Is it too late to tackle our drink problem?

10 April 2012

Alcohol is our favourite drug by far. I know few people who don't drink, but while most of us use it for enjoyment, an increasing number use it as a crutch. Our drug laws become a mire of contradiction when one considers that alcohol causes significantly more harm than illegal drugs like heroin and cannabis.

Now the figures have got truly frightening.

Experts have predicted that alcohol will cause 210,000 deaths during the next 20 years through illness, violence and accidents. This breaks down to 70,000 potentially avoidable deaths from liver disease and 140,000 from drink-related strokes, heart attacks, cancer, violence, suicides and accidents. Hospital admissions related to alcohol have doubled in the past eight years - there were 1.2 million last year that cost the NHS £2.7 billion. A recent Government report estimated that alcohol costs society between £17 billion and £22 billion a year through crime, sickness absence, and unemployment.

The irony is that, unlike other drugs that tend to attract low-income individuals, it is often Britain's wealthiest areas that are home to its most determined drinkers. It is Middle England, usually so well-cushioned from harsher realities, that is sitting on an alcohol time bomb set to explode some time soon with an epidemic of liver problems, heart disease and cancer.

Many different proposals have been put forward to solve our drinking problems - from minimum pricing and banning alcopops to 24-hour opening - with limited signs of success. But I think the problems start much further back, when we are teenagers.

I remember alcohol being pretty much forbidden until I got into the sixth form at school, where there was a bar. We would get as bladdered as possible on Saturday nights to show our maturity and impress the younger kids. It was the only chance in the week we got. For others, it was a big blow out on their 18th birthdays - when alcohol finally became legal and they could make up for all those lost years.

From my youth, social rituals around alcohol always involved bingeing, and it went from being taboo - secret drinking behind the bike sheds - to being a sign you had come of age. It is these patterns, laid down as teenagers, that I believe are the catalyst for the destructive way many of us treat alcohol now.

Research backs this up to an extent. Young drinkers who get through five or more drinks more than three times over two weeks are 19 times more likely to develop alcoholism than non-binge drinkers. It's to do with drinking for the sole purpose of getting drunk, which is what our early introduction to alcohol is usually all about.

Despite some researchers calling for an increase in the age at which we can start drinking to nearer 20, or even 25, I think introducing young teens to alcohol as a normal part of a meal - as happens on the Continent - and not just something to be used to get drunk on may change our embarrassingly immature approach to this drug. But I fear we are too late.

Twitter @DoctorChristian

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