Alcohol Consumption: How Much Is Too Much?
Photo by payerrick (http://www.sxc.hu/photo/716221)
By Emily O’Grady
With the holiday season behind us, now may be an appropriate time to reflect on personal choices and actions within the past year. In particular, the role of alcohol in the lives of young people is one with complicated emotional ties, excessive behaviours and sometimes dangerous consequences.
With the increasing popularity of shows such as Dr. Drew’s Celebrity Rehab and Intervention, along with the frenzied publication of sloppy celebrity inebriation and DUIs, Canada has become further aware and somewhat fixated on the complexities of problem drinking. However, the measurements of an alcohol problem are not always quite as clear as portrayed on television.
Internal tension, mental and anxiety disorders, as well as varying social situations affect the ways in which a person interacts with the bottle. It is important to take factors such as these into account in determining whether a person has an unhealthy reliance on intoxication, understanding that addictive and self-destructive behaviours come in many forms and with different levels of severity.
Binge drinkers
The lives of university and college students are largely represented by the tendency to participate in binge drinking, which occurs when a person consumes a large quantity of alcohol in a short period of time. Students will compete in drinking games, such as flip cup and beer pong, for which the purpose is to drink copious amounts while attempting to outmatch opponents. Additionally, the prevalence of house parties, keggers and night clubs creates an environment condoning the purchase and consumption of alcohol, presenting it as a relaxing escape from the daily grind of books, employment, and boredom.
In a Harvard study on the links between college drinking culture and alcohol problems, 43% of students surveyed identified getting intoxicated as a dominant reason why they drink. The report also identified that one in four students consume alcohol more than ten times per month, and it revealed that approximately 91% of all alcohol consumption in college occurs in binge drinking situations.
Overall, a large part of the postsecondary experience centers social life on drunken nights, forgotten conversations and random hookups. This quality can also be seen in the Statistics Canada report that 20- to 24-year-old men and women have the highest frequency of heavy drinking nationwide . University and college are a pivotal moment in the process of growing up, but it is obvious that this situation is a catalyst for disaster if a person is susceptible to alcoholism or is already in the clutches of a drinking problem.
Medicating drinkers
To complicate matters further, the factors of mental illness, such as depression, bipolar or schizophrenia, create an unstable situation for an individual, leaving him or her more likely to develop a drinking problem. For many, the freedom of living away from home is exhilarating and liberating, but in some cases it can result in feelings of isolation and loneliness, creating conditions for disaster.
The relationship of alcohol and depression, for example, is unclear because it is not known whether heavy drinking triggers depression or depression incites heavy drinking. Regardless of this chicken-egg debacle, the strong connection between the two is undeniable. According to Statistics Canada, fifteen percent of those diagnosed with an alcohol problem are identified as depressive, emphasizing that, though these factors can exist in isolation, there is an obvious connection between mental health and an individual’s relationship to alcohol.
Social Drinkers
Another disorder which can often occur in combination with excessive boozing is the broad range of anxiety-based problems, such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder and unfounded fears of particular things or situations, also known as phobias. In particular, social anxieties can greatly affect the way an individual will consume alcohol in a party or bar situation. It has been reported that specifically public self consciousness is an active factor which increases the likelihood of a person to experience negative drinking consequences.
It is not uncommon for people to use drinking as a “social lubricant”, inducing the loss of inhibition as a way to be more empathetic and conversational. Some drinkers also feel shy and unable to interact effectively with others in a sober state, thus further heightening anxiety and selecting alcohol as a tool to relax and feel confident. This can easily develop into a habitual behavior and ultimately a serious addiction.
The fine line of alcohol addiction
Using drinking as a way of suppressing unpleasant emotions, forgetting life’s complications or making oneself more sociable indicates a self-medicating quality in the relationship between the drinker and booze. When a person consistently engages in intoxicating behavior for this purpose, he or she is using alcohol as a vice or escape, and this quality most definitely marks that individual as a problem drinker.
In these situations, a person will sometimes drink alone in the absence of company. He or she will frequently drink to an obvious level of excess, and may also become restless while sober, fixating on attaining alcohol to numb emotions. These and many other indicators can be used in the identification of an addiction problem.
The fine line between normal and unhealthy drinking is not quite as clear cut as television may make it seem. Many people fail to incorporate additional internal and external factors into the causation of alcohol problems, such as mental illness, overwhelming anxiety, self-medication and rousing atmospheres centred on partying and attaining obliteration.
Indeed the emotional condition of a heavy drinker is often quite dismal and lonely, a state to which booze creates a temporary solace, only to pull the person further down the next day. It is a cyclical trap which men and women fall into more often than once thought.
I do not write this article with the intent to dismiss alcohol as evil or to suggest that it is impossible to be a responsible person who enjoys consuming the occasional drink. However, I do believe that it is important for family and friends to know what to look for in the drinking habits of loved ones, recognizing when risk factors exist and deciphering destructive patterns and behaviours.
Having others be aware of the issue is usually necessary in order for those with alcohol problems to seek rehabilitation, and a basic knowledge of signs and symptoms of such a problem can help prevent increasing severity of an alcohol addiction in others and within oneself by confronting the problem before it escalates.
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