Diana Wichtel: Another think about that drink

COMMENT

More worrying news from our now overflowing "The latest research is bad for you" file: a new study reveals that we are a nation of hopeless and unrepentant drunkards for whom alcohol is pretty much the central organising feature of life. I drink, therefore I am.

Yes, that means you. The Alcohol Advisory Council (Alac) has conducted a survey of drinking habits. "More than a million New Zealanders are binge drinkers!" announced a more than usually alarmed-looking Judy on One News. "More than 50 per cent of adults think it's acceptable to get drunk!" Yikes.

"Some say the findings are misleading," allowed Judy. Good, we thought, settling back for some thoughtful analysis of the shrieking headlines. Then we remembered that we were watching the network news. Analysis? Though they did talk to a young bloke in a pub: "Some people can have a dozen and be spewing," he pointed out. "I can have that and still know what I'm going on about." Take that, Alac.

Writer Joe Bennett weighed into the debate with all the subtlety of a force nine gale the next morning on Breakfast, roaring at Alison Mau that the whole point about drinking is to "shake off responsibility, shake off dull care" and working himself up to a thundering conclusion of Shakespearian proportions: "The cruelty of our human condition requires booze!"

He has a point, but I doubt his argument would go down very well at Alac.

Bennett was also rather scathing about the value of studies that reveal the shock news that people with more money buy more drinks. Or, as one headline interpreted the statistics: "Rich white men binge drink most". And, while it's good to see stereotypes of who's doing the most boozing undermined, this is hardly surprising.

What is bingeing, anyway? According to the study, it's five or more drinks in a session for those under 18 or seven or more for adults.

Hmmm. I took a trip to the Alcohol Healthwatch website, where they're calling for the legal blood alcohol limits for drivers to be lowered from 80mg to 50mg. Even at the 50mg limit, they say, "Australian recommendations state that a male can consume two standard drinks (10g) of alcohol in the first hour, and one per hour after that. Females can consume one drink per hour, from the first hour."

So in theory you could drink in a civilised manner over several hours on, say, Christmas Day and evening and still be under even a lowered drink driving limit. Yet you would be defined by this study as a binge drinker.

You couldn't help but wonder if Alac's study might be a drink or two short of a binge. In search of more answers I checked out the executive summary at the Alac website.

Alac's research included interviewing 1783 people by telephone last year. Did the researchers check whether any of those people were hopelessly and unrepentantly drunk at the time? If the study's terrifying conclusions are correct, statistically some of them probably were. They don't say.

And you do have to wonder about some of the questions asked and some of the conclusions reached. It seems 49 per cent of all people 12+ disagree with the statement: "It's never okay to get drunk". Conclusion: "New Zealand is a society in which many people are tolerant of drunkenness".

Hang on a minute. Being able to imagine a particular situation - as that "never" prompts you to do - where having a few too many is understandable, even okay, hardly counts as blanket tolerance for general drunkenness. It counts as being human.

We are also, the study finds, "a society in which many adults who currently drink don't appear to be concerned about their physical or mental well-being because of their drinking". This is based, in part, on the finding that 38 per cent of all drinkers 18+ disagreed with the statement: "I am concerned about the long-term effects of alcohol on my physical well-being". This has been read to indicate an idiotically blase attitude to the effects of alcohol on one's health.

But how many of that 38 per cent responded with such nonchalance because they feel reasonably confident that their drinking falls within the guidelines for safe drinking?

Alac says it doesn't want to stop people drinking, just make them think about it. Fair enough. There's plenty to think about, as anyone who watched Melanie Reid's 20/20 item on Dunedin's Scarfie booze culture will agree.

But there are dangers in pathologising huge numbers of drinkers as irresponsible bingers, especially on the basis of some of Alac's dodgier declarations. If the research was extrapolated out, went one press release, a whopping 50 per cent of New Zealanders "accepted drunkenness as socially acceptable". This figure seems to be based, in part, on the assumption that anyone who "binges" by Alac's definition is automatically a cheerleader for public drunkenness.

As the political polls constantly demonstrate, the answer you get depends to a significant extent on the way the question is framed. I suspect if the Alac study had said "Drunkenness is socially acceptable - agree or disagree", the figures would have been very different. But then they wouldn't have made nearly such sensational headlines.