Saturday, 17 May 2008
Binge drinking - Part 4
Kahless apparently was in good spirits last night enjoying a Bacardi or two.
But as the quotes below show if she drank 4 or more nips of Bacardi then according to her government she is drinking at dangerous levels.
The last quote is interesting and perhaps the Swedish government is the only one that is being a little bit realistic about what the term “Binge drinking” means and is not treating its constituents like they are morons as the Australian, UK & US governments do.
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A standard drink is defined as one that contains 10 grams of pure alcohol:
• One can (375mL) low-alcohol beer.
• One pot (285mL) regular beer.
• Three-quarters of a stubby (375mL) of regular beer.
• One glass of mixed drink (30mL spirits + mixer).
• One nip (30mL) of spirit or liqueur.
• 100mL (small glass) table wine.
• Three-quarters of a bottle (330mL) of alcoholic soda.
There is no internationally agreed definition of binge drinking, but in the UK, drinking surveys normally define binge drinkers as men consuming at least eight, and women at least six standard units of alcohol in a single day, that is, double the maximum recommended ‘safe limit’ for men and women respectively.
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One of the commonly used thresholds for binge drinking is five or more drinks for men and four or more for women per occasion. This is often reduced to ‘five or more drinks’, regardless of gender and obtains in many international reports and studies.
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Recommended limits for Guys
• No more than four standard drinks a day on average, with an occasional maximum of six standard drinks.
• One or two alcohol-free days a week.
Recommended limits for Girls
• No more than two standard drinks a day on average, with an occasional maximum of four standard drinks.
• One or two alcohol-free days a week
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The epidemiological research literature shows a broad range of definitions of binge drinking.
4+ drinks per occasion for women / 5+ drinks per occasion for men (US)
5+ drinks per occasion on at least one in last 30 days (US)
Blood alcohol concentration raised to 0.08g/ml or above (US/ NIAAA)
1/2 bottle of spirits or 2 bottles of wine on the same occasion (Sweden)
6+ bottles of beer per session (Finland)
8 drinks within the same day (Canada)
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Kenoath makes a very good point in his comment in part 3 of the binge drinking saga. He states:
“Seeing as though the health dept have hijacked the word "binge" for their purposes it makes sense to coin another phrase that suits.
Wasted Drinking perhaps? Why don't we all go and get Wasted tonight? Wasted Drinking sounds good. I can just imagine the headlines now. "Teenagers run amok and get wasted on several jugs of beer." "Wasted Drinking is becoming a problem in our society".
(End quote)
I agree with him that with these new definitions of the term “Binge drinking” it has now become a meaningless term. It is a bit like the term ADD. That used to be a realistic diagnostic psychological state. These days any unruly child is diagnosed as ADD and probably put on dexamphetamines. So what the term ADD originally meant was lost long ago.
So Kenoath’s suggestion of seeking a new term to mean what real binge drinking once was seems like a fruitful exercise. “Wasted” seems good. Lets see what Michael Hutchence has to say about it
Although Micheal did have excesses in other areas. Him and little demur Kylie Minogue used to really push the envelope it seems, with somewhat unfortunate consequences in the end!!
Graffiti
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Thursday, 15 May 2008
Binge drinking - part 3
Here is a picture of me binge drinking.
I am the third on the left. Looking right at the camera (of course!) with the black hair and ciggie and beer in hand. There are some really good friends in that picture, it gets me all a bit nostalgic.
This is a very Australian scene. It is in what is called a "Beer Garden". There are not many beer gardens left these days. In those days a hotel or "Pub" would have a grassed, garden area out the back. People could drink out there instead of inside the pub. On a Saturday afternoon in the summer time it was grand indeed to get out in the beer garden with your friends and do some solid binge drinking.
Notice all the 'jugs' on the table. You would buy a jug of beer and then people would pour the beer into their glass to drink. It was the sociable thing to do instead of buying just yourself a beer. There are two girls in this picture but it is male dominated and this would also be typical really. The girls tended to come more out at night time and would drink less than the males typically.
That bush behind is actually a grape vine. On occasion after some good old binge drinking had been done someone would decide to throw a grape at someone else. In a short space of time all out war would break out and a grape throwing fight would ensue with much vigor.
Really good days and great times indeed.
Graffiti
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Binge drinking - part 2
Roses says
When i want to get drunk or make the world bend my way for a bit, i just get a bottle of clear alcoholic liquid and drink it straight. Well sometimes i'd add an ice block to it so it's cooler than room temp. It tastes really bad and it feels really bad but it makes the world bend(1) for a bit. But then straight after for the next few hours i'd drink water and lots of it. Basically, hang overs are yucky. I just had to rehydrate my brain again so as to not get one - a hang over that is.
I consider that to be binge drinking. It's the intention, not the amount that is consumed.
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I think you make a good point Roses, about the intent rather than the volume and I have actually seen that written elsewhere. That binge drinking is defined when the intent of the person is to drink to get drunk.
This raises an interesting point in itself.
If a someone drinks to get drunk what is wrong with that? Of course this is an assumption that underlies the vast majority of government policy on drugs in society.
It is automatically assumed that if a person smokes marijuana then they are somehow ‘sick’. It is assumed that they have some psychological problem and are thus sent to counselling to correct that problem.
Similarly if some one drinks to get drunk then it is also assumed that they have some psychological problem.
There is no doubt that some people takes drugs to self medicate and so forth. Thus there is an ‘underlying’ problem with these people. The vast majority don’t and use drugs recreationally as they say.
So if a young woman drinks a bottle of wine to get drunk in the company of her friends she is defined as a binge drinker. Is that a problem? Does she have a problem?
Again the government and the AMA will tell her she has a problem. But one can argue that she does not. If she wants to get drunk and have a hang over, so be it. If she sees it as OK then again she will see mass media anti drug campaigns will have little effect with her.
Graffiti
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Wednesday, 14 May 2008
Binge drinking in Australia.
There was a good article in the West Australian newspaper today (May 14th) by Tony Rutherford. He was discussing lifestyle campaigns. He states, “No day passes without there being either a new health scare or a new measure announced to improve our health or make our lifestyle healthier”. Then he goes on to mention the threat to health now reported about the binge drinking of young women in Australia. Many are asking why has the binge drinking in this group increased?
Why do they do it?
Recently released papers by the Australian Psychological Society (APS) on substance use and the 2007 National Drug Strategy Household Survey repeatedly mention terms such as “High risk drinking” and “Binge drinking”.
I have surveyed these documents in order to find out actually what is high risk drinking and binge drinking. The first thing I discovered was that this is no easy task. To find the definitions of such terms is difficult. I surveyed these documents and could not find a definition for these terms. I even contacted one of the authors of the 2007 National Drug Strategy Household Survey to ask him. He referred me back to a particular place on the website where I could find it. So I went back and had another look and I could still not find it!!
Of course after this frustrating exercise one begins to wonder why they are so hard to find? Why aren’t the definitions clearly and openly displayed for all to see? It does make one wonder about such things. Do they have something to hide?
However I have persevered and I have actually found some information on what these terms actually mean.
For instance I found - “While these guidelines equivocate on the definition of binge drinking, they imply that binge drinking occurs at five drinks or more for men; three or more for women. This definition obtains in almost all subsequent Australian studies.“
So if a woman has three standard drinks in a night then she is binge drinking or drinking alcohol at a high risk level. So lets work out what that means.
In your average bottle of wine in Australia (750 ml) there are 8 standard drinks. So binge drinking is 3/8 of a bottle of your usual wine. That amounts to 3 small glasses of wine in one session.
OK. So the 20 year old woman is going on a night out with her girl friends. The usual girls night out and she sets out to do the right thing with her drinking. She gets to the night spots at about 8pm and is due to be home by about 1am. A common scenario I think you would agree.
So at 8pm she gets a small glass of wine and drinks it in about 15 minutes. She then waits one and a half hours before she gets another one. She may even have a soft drink or water in between. She buys her second small glass of wine at 10pm and drinks it as well. Two hours later at midnight she buys her third small glass of wine. And then she goes home.
She is then informed by the government and the Australian health authorities and the Australian Medical Association that last night she went binge drinking and drank alcohol at a high risk level.
What is she going to think about all that? Just because the government and the health authorities tell us what unhealthy drinking is, does not mean that it is. They are treating the general public like they are stupid and that they just expect to be believed. People will not just accept such information. They will go out and make their own observations.
That young woman will think that the advice she was given about binge drinking is absurd and a nonsense, which indeed it is. Drinking at that rate she would hardly even feel the effects of the alcohol. She certainly would not have a hang over the next day. She will think, how can I go on a drinking binge on a big girls night out and have very little if any hangover the next day?
She will conclude that she is being lied to. She will conclude that the dangers of binge drinking are grossly exaggerated, as indeed they are. No wonder so many young women are now binge drinking. The health department has just redefined what it is, so it now includes more young women.
Can you believe the Lard Information Council?
Of course this has been going on for decades and I would suggest that the public mostly accept that health warnings are by and large exaggerated and thus they are dismissed by most people.
This quote comes from the Editorial of the “Medical Journal of Australia”, 2007, by A. Jorm and D. Lubman.
“Mass media campaigns in other areas of health have typically had very little
effect, including when drug misuse prevention has been the goal. In many cases,
the weak effect has been due to campaigns being insufficient in intensity.“
Perhaps the real reason why such mass media campaigns have little impact is because the public see that they are being treated like they are stupid and thus they will go out and make their own observations. And usually they will decide that the dangers are exaggerated as mostly they are.
Graffiti
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Monday, 12 May 2008
Prohibition history in the making
Last week the Australian Psychological Society (APS) release its various position statements on substance use in Australia. Being a member of that organisation I got a copy posted to me. These position statements are serious business that the APS looks at very carefully and they put a lot of work into them. The areas are researched in great detail.
Here is a few paragraphs from these substantive documents:
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“In Australian history, laws regarding the legality or illegality of certain drugs have been politically driven, and had little to do with the level of use or possible harms that the substances themselves might cause. For example, the restriction of opium began in Queensland in 1897, with the Aboriginal Protection and Sale of
Opium Act (see Berkhout & Robinson, 1999). This Act made it unlawful for doctors, chemists and wholesale druggists to possess or supply opium, but only if it was intended for sale to Aboriginal peoples”. (Page 3)
“Importantly, prohibitionist and ‘drug war’ approaches have been shown,
historically, to have little impact on levels of substance use, and even less impact on the level of harm associated with substance use. The small gains that law and order campaigns and prohibition approaches have achieved have not been lasting (Lang, 2004). While effective prohibitions have resulted in temporary decreases in the use of targeted substances, other consequences of prohibition have negated this impact. These other consequences include: supply sources finding other destinations for their trade; supply sources eventually developing new supply routes into the original destination; and other substances filling the gap in supply.
Consequently, little reduction is achieved in the level of overall usage. Increased
money spent on supply reduction, through criminal justice and customs, has generally paralleled increased, rather than decreased, consumption of an ever- greater variety of substances, both licit and illicit. This does not mean that these approaches do not have their place, but rather that they cannot be the sole basis of substance use regulation”. (Page 4)
(End quote)
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Holley Molley
This as I said is from the APS, one of the peak bodies in Australia charged with guiding government on the psychological health of all Australian’s.
Back on October 27th, 2007 I wrote a post with this
The West Australian newspaper reported it today. This is extraordinary news!!! Fitzroy Crossing, a very remote town in northern Australia has a very bad history of alcoholism and domestic violence particularly amongst its aboriginal inhabitants. News laws, only a few months old now only allow for the sale of low strength beer in this very isolated town. Carl O’Callaghan reports that in the past few months there has been a 30 percent drop in domestic violence and many families and children have been able to enjoy a full nights sleep for the first time in years. This is due to the alcohol prohibition.
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Oh well. Either Fitzroy Crossing is going to end up worse off than it was before the prohibition was commenced or it will be an extraordinary social achievement in the entire history of Australia. I wonder which one it will be?
Graffiti
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