Veronica Callanan

I have yet to meet anyone who counts there alcohol units, have you?

I mean, does anyone go out on a Friday night and think; “well I had 4 units on Wednesday and Monday so I can only have 4 tonight and the other 2 tomorrow lunchtime”.

Nobody does this.

The government drinking guidelines are that men can drink up to 21 units per week and women can drink 14 units per week, by the way these aren’t safe drinking levels (as there is no such thing) but low-risk drinking levels. These units need to spread over the week (not taken in one go) with at least 2 alcohol free days.

It was in the news today that alcohol manufacturers will start labelling bottles with how many units are in each bottle to help drinkers regulate how much they consume.

Don’t get me wrong anything that drinks manufacturers are willing to do to address our nations drink problem is a good thing, however there’s something here that doesn’t quiet add up. Alcohol is a mood and mind altering substance people don’t drink it because they like the taste (generally speaking who actually liked the taste when they first tasted alcohol?) we drink it primarily for the effects. And the effects are that they alter your perception slightly, loosen you up and make you feel differently so there is something bizarre about expecting people who drink this mood and mind altering substance to be able to regulate the amount they take in.

It changes how you feel, so before you drink it you may feel you only want two glasses of wine but after having those two glasses its not unlikely that you feel differently and may feel that another 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 glasses are a good idea.

It’s kind of like asking 5 year olds to regulate their candy intake all by themselves.

There’s something about alcohol that makes you want more of it no matter what your intentions were. I don’t really see how labelling bottles differently is going to change that, after all there are big labels on cigarette packets that scream “SMOKING KILLS” and thousands of people still die of smoking related illnesses every year. Well done to the drinks industry that they are doing something but they are going to have to go much further than that and take responsibility for the drinking culture they helped create. This is what needs to change.

There is a lot of money at stake here, the drinks industry is booming and the more alcohol that is sold the more taxes the government can rake in…………………is it any wonder that no one wants to regulate our alcohol intake too much?

I would be interested in your comments on this issue.

There was an article in these months Red Magazine that I can’t let go by without commenting on.

I read it with complete disbelief; it was tucked away in the magazine, no big deal, a commentary piece by a journalist on a subject many readers could relate to.

Drinking, getting drunk, being hung-over.

What’s the problem?

It wasn’t that what shocked me, it was the complete normalization (and acceptance) of the abnormal.

The denial of the author, (editor and possibly readers) that they were innocently writing about something as harmless and irrelevant as say; adult acne or bloating, or ‘shock’ the effects of too much chocolate cake was staggering.

‘The curse of the 48-hour hangover’ like this is some niggling little quirk that one must accept as one increase’s in years.

The author describes sending out emails to friends saying she’ll be off their radar for a couple of days because she’s going out drinking that night and excepts to be hung-over for at least 2 days after?

Hel-lo?

She also describes her younger years where a consistent diet of alcohol and cigarettes (spritzers for lunch, shots and whiskey for tea) was normal and gleefully capitalised on (one bar considered her such a lush a cocktail was named after her).

It’s not her drinking I object to it’s the complete load of B*****ks she’s implying in her article.

This isn’t normal behaviour, this is serious and dangerous alcohol abuse (don’t ask me to quote statistics but I will if you insist) paraded out as a life style challenge.

The article goes on to mention how she and other women try to cope with; anxiety, depression, paranoia which result after their use of alcohol.

There is nothing normal or ok the behaviour this article is describing. It is colluding with the mass denial and deception this country is in around its alcohol use.

For those of us who have a problem with drinking and for those of us who know someone who has a problem drinking but who isn’t admitting it, we are all taking part in some kind of mass deception.

If I’ve learnt anything in my 5 years as therapist then its people doesn’t always present their truth on the outside, it is often hidden inside of them. Often their insides and outside don’t match.

The deception is our relationship with alcohol and how we justify it.

The deception is our devotion to the effects of alcohol and what we are prepared to loose, compromise or lie about in order to get it.

The deception is we are all colluding with each other and drinking abnormally and dangerously whilst calling it something else. (Exactly what this article did).

The deception is we prefer the manufactured feeling it creates because we’ve forgotten how to create feelings we crave organically.

So we have normalised abnormal drinking.

Alcohol abuse is the purpose of their business.

I’m at huge risk here of sounding like a pious, reformed drinker who believes any form of fun with alcohol is sinful and devious and should be outlawed at once for the sake of our souls or something.

Forgive me if I do. Because that isn’t my intention and there is nothing wrong with alcohol in moderation.

But sometimes I feel like the little boy who stood in line to watch the emperor parade his finest robes to his people that had been specially made by two con-merchants (drinks industry, politicians?) who spin the message that the cloth is so special, so fine that only really clever people can see it, to the stupid it is invisible. Of course no one dare admit they can’t see anything because they don’t want to appear stupid or different to other people, so they all lie and exclaim how fine the robes are. So when the emperor is marching in these new robes he is actually naked but nobody dares tell him.

Except one little boy who points and says ‘but his not wearing any clothes’.

So I’m hear pointing saying you/we have a huge alcohol problem that everyone is pretending is ok and is normalised to such an extent that no one can see how naked we are.

I was coming back from London and picked up the Evening Standard to read on the train, I came across an article about Meg Matthew (formally married to Noel Gallagher from Oasis); she was talking about her new wallpaper line and her life in recovery. Apparently last year after a trip to Ibiza she realised she had a problem and checked herself into rehab to get help. It was interesting reading her story because in many ways she’s had such an amazing life, rock and roll lifestyle, parties, famous friends, rich, successful, pretty, she basically had the best this world had to offer and she still wasn’t happy.

She spoke of her dissatisfaction and unhappiness, in particular just not feeling ‘good enough’, although she says she doesn’t regret it most of it she says she’s lucky to have a second chance at life.

Whenever I read of a celebrity who is getting sober I relate so much to what they’re describing. My life was as opposite to Meg’s as it’s possible to get, there was absolutely no glamour and no rock stars to speak off. So that part I don’t relate to in fact I used to envy. Yet here is a woman who supposedly ‘had it all’ and was still not happy, still felt dissatisfied and not good enough which is exactly how I felt.

It seems that it doesn’t matter what you have on the outside, if you feel empty on the inside then nothing can change that, all the money and glamour in the world just highlight the incongruence of your ‘insides and outsides’ not matching, and just how painful that is.

I remember feeling worthless, no confidence, unattractive and my friends told how attractive I was, how any guy would be lucky to have me (like Meg I couldn’t get a date for love nor money, and had resigned myself to singleness). I knew they meant it and weren’t just being nice as they were genuinely shocked that I could feel that way about myself. But it didn’t matter that they were incredulous and my lack of self belief, it didn’t matter how many people told me how great I was, or pretty etc, I didn’t feel it myself, I didn’t feel good enough and there’s something about believing that about yourself that makes it manifest itself in your reality.

Because I felt and thought badly about myself, I became that person. We are what we think we are.

No wonder we use alcohol to numb that.

There just isn’t a day that goes by when there isn’t another story on all the awful things drinking can do. It’s a wonder the pubs can get any trade at all its so dastardly bad for everyone. I don’t know about anyone else but I have an amazing ability to ignore this kind of information as I think it doesn’t apply to me. During the worst of my drinking I was always getting different pills from the doctor, for my various ’symptoms’, depression, anxiety, paranoia etc, of course I couldn’t make the links that the massive amount of mood and mind altering substances I consumed could have anything to do with these deeply unpleasant feelings. So when I was checking out the side effects of said pills there was always a big warning, something to do with not mixing them with alcohol or driving heavy vehicles.

Of course the warnings weren’t referring to me they were referring to other people. People who drank too much.

I rationalized that it couldn’t make that much difference, the risks weren’t very high, they probably didn’t mean it, they were just be over cautious.

Now I’ve ‘woken up’ I hope to God I stopped in time, even now I worry from time to time the long term damage I may have caused myself through alcohol and drug abuse. Now I have been ‘restored to sanity’ I don’t even drink coffee because caffeine isn’t good for you. It’s funny though when drinking all the risks in the world wouldn’t have stopped me drinking, potential breast cancer, heart disease, mental health problems, rape, that was stuff that happened to there people. Drinking took priority over all of these potential hazards.

That was stuff that happened to other people, not me right?

Asda has taken the lead on clamping down on underage drinking by refusing to let anyone buy alcohol who looks under 18 and doesn’t have ID. I’m not going to go into the controversy of ID cards, as I don’t have a strong opinion either way on this. I do however think that retailers have to take responsibility for who they serve alcohol. With so many young people drinking we, as a society have to do something about this so it can only be a good thing that Asda are being responsible in this manner.

Unfortunately it is only a small part of the solution; anyone who’s been a teenager can remember how easy it is to get hold of alcohol, either from their parent’s drinks cabinet or getting an older friend to buy it. I was getting served from the age of 13, with make up I looked old enough and nobody seemed to bother IDing then. Ultimately making alcohol hard to get will make it more attractive to young people, especially if grown ups are still acting irresponsibly with alcohol.

Drinking and getting as drunk as possible seems to be a right of passage for most young people these days, when I was a teenager it made me feel confident, glamorous and sophisticated all the things I felt I wasn’t, of course there is nothing remotely glamorous about a 15 year old collapsed outside of a pub with a bucket of water being thrown over her lying in her own vomit as was the case with me.

Twenty years on you visit any high street on a Friday night and this would not be an uncommon sight, how terribly sad that we believe we’re having a good time, are we deluding ourselves?  I look back at my own drinking and can see it was all a sham, a big lie, I wasn’t having a good time I was just doing what everyone else was doing.

Not selling alcohol to under 18’s is a start, but we are going to have to go a lot further than that.