Tony White

Two days ago I ran a training group and we had a grand old time. Lots of good laughing and lots of good learning. I know some of you trainees read this blog so I thought I would comment. One woman who is a very experienced teacher and educator presented on the stages of treatment which was interesting. But I was especially interested on how she presented it. She did it as a sort of group exercise. I am going to pinch that presentation style and use it my self!!

Amidst the various discussions one trainee asked how long had been my longest client and I said 14 years. I thought about it later and that was not actually true. There are two men who I have seen over a period of about 20 years. They have been less consistently seeing me than the woman but there has never been any very long breaks in that 20 year period.



I have seen another man for 11 years and that was some time ago now. A very paranoid man who just seemed to get on well with me. He stopped seeing me about 10 years ago. When christmas day arrived that year there was a knock on my front door at home. So I opened the door and he was standing there. He gave me a christmas card and a small gift. I had a brief chat with him and then he left. I thought about it for some time. Should I say anything about it to him as here was a paranoid ex-client appearing at the front door of my home. However I did not hear from him again so I left it. Then when the next christmas day arrived the same happened and has happened ever since. Some times he comes alone and sometimes he brings one of his sons. Each time he gives me a card, a small gift and we have a short chat. The rest of the year I hear nothing from him.

There was also a woman who I saw for about 7 or 8 years. For a significant period of that time she was seeing me three times a week - Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That is not an easy thing to do (for the therapist) for a number of years. What do you talk about when you see someone that regularly! But we managed and of course it was not the ‘talking’ that was important.



Another interesting development I have noticed in more recent times is my weblog. In pre-blog days a client would come for their one hour appointment and then wait a week for the next appointment. So there was a short contact with the therapist (me) and then a week long break of no contact. However, I know some of my clients read this blog as they tell me they do. This is providing a form of contact that was not possible in pre-blog days.

So the therapeutic relationship with me and some of my clients has been altered due to this weblog as it provides a form of contact. This has been particularly evident with clients who have a strong transference with me and in particular those clients with object constancy problems. That client with an insecure attachment style. This means the person never learnt that the primary attachment figure (originally mother and now it is me) was secure. So when the client moves away from the therapist it is like the therapist disappears and thus they can feel strong anxiety, anger and so forth. These clients can now watch this blog and see me do posts, make comments and so forth. So in one sense the primary attachment figure is “there” for them. So it provides a sense of security in this way. However the therapeutic relationship is changed by this blog and we will have to wait and see what are the long term effects of that change.


The outcome will be?

There was one client about a month ago who expressed some displeasure with me in his session. He stated that I write about my other clients on this blog but have never written about him. Why are they more special to me than he is he complained? So here is an instance of this weblog having an effect on the dynamics of the therapeutic relationship - sibling rivalry in action.


Expressing displeasure

Over time I find I am slowly doing more and more internet counselling and supervision. This is both directly and surreptitiously. Some of it is directly requested by the client or the trainee. In addition to this I know that it is highly likely that he will read this and he will know that it is him I am writing about. So by doing this I am sort of doing a piece of therapy right now. Or at least it will have an effect on our therapeutic relationship. As you can see a whole new area of study is evolving. The use of the weblog as a means of communicating with a client. Or the use of a weblog to do therapy and supervision.

Graffiti

Three generations ago some adolescents finished their schooling by age 12 or 13 and then went to work shortly after. They could then be married and starting a family anytime after age 16 and were maintaining themselves economically by age 18 or younger. Nowadays this is far less common.
In this day people turn adolescent around 11 (females) and 12 (males). Girls on average mature 2 years earlier than boys who do not catch up until the last years of adolescence. Adolescence can finish around 18 to 25 years of age, where they become economically and psychologically independent with a regular job and the establishment of a family of their own.

Once upon a time (30 to 40 years ago)



Nowadays



So why has this change occurred?. There seems to be a number of reasons for this.
* First, as a general rule the more educated a society is the longer adolescence will be. If one is receiving schooling then one is not working. If one is not working then one does not have economic independence which is a key feature in finishing adolescence - no longer being financially dependent on others, usually the parents.

Many in the western world do some form of post school education. This means, that if one studies full time they will not be in a position to earn a full income until they are about 22 to 24 years of age. To do this one would have essentially have been at full time ‘school’ from age 6 to age 24. No time to gain realistic financial independence and no time to have been out in the work force and dealing with life that did not involve full time education. Such a person at age 24 will be financially dependent and lack any significant life experience in the work force world. So for these people it could be argued that adolescence is not going to begin to end until the age of 24.
* Marriage is tending to occur later. One does not hear much about weddings occurring with 18 and 19 year olds as they did not so long ago. So in this way people do not have to be ‘grown up’ so early.
* Related to this is child birth occurring later and numbers of children is reducing. This allows people to be more irresponsible in this sense, all they have to do is look after self and not a child.



* As a society we tolerate this period called adolescence more so than in the past. In the city where I live every year there is a week or fortnight called ‘schoolies week’. This is where those who have just completed high school (17/18 year olds) go on vacation as soon as their last examinations end. On this vacation they drink too much alcohol, take drugs and engage in gratuitous sex. Whilst I am sure there are many who do not do such things, this is what is highlighted in the press year in and year out. In general it is tolerated by society and even viewed with amusement by some.
Not only do we as a society tolerate the adolescent but we go as far as to tolerate somewhat deviant and anti-social adolescent behaviour. We let them be this without trying to force them into being adults with the appropriate behaviour at an early age.



* As some societies becomes more affluent they do not need the group of ‘adolescents’ to be working so as to maintain a functioning society. Hence such societies are in a position to be come more educated, and governments like in Australia certainly have policies that promote a more educated society.
Another consequence of some societies becoming richer is that its focus changes. There is less attention on meeting the basic survival needs of food and shelter. This can result in more attention turning to the introspection of ourselves (more self actualising). One of these things can be more of a focus on psychology and human development. More time and money allows a society to do more navel gazing. So the humanities increase in influence and we have psychologists and others being more vocal and influencing thinking in society and in government policy making. So we become more understanding of the adolescent stage of development because it is being studied more and talked about more.
* Life span increases. Over that past 50 to 70 years the average life span has increased by about 20 years. So in this sense there is less of a need to hurry through the developmental stages. As people can now be adults for longer they can then proceed through adolescence at a slower rate.



So it would seem that changes like these in some societies over the past 50 years has resulted in the stage called adolescence becoming longer and longer. Not so much starting all that much earlier but taking much longer to complete.

Graffiti

On September 23rd, 2007 I wrote about my life script and stated:
“One of the ways to understand who you are and why you are, is to look at the heroes, characters or figures that you relate to or identify with. This can be movie stars, singers, dancers or just characters from film, TV or the media.
When I did this exercise a long time ago I instantly came up with 3 characters.
Snorky the elephant from the Banana Splits
Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh
Marvin the martian”
(end quote)



Then later on I mentioned my admiration at the world famous mime artist Marcel Marceau who recently passed away.

I noted that one common theme of all this is that none of them speak and possibly the depressive like qualities of Eeyore.

In recent times I have come across Oleg Popov. Here is Popov in action



Thank the lord for Wikipedia! They have this to say on this very fine artist:
“Oleg Konstantinovich Popov (Russian) is an extremely famous Russian clown and circus artist. Popov is also called the "Sunshine clown".

He was born on July 31, 1930 in Moscow as the son of a clock-maker. He has studied elements of acrobatia, juggling and other circus skills in his youth. In 1949 he finished the Russian circus school in Moscow and started his career in the Moscow Circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard. Six years later, he became the first clown from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to perform in the Western world. In 1969 he was honored with the title of the "People's Artist of the USSR". Popov's fame extended to Melbourne Australia where he was named King of Moomba (1971)”
(End quote)

Many years ago the Russian circus came to Australia and my mother took me to see it. I was absolutely captivated by Popov the clown and this is at the age of about 10 years. For many years I craved to be like Popov the clown and study at the Russian circus school in Moscow. I remember even at one stage, my want was so strong that my mother investigated how an Australian could go and study at clown school in Moscow. Alas it never came to be.

However here we have again another script figure who does not speak! Well they do not speak with words and yet they say so much.


Visual. No words, but says so much.



Like Marcel Marceau, Popov the clown is a performer. Maybe that is what a psychotherapist can be? I do know that I have some narcissistic qualities as I am sure they do as well. Perhaps this allows me to maintain the narcissistic gap that so many psychotherapists require?

Graffiti

In the previous post I mentioned that John Bowlby discovered this thing called human attachment. This begs the question - why is it there? Why does attachment exist in human relationships.

An attachment is a sense connection to another person. It is a merging of boundaries where one person’s identity and the other person’s identity are connected. The line or boundary between the two people is fused or unclear. When an attachment exists between two people they have a strong urge to seek each other out and to spend time with them. So why would this thing exist in the first place.


When one fall in love one looses a sense of boundary.



There are probably a number of answers to this question and I will look at it from an evolutionary perspective. Every society has the same problem. It has to create a structure by which a male and a female can get together and conceive a child. In my society this is most commonly done with either a marriage or a defacto relationship.

Every society then has another problem. It has to create a structure whereby that new born child can survive and grow into an adult so it can then also reproduce the species. In my society that is most commonly done by the nuclear family unit. A mother, a father and the children. Sometimes there may also be grandparents or others in the family unit but this is the most common structure in which a dependent child is raised. Obviously if a society can’t solve either of these problems then it is not going to be a society for much longer.

When a woman becomes pregnant the society and that woman have a problem. In about 7 months she and the child are going to need a fair bit of help for a number of years in order for the child to survive.



Remember we are talking evolution here. So like 500 years ago there was no single parents pension or health care systems and so forth. The problem is that the father of the child can simply walk away. If that happens then the likelihood of the child not surviving increases.

So what does evolution do? It creates this thing called attachment. What is one of the core features of human attachment? When a person forms an attachment to another, then it has a strong, indeed very strong urge to seek out and maintain a geographical proximity to that person. If the father of the child has an attachment to the mother then he has a strong urge to keep geographically near her. After the child is born if the father develops an attachment to the child then he has the same desire to keep geographically close to the child. If the father stays geographically close then the likelihood of the child surviving significantly increases. Of course after the birth the same applies for the mother.



So if the society can keep mother and father together then the child is far more likely to survive and thus the society survives. It is estimated that when a person reaches the age of 10 to 15 years then they are probably physically and psychologically capable of surviving by them self. If they are forced to look after self at age 14 then they might be quite neurotic in adulthood but they will be able to survive to reproduce the species.

In western society the divorce rate usually hovers around the 50% mark. Of the 50% who aren’t divorced probably half of them should be. But they stay together for financial or other reasons. Societies usually tell a man and a woman who marry that it is meant to be for life or the next 50 years. The problem is that half of them don’t and perhaps another 25% don’t want to be married but are for practical or moral reasons.

The explanation we are usually given for this is faulty child rearing practices, poor education on relationships and society makes it too easy to divorce and so forth.

There is another explanation that I propose in my serial monogamy model. I am somewhat reluctant to state this. Since I first presented it in August 2001 I have found that I need to have my battle fatigues on when I ever I publicly present it again. I have had conference a participant stand up, shout at me and walk out of the presentation on it. I have received hate mail related to my article on the serial monogamy model. There is a group of people who very much do not like the concept. And to KazzaB, if you are ever doing an assignment on human attachment it might be wise not to include this, as you might be given an “F”. This is certainly not mainstream thought on human attachment.


Earning a living

Perhaps an attachment between a male and female breeding couple is finite. After about 10 to 15 years it runs its course. From an evolutionary perspective it make sense for a couple to breed, raise the child together for 15 years and then breed again in a new couple.

In western society, for at least 50% of the population the attachment does precisely that. It ends. All I am doing here is providing an explanation for something that is happening right now. Just because it is unpalatable does not make it untrue, despite governments and particularly religions wanting human attachment in a marriage to not be seen as finite.

Original serial monogamy article:

http://www.ynot1.com.au/magazines/TAT%20serial%20monogamy%20[v6.0]%20(WP).pdf

Graffiti

In the 1950s the WHO (no not the rock band!) commissioned a guy called John Bowlby to look into the area of human attachment. People were noticing particularly after WWII with a lot of orphaned children that many of these kids raised in orphanages were coming out as damaged individuals. They were being fed and housed but they were still being “screwed up” psychologically. So they wanted to know why.

He took on this research and produced many documents with the 2 most famous being a book titled “Attachment” and a subsequent one called “Separation” (surprisingly enough). He has since become one of the most influential thinkers in the psychological literature in the past 50 years. His works have had a tremendous influence in the area of human attachment and child rearing practices.



He and his compatriots did lots of experiments like putting a mother and a young child into a room full of toys and then simply observed the movements of the child. The mother would stay stationary in a chair and then what would the child do?. What the child did varied on how secure it was in its attachment with the mother. For instance a child with an insecure attachment may never leave mother’s side even to go and look at some interesting toys even if it was really bored. (This child is seen as having separation anxiety). Then there was others with insecure attachments who would simply move away from mother to play with the toys and never return to her for long periods of time. (This is common in the development of the antisocial personality).

Those kids with a secure attachment would at first stay near to mother and then slowly move out to the toys. The child would regularly look back to see where mother was and go and ‘touch home base’ every now and then. This child is developing what is known as object constancy. He is learning that mother (the object) is constant and does not disappear when he moves away from her. Thus he is secure in his attachments.


Baptism - another human attachment style?



However one of the key findings of Bowlby was that when a child develops an attachment then it will seek to maintain a geographical proximity to mother and this is one of the central features of human attachment. When two people attach they will have a very strong drive to be together and to maintain contact.

Of course this has a corollary. If two people have an attachment and they slowly drift apart and spend less and less time together then the attachment will diminish in intensity. It slowly fades away. The husband and wife who progressively live more and more separate lives can finally separate without the intense grief or bereavement because they have spent the last 10 years detaching anyway.

At the week long workshop I attended about a month ago attachment styles were discussed at length and there was a mention of the isolated attachment style. I found this an interesting concept because it is an oxymoron or a contradiction. If one is isolated then they are not attached, or if one is attached then they are not isolated, so how can you have an isolated attachment.


If you see one of your primary attachments disintegrating then you can do things quite out of character.



It was explained as that attachment style like when a husband and wife live apart for long periods of time. Such as when the man works away from home and they maintain an attachment as such. The other example is when two bloggers meet in the blogosphere and develop a ‘relationship’ or attachment, having never met each other and it is highly likely they will never meet. How can these two people have an attachment when one of the most basic ‘conditions’ of an attachment is that they maintain a geographical proximity to each other. An attachment is when there is a very strong urge to be in each others company face to face. Contact by phone or email can maintain the attachment to some degree but over time there will still be the inevitable deterioration of the initial attachment regardless.

With subsequent thought I think the term and concept of isolated attachment is a misnomer. It does not exist. People mistake it for something else.

One only needs to ‘surf’ the blogosphere for a short space of time to discover that there are many who state that their blogger friends are very important to them. They talk about having strong feelings for each other and how important they are to them. Obviously something is going on. But what is it? Is it such a thing as an isolated attachment?

I would answer - no - as there is no urge to be physically close to the other. What has happened is two people have had strong emotional reactions to each other and find the other appealing and thus want to communicate with them. That is not a human attachment in the usual sense of the word.


Can these two people be in the relational?



To call it an attachment changes the definition of the term and I would suggest that it is better to keep to the original definition and call blogger bonding something else. So it is not seen as an attachment style. Thus you can not have the concept of isolated attachment. How about simply using the term, “distance relationship”. It can be defined as two people having strong feeling reactions to the other, they find each other attractive or appealing but there is no attachment in the psychological sense of the word.

Graffiti

Roses wants to know what happened at the all day training workshop last weekend. Well lots of things happened. One was that I did a presentation on different attachment styles. I got the participants to do a questionnaire to see what attachment style they used in their relationships. Afterwards most were silent and did not want to report what they got to the group. That is always a good sign that the exercise worked.

The other thing that I did was talk about the vine swinger. That person who is the tarzan of human relationships. They grab hold of the next relationship before they have let go of the last one just like tarzan did as he swung through the jungle from vine to vine. Why would they do such a thing? There are a number of reasons and one is shown in the diagram below.



The wife in the second diagram has a very big problem. She has a strong attachment to a person who is now deceased. Never underestimate the importance of human attachment. If one perceives such an attachment to be breaking down then that can make people do very strange things even to the point of murder and suicide.

The wife is about to suffer considerable pain. It is called grief or bereavement which can last for many months. If she does her bereavement well then she will finally get to the place of the last diagram. Because it is so painful then people will do all sorts of things to avoid it and one of those things is to become a vine swinger.


Some people find this a very difficult place to be in. Alone.



Hubby is now dead so she quickly grabs onto another one. Some times called the rebound relationship. And it works. It does lessen the pain of bereavement. The new person and the new relationship does take away some of the pain of grief about Hubby.

The downside of this is that it disrupts the grief process and thus she does not get to the third diagram. This can then result in:
1. The person stops living in the here and now. They are living in the past
2. The child part of them is thinking magically in that it believes at least partly that the person is still with us and they will behave at some level like the person is.
3. The attachment is not freed up so subsequent relationships are disrupted by that.

Unfortunately the old adage applies in such scenarios. Short term pain for long term gain. Have the pain of bereavement and thus the gain is less affected relationships in the future. Alas the vine swinger ends up with short term gain but long term pain.


One way people can formalize human attachment.




I might do more on the vine swinger in another post.

Graffiti

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.



---------------------------------

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.

--------------------------------

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.

---------------------------------

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



--------------------------------------

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)

----------------------------------------

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

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

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.

----------------

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

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