Chapter 3 pp 59 to 62

 

Contents

3.1.29
Need to distinguish between sound advice and opinion  

Directly after the 'Healthy Eating' exposé in June, 1984 referred to above, R.Hoffenburg, President of the Royal College of Physicians wrote (The Times Letter Page, 15 June 1984) with the valid comment concerning the need "... to distinguish between advice that is based on sound evidence and that which is less secure and therefore a matter of opinion". But not that many of the reports make "categorical statements": most, however, try to link the obvious to the guesswork which has gone before and point the way to better health.

 58

3.1.30

Men 18 - 24 the most susceptible    

The present discussion can do no more than that and what any of us reads has to be tempered with common sense. If a study of only thirty one alcoholics (Cohen, The Times, July 11 1983) shows that young people recover with better effect than the over-40s, most who read it from the wrong end of the age scale might well at least think about it. Younger readers might be forgiven if they have forgotten about it by the time they reach forty, and in any case they will conclude that there would be fresh evidence, meantime, to refute the idea.

3.1.31
 
Subsequent generations drink more than their predecessors   

Morris (The Times, July 12 1983) also expressed concern which he acquired by reading a report that men between the ages of 18 and 24 were the most susceptible to the effects of heavy drinking. The report also pointed out that subsequent generations drink more than their predecessors which helps little when we are trying to determine what moderate drinking comprises.

3.1.32
 
Nutrition Advisory Council is "a notorious muesli-front organisation" using "middle class code"    Looking now at the public there is great confusion in the average mind about Health Education generally and values engendered by it. Even if the Nutrition Advisory Council no longer functioning has been accused by Johnson (The Times, July 15 1984) as being "a notorious muesli-front organisation" using "middle class code" such as "eating healthily", we have to remember that his occasional and wry contributions arrive just before the crossword on the back page and he really has a healthy (?) respect for the Council.

3.1.33
Bolting the bar door after everyone has ordered their drinks.  

But the man in the pub is less clear and he has to adapt to new findings which have to be reconciled with a very different value system which encourages competitive drinking within the lower orders of society and social drinking within the middle and upper classes. These conflicts of interest which smoulder under the surface of daily life may well be fanned into a raging inferno if we spend too much time thinking that the medical profession is disinterested in tackling the drinking problem. So also, are some of the other social services. This approach generally accords with bolting the bar door after everyone has ordered their drinks.

 pagetop     

3.1.34

Alcohol-pushers stand on both sides of the bar   

There is a widespread lack of definition of society's attitude towards alcohol consumption. While we cross to the other side of the road at the approach of a drunk we stay on the same side, as it were, to help cover up a friend's alcoholism. Influencing him to accept his own responsibility for getting in touch with the helping agencies is, however, a different matter until it is all over bar the funeral. Specific types of drinking behaviour are acceptable up to the point of detection and to the point where physical harm accrues to the alcoholic, to his friends waiting until it is their round, or innocent bystanders. Addiction to alcohol is more socially acceptable than, say, addiction to hard drugs yet alcohol-pushers stand on both sides of the bar.

3.1.35 

Alcohol dependency is powered by numerous 'catalytic encouragers'     

The conveyer belt towards alcohol dependency is generally slow at the outset and is powered by numerous 'catalytic encouragers' who oil the machinery without dirtying their hands. They stay sufficiently clear of the belt as it gains momentum and rush off to make minor adjustments to their own machinery when somebody else's overheats. There is no greater scandal than this: as we push someone else's boat out there is small recompense to them if our own is left smouldering at the quayside. 

 

3.1.36
Work out the influence which alcohol has on your house     

Discuss some of this, then, while you are having your 'quick-one' on the way home tonight. Better still, give it a miss and arrive home early to give them all a shock! When they have recovered, sit down and begin to work out the influence which alcohol has on the house. Count the bottles in the cupboard if you need to be shocked into action and gently appraise the 

 59

benefits of an occasional review of the consumption levels of all the family. If you want to do the job properly it requires a pretty hard look at the whole diet.

 

3.1.37
Manufacturers hoodwink us into disgusting food. Can the same tricks be played re alcohol?   

If we have been hoodwinked by manufacturers into pandering to a national weakness for sticky, chippy, pretty disgusting food it is appropriate to wonder if the same confidence tricks can be played in terms of alcohol. It is at the bar and off-licence that the full discerning powers are focused and little that is not up to standard, meths excluded, passes the lips of even the non-serious drinker. If the same standards of discrimination were applied to food then all public eating places would have to begin at five stars.

  pagetop

3.1.38

Our alcohol has to look good, taste good ...   

But this comparison is not limited to warm beer versus cold food and different levels of complaint. It helps demonstrate that while we are quite happy to have soggy chips with everything our alcohol has to look good, taste good and, by Jove...you know the rest!* You must surely accept that alcohol-related slogans seem to have more beneficial effect in market terms than in the alcoholic treatment centres. While there may be sunflower-oil margarine-men kicking sand in the faces of seven-stone weaklings there is less market resistance to drink and the battle concerns influencing the purchaser to drink a specific brand. Its more immediate casualties in this battle find their way to the treatment centres while the long term inflictions are reflected in the liver-cirrhosis statistics.

* "And, by Jove it does you good!"  Makeson Stout. Current in 1980s.

3.1.39 
The case for exciting drinks  

Another distinction between the reasons for eating and drinking go beyond thirst and satiety. We must take in food but could do quite well with just water. The apologists for drink could argue that we eat unattractive food and therefore the case for not consuming more attractive liquid is destroyed. Now, we surmise that as a nation our diet is incorrect and boring. This, perhaps improves the case for exciting drinks, or even consuming more boring drinks with the promise of exciting outcomes as made by the adverts.

3.1.40

We can fill up on high-octane alcohol   

Then again, there are differences of effect and quantity needed to bring it about. It is difficult to bypass the nausea mechanism when eating and the body's limit on volume is announced virtually immediately. In contrast, of course, we can fill up on high-octane alcohol with the engine still running and forget that the explosion comes when we get round the next corner. Ideally, most of us recover in the pitstops but some do not live to see the already lowered chequered flag.
 
3.1.41

You gaze wistfully through the train window   

But it is too easy when discussing the drink problem to invoke the differences between factors affecting what we choose to eat and drink and forget that the overall diet in relation to other aspects of our daily life such as stress may be in need of change. As you reach this point and gaze wistfully through the train window at a lifestyle you would prefer to keep you wonder just how many more exhortative statements there will be to alter it.

3.1.42 
Bury your head in the empties     

Perhaps you have decided to pour yourself a whisky when you get home and sit down to write to your newspaper for articles which propose that more of what you fancy does you good. But that would be to bury your head in the empties since the answer to those with some of the signs of an incorrect diet weighted down by an excess on the alcohol side of the equation is to reappraise all aspects of life. This job done it is easier to establish your reasons for drinking and determine just how much pressure is being brought on your own pump and by whom. At least you can be less heavy-handed if it is yourself.

                                                 60

  pagetop

  

3.2   Conclusion

3.2.1

Rather than draw any conclusions from what has been discussed above I prefer to use those by Marshall (1979). He edited a large volume of papers dealing with alcohol use and abuse the world over. Each of the conclusions here is followed by discussion but see the book if interested. Not all of his conclusions have direct bearing on what has been discussed above. It should be noted, too, that none of the papers concerned UK drinking. Even if that is the case the conclusions en masse are appropriate to the present discussion.

Add 3.2 before a number when referencing.

“1	Solitary, addictive, pathological drinking behavior does not occur to any significant extent in small-scale, traditional, pre-industrial societies; such behavior appears to be a concomitant of complex, modern, industrialized societies. ...
2	Beverage alcohol usually is not a problem in society unless and until it is defined as such. ...
3	When members of a society have had sufficient time to develop a widely shared set of beliefs and values pertaining to drinking and drunkenness, the consequences of alcohol consumption are not usually disruptive for most persons in that society.  On the other hand, where beverage alcohol has been introduced within the past century and such a set of beliefs and values has not developed completely, social – and sometimes physiological – problems with ethanol commonly result. ...   pagetop
4	The amount of pure ethanol in the beverage consumed bears little or no direct relationship to the kind of drunken comportment that results; i.e., one cannot assert that the stronger the beverage the more disruptive the comportment. ...              Some would contest this.
5	All societies recognize permissible alterations in behaviour from normal, sober comportment when alcoholic beverages are consumed, but these alterations are always "within limits." The limits for drunken comportment usually are more lax than those prescribed for sober persons in the same situations. ...
6	Beverage alcohol usually is defined as a social facilitator (i.e., as a substance that promotes friendship, camaraderie, social solidarity, etc.), and this belief may persist despite considerable evidence to the contrary. ...
7	Socially disruptive drinking occurs only in secular settings. When alcoholic beverages are used in sacred or religious contexts they seldom produce socially disruptive drunken comportment, unless such comportment is considered an appropriate part of the religious worship.(!) ...
8	Beverage alcohol is used for festive, ceremonial, or ritual celebrations the world over. ...
9	Where opportunities for group or community recreation are few and alcoholic beverages are available, alcohol consumption will become a major form of recreational activity in a community ("the boredom rule").
10	Typically, alcoholic beverages are used more by males than by females and more by young adults than by pre-adolescents or older persons. Hence in any society the major consumers of beverage alcohol are most likely to be young men between their mid-teens and their mid-thirties. ...
11	Not only do males usually drink more and more frequently than females, but males' drunken comportment usually is more exaggerated and potentially more explosive than that of females, regardless of relative ethanol consumption. ...
12	The drinking of alcoholic beverages occurs usually with friends or relatives and not among strangers. Where drinking among strangers does take place, violence is much more likely to erupt. ...
13	Peoples who lacked alcoholic beverages aboriginally borrowed styles of drunken comportment along with the beverages from those who introduced them to "demon rum."...
14	When alcoholic beverages are defined culturally as a food and/or a medicine, drunkenness seldom is disruptive or antisocial. ...
15	Alcoholic beverages are the drug of choice for a majority of persons in any society, even if alternative drug substances are available. ...
16	Once alcoholic beverages have become available in a society, attempts to establish legal prohibition have never proven completely successful. ..." (Marshall, 1979: 451ff)

  pagetop

 

 3.3  Addendum on food and alcohol in the extreme

"The relationship between food and alcohol is brought to a head in the case of the chronic alcoholic. When the desire for alcohol overtakes the desire for food extreme problems may arise. 'Anorexia' is the medical term for lack of appetite. There is, apparently, a cycle of events and the writer has derived the term 'anorexia alco-circosis."

 

 

 

If we start the explanation by looking at the top word, we see there is a lack of appetite due to the general state of the person. As the day progresses there is a feeling of nausea which is compensated by the first drink of the day. Any hunger pangs which might have emerged are reduced and there is a later intake of alcohol. By midday the digestive system is rather depressed and the early stages of malnutrition will be felt after weeks of this treatment. The nervous system affected, one's appetite is a first casualty and so the cycle is perpetuated. The ever-increasing intake of alcohol leads to an inflamed stomach and cirrhosis of the liver. The wheel turns until death occurs." (Harrison, 1982: 222)

 pagetop     Return to Chapter 3 Contents