Cancer. We also know what effect alcohol has on the community but we claim stopping binge-drinking will solve the problem. Binge-drinking is not the problem. Alcohol is the problem. The solution is education and government leadership to stop this serious plague on our community.
That was a harrowing account of the chronic alcoholic, a person who can sometimes disappear among the others who also spend their late teens and early twenties hopelessly pissed. While the alcoholic needs early and intensive support, the others (who eventually grow out of it) are also squandering their youth, making poor decisions, irreversible mistakes, and losing wonderful opportunities to live, learn, love (properly) and develop. Even the simple exercise of adding up how many $200 nights you can’t remember as a younger person is grounds for reflection. I am now of the age where I am looking at the next generation going through the same waste that I did. You can’t tell them. It’s not a new problem, but it’s a terrible shame.
Cheers.
Riverman, Brisbane
THANK YOU JEREMY FOR BOTH YOUR COURAGE AND PERCEPTION. 39 YEARS IN FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY HAS, IF NOTHING ELSE, TAUGHT ME THAT WHILE SOME BINGEING TEENS AND YOUNG ADULTS FIND THEMSELVES FROM TIME TO TIME THAT IS USUALLY MINOR AND TRANSITORY. YOUR POINT IS WELL MADE-IT IS THE MARGINALIZED THAT PRESENT WITH THE LIKELIHOOD OF LONG TERM DIFFICULTIES-THE OTHERS USUALLY PASS ON TO A LIFE THAT DOES NOT INVOLVE ALCOHOL, DRUG USE TO EXCESS AND SUICIDE. HOPEFULLY THE POWERS THAT BE AND THOSE WHO BELEIVE THEY UNDERSTAND WHAT IS HAPPENING WILL READ, CONSIDER, AND PERHAPS ACT ON WHAT YOU HAVE WRITTEN.
WE ALL LIVE IN HOPE.
ALLEN FUGLER
Nick D’Arcy might be a two pot screamer… but i doubt it. It was reported he’d drunk 16 beers in 4 hours before he rearranged another person’s face.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23564122-421,00.html
I’m not sure what this says about his ability to grow out of his behaviour, but it suggests to me he’d drunk this much often enough in the past, to still be able to land a devastating assault under those alcoholic conditions…..
Great article, Jeremy, made very poignant by your description of the solitary figure on the headland. Many are drinking to avoid being marginalised, others drink because they feel they are.
As you point out binge drinking has its roots in the social context, and has little to do with the availability of grog. It has to do with young people feeling driven to make the ‘transitions’ to adulthood as quickly as they can, through sex,cars,grog to be seen as having "made it" (whatever "It" is)and being part of the ‘in’ group. With the resources available to the current generation they can go through all this so much quicker than even 10 years ago.
Those who don’t want to do it that way remain, derided, definitely on the outer - but it is only once young people step back from those compulsions, seeing them for what they are, that begin to grow up
Oh I reacted to you, like anyone with a couple of drinks under their belt will do. Then I realised, you’re right, but you’re also defining a singular experience. Fair enough. We don’t all walk the same line, path, whatever. Responsibility is a key. I’m not always so good at it, and I never would have written that three word gliph had you not owned up yourself. Anyone see a pattern here. Some of us are drug users, we’re not perfect 925 silver, thank you very much. We’re not all 18-21 either. I like your article, but I hope you don’t forget, like anything else, there are lots of us that slip through other peoples definitions. Yeah there’s quite a few, in my opinion at least. x.