Drinking

"There is this to be said in favour of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world".
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher.

In 2004 I purchased a bottle of wine and put it in the cupboard. Nothing unusual about that, but there it sat - Unconsumed. That was unusual. I became quite conscious that, after about 2 weeks, I still had no desire to drink the wine. I said to Ruth "I don't want to drink that bottle", and the obvious reply was "Ok, we'll leave it there until we do". I replied that in fact I never want to drink it. And I have never had a drink since.

Since making that decision I have lost 30kg. Nothing is missed about drinking. Not one thing. Not the lost evenings drinking (and mornings recovering), not the cost, not the standing in the super market isle deciding what I’d be drinking next, not the buying of a bottle of wine whenever a University paper was completed, and certainly not the mindset that drinking is for pleasure. Is the marketing of alcohol ok?? What IS ok?? And what should be considered as normal??

I recall sitting in a tutorial for my second year Social Psychology paper, and we were specifically discussing the social consequences of social norms. I commented that alcohol was very aggressively marketed in New Zealand, and looked around the room to see about 15 students looking at me blankly as if I had grown a second head. These were intelligent young adults learning about the finer points of how the human mind sees this world. These were our 'best and brightest'.

Crime, violence and unwanted pregnancies are just some of the outcomes of alcohol. Some will say that there are positive effects also, with most Rugby and sporting clubs around the country basing their social functions, (and in some cases their reason for existence), on the consumption of alcohol. Getting drunk is ok...apparently. In this age of methamphetamine being the scourge of society, the reality is that more people are actually effected in a negative way by alcohol.

Former Labour MP Mark Peck probably sums it up best with his story of an addiction to alcohol. After years of binge drinking he finally quit politics and (after crashing his car) faced losing his marriage if he didn’t sober up. He woke up one day and saw the world in a new way – He was finally free.

The statistics presented by former Commissioner of Police Howard Broad are disturbing. In 2004...
- Alcohol was a factor in 22,000 family-violence incidents.
- Police processed more than 25,000 drink-drive offenders.
- Spent 16,000 police hours either taking drunks home or looking after them in custody.
- Spent thousands of hours dealing with alcohol-related sexual-assault investigations.

Economist Brian Easton estimates that the single biggest cost of alcohol is $1.7 billion in lost productivity each year. (That’s $1,700,000,000 we’ll never see in the name of a ‘few quiet ones’).

It is worth noting that the All Blacks, who have had Steinlager as an official sponsor, had two players arrested in the weekend of the 28 and 29 June 2008. One for drink driving, and then the well publicised ‘Jimmy Cowan incident’ outside a Dunedin nightclub. Jimmy Cowan was arrested for the third time in three months for a drinking related incident.

Alcohol consumption is driven by large multinational corporations, who market drinking (and it’s consumption) to target 'sectors' of the community, with the sole intention of maximising profits. They are accountable only to their shareholders. Alcohol is promoted as the answer...but what was the question??

I will leave the last word to former Labour MP Mark Peck. "90% of the alcohol is drunk by 10% of the population".