Young people are waiting longer to start drinking and they’re drinking less - or, not at all. Photo / Mark McKeown
Alcohol remains the “acceptable” drug of choice in New Zealand - it’s our most frequently used substance.
It’s also our most harmful. A 2023 study found that alcohol is the most harmful drug in Aotearoa, followed by methamphetamine.
While other drugs and substances are penalised and demonised, rightly or wrongly, depending on your opinion, alcohol is everywhere.
Getting alcohol became as easy as buying groceries in 1989 when wine arrived in supermarkets. Ten years later, beer was also on the shelves and the legal purchase age was lowered to 18.
Despite the pervasiveness of alcohol in New Zealand, youth drinking has been in long-term decline. Young people are waiting longer to start drinking and they’re drinking less - or, not at all.
Jack Dowle stopped drinking alcohol eight months ago after a particularly big night out.
“I got carried out of a party on all fours, and I thought, ‘I’ve had my fun’.
“So then I woke up the next morning and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not drinking. Never again’.”
Because his parents don’t drink, it didn’t feel like a big deal to quit.
“I feel like it was just a long list of bad decisions over my life that all involved alcohol... I thought: ‘There is one common theme here’.”
As a university student, there was a culturally ingrained “expectation” to drink alcohol, but not necessarily from his peers.
“You feel the vibe of like, ‘well, everyone else is drinking, I should too’.”
But Dowle said people his age don’t seem to care when he tells them he doesn’t drink anymore; the surprise comes from people middle-aged and older.
“There is just a lot of people [my age] who have stopped. My flatmate just stopped, and then our other flatmate [quit]...
“It’s just a general feeling for people our age, that it’s not something necessary, and also, the cost of living is crazy, and no one can afford it.”
As a student living in Auckland, the cost of rent and transport cuts into any possible budget for alcohol - especially at bars and pubs.
“The last thing was the realisation that [going to] town is shit, I have no money, and I’m sad all the time.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a night when I came home from town and was like, ‘I need to do that again’.”
Studying neuroscience also changed Dowle’s perspective on alcohol, as he learned more about the impacts of alcohol on the brain and on mental health.
“I think that the reason that studying neuroscience helped was more for my mental health.
“Rather than stopping drinking... I kind of slowed down on my drinking, because I found out how bad it is, and then once I was kind of in a good head space, I was like, ‘Oh, I actually don’t need alcohol at all’.”
Quitting alcohol has had a major impact on his life.
“Everything has changed, and it sounds like I’m trying to convince everyone else not to drink, but I’m not.
“My study is better, my sleep is better, I eat better because I don’t have the momentum of, ‘Oh well, I had a big night last night, I might as well just have McDonald’s this morning’, and my bank account’s way better.
“I can pay for things I enjoy rather than pay for things that I’m expected to do just because everyone else is drinking.”
The realisation that he doesn’t “have to have a drink” is a nice one to have, Dowle said.
If he’s in a social situation and offered a drink, he just opts for a Diet Coke instead.
“If it’s just a stranger, I’ll usually say I’m just driving because I don’t really need to have the conversation about why I stopped and how long I’ve stopped.”
Hannah learned at a young age that alcohol helped dull feelings of social awkwardness.
After being exposed to alcohol at school parties and family functions, she began drinking sporadically when home alone from the age of 13.
“I learned how incredible it can be to eliminate social anxiety and then it transitioned into a real problem when my mind told me, you can feel this good any time you want.
“Alcohol is so available, so why not just drink on your own? And that was something that I did a lot of.”
She said she always had a retort for why she drank so much, or why she couldn’t stop drinking.
“People had suggested to me that I had a drinking problem, but I didn’t fully believe them.”
Hannah has now been sober for 10 months but says before her sobriety, she had been trying to change her relationship with alcohol for a while.
“Last year, it had been a massive goal of mine to stop drinking for a month, and I couldn’t get it.”
She told herself she would stop drinking at certain milestones, such as finishing university, getting a new job, and ending a stressful project.
“The truth is I would drink no matter what and whatever circumstance was around me was just my excuse at the time.”
Earlier this year, after a “massive bender,” Hannah woke up “not in a good way.”
“I realized I haven’t gone a day without drinking in a really long time.
“I reached out for help because I was scared that I was now at a point where I had no control over it.”
Hannah opened up with her mum, who helped her sign up for a 12-step programme for people with alcohol issues.
“I just cried the whole day because I thought my life was ending.”
The first week of sobriety was “incredibly hard” and Hannah experienced physical withdrawal symptoms alongside feeling “numb.” After the first month, she physically began to feel better, but mentally she felt worse.
“Something that someone’s told me is you know you’re an alcoholic if you stop drinking immediately, and your head gets worse because every negative emotion that you’ve used alcohol to suppress comes back.”
While joining a support programme has helped her feel less alone, Hannah said some of her friendships were lost as a result of her sobriety.
“Some friendships that have dropped off, that’s partly because this thing that we did together was sort of our glue.”
Removing alcohol from her life also impacted Hannah’s sense of self.
“I honestly thought I was a really confident person, and that has been wiped away by not drinking.
“Some people have wondered when I will go back to my old self, and they’re saying, ‘You don’t have to drink, but why don’t we see you out more?’
“I want to go and do fun things, but my head just tells me, no one wants you here even though people do and I just feel so out of place.”
Hannah has found other ways to release stress other than drinking, particularly exercising and meditating - alongside caffeine and nicotine.
While it hasn’t been an easy journey, Hannah said stopping drinking had helped “dramatically” with her self-esteem.
“You get away from [alcohol] and you realise, ‘hey, I’m not all of those [negative] things, I can be a good friend and look after people and be all of those things I could never be when I was drinking'.”
Charlotte, who asked for her last name not to be used, stopped drinking in July.
“I properly stopped drinking when I went on antidepressants because they tell you not to drink.
“I didn’t really drink often anyway, maybe, like once every couple of weeks.
“I became kind of selective in the environment and who I drank around because I’d get really bad anxiety.”
Charlotte would suffer from “hangxiety” in the days after a night of drinking, ruminating over what she’d said and done.
“I would just wake up the next morning just really anxious, and I’d get heart palpitations.
“I’d overthink the night before and the conversations I’d had with people.”
Gossiping about the drunken events of the night wasn’t as fun for Charlotte as it seemed to be for her friends at the time.
“I didn’t have a good time as I drank, and it wasn’t with the right people.
“Even if something bad didn’t necessarily happen, the next day was always unpleasant.”
After finding some different friends who drank less, Charlotte decided she didn’t want to drink anymore.
“I don’t need the alcohol to have a good time.
“I’d just become anxious and not have any fun... why would I put myself through that?”
Increasingly she has found that others her age are reducing the amount they drink, or quitting altogether.
“I actually find it really interesting how the perspective is changing, especially with a lot of my friends, that everyone’s feeling the same way. It’s like they don’t need to drink.”
*Not her real name.
Jaime Lyth is a multimedia journalist for the New Zealand Herald, focusing on crime and breaking news. Lyth began working under the NZ Herald masthead in 2021 as a reporter for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei.
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