Getting into the spirit of things
Am I an alcoholic? It’s not a question most of us want to have to think about answering, but BUPA’s latest Wellness Survey has got me thinking. It seemed like yet another study telling us how much we all drink, how bad it all is for us and how worried we should all be. To be honest, when reading the report in a newspaper, I was not particularly worried. Perhaps I should be, however. Men should drink no more than 3-4 units a day.
Three units is the equivalent of roughly one and a half pints of beer, or three small glasses of wine. On a restorative quiet night in yesterday I drank double this. It was only when I turned to the next page that what I had read was put into some sort of context. On it was a picture of George Best. This is a man who has had his life, or at least his liver, destroyed by alcohol. One of those panicked moments ensued.
Maybe having a few heavy nights out every week is the start of this; maybe in five years I too would be in a coma with somebody else’s liver. So how would I know if I had an alcohol problem? A spokesman for Alcoholics Anonymous refused to give any information about how students could know if they were dependent or not. The only advice that the AA could give was to ring them, or go to a meeting, if someone had any concerns.
This is, to be honest, quite a large step, and I don’t think I could bring myself, perhaps out of pride alone, to do that. I took solace in the internet. A way of proving my innocence. There are many tests through which one can gauge whether they have a problem, such as a quiz from The Office of Health Care Programs, John Hopkins University Hospital. This requires yes or no answers to twenty questions.
Such questions as “Do you lose time from work due to drinking?”, “Have you ever had a loss of memory due to drinking?”, “Have you ever felt remorse after drinking?” and “Do you drink to build up your self confidence?” Confident after clicking ‘no’ to the vast majority, I turned to the assessment. “Your score is 35 per cent.
According to John Hopkins University Hospital, if you answered ‘Yes’ to three questions it is a definite sign that your drinking patterns are harmful and considered alcohol dependent or alcoholic. As you answered more than three with a ‘yes’, you should seek an evaluation by a healthcare professional.” This was not exactly the answer I was looking for. But tests like these are surely inconclusive. I know that I can stop drinking whenever I would want to, as do most students.
Drinking is purely a social activity, not something I would need. I spoke to a self-described alcoholic, a finalist, who did not wish to be named. “Social drinking is how it all starts. No-one sets out to be an alcoholic. You just have a few drinks, then a few more, and then a few more. I would be drinking every day, just a spot. After a term or two of that, with a college bar practically next door, it would turn into a lot. “Then it was every lunchtime, and then even when I was working.
I knew there was something wrong but couldn’t do anything about it.” He told me that it was only during the summer vacation, when at home, that he realised the extent of his problem, and could escape the cycle. The vast majority of Oxford students who drink over the recommended limit of 21 units (for men) and 14 units (for women) a week, and even those who drink over the ‘high risk’ threshold of 50 and 35 units, will not become alcoholics.
However evidence from the Harvard Medical School suggests that still one in ten college males under 24 met a diagnosis of alcohol dependence. For those who do not meet this diagnosis, alcohol still has a significant effect on life. In the personal sphere, researchers have found that men and women who have drunk a moderate amount will find the opposite sex’s faces 25 per cent more attractive, raising the chances of waking up with a rhino on your pillow next to you.
Alcohol also has a more serious effect on inhibitions: Wake Forest University School of Medicine reported that students who got drunk at least once weekly were three times as likely to be hurt or injured and 75 per cent more likely to be “sexually victimised.” According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, (NIAAA) 97,000 students each year in the US are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault.
Moreover, Oxford Professor Michael Goldacre discovered that deaths from alcohol have tripled in the last twenty years, and there has been a three-fold increase in Cirrhosis of the liver in those from 25 to 34. Worryingly for Oxford students, Duke University researchers, with rat studies, have found that young drinkers are risking serious damage to the brain and potential memory loss with ageing. Some authorities have taken the matter out of student hands and have banned alcohol altogether.
Southampton University have banned ‘initiations’ for various sporting teams, which invariably involve naked men climbing up fountains, while here in Oxford, St Edmund Hall placed an alcohol ban on its students for two weeks in 2003 after the college had been habitually decorated with faeces and vomit. One third of US colleges now have enforced a ban on alcoholic drinks from their campuses.
A report from the Journal of Studies of Alcohol found that in fact in these colleges, there were 30% less heavy episodic drinkers, and fewer with second hand effects. Should the university authorities be doing something similar in colleges in Oxford? Wadham Bar and Social Officer Robbie Hamilton thinks not: “I think it would be a ridiculous infringement on liberties and would cause more problems than it would solve to ban alcohol from campuses.
I don’t think that we’re drowning in alcohol as students. “We need to adopt a more casual, continental attitude to alcohol rather than create a drug culture around it.” Alcohol is ingrained in the university experience, whether we like it or not, and the health effects are an inevitable consequence of that experience. Not much can be done to prevent that, and that is because while alcohol is a problem for students, it is not a problem too many students will be concerned with.
One in four are binge drinkers? Indifference is the natural reaction.
10th Nov 2005