As we wait, young kids continue to limp, stumble and crawl out of the teenage disco, all bare-chested bravado, smudged mascara and torn tights, as friends try to sober them up in anticipation of the return home. The volunteer says the majority of the blame should rest on parents and not on the children themselves. ‘When I am wearing the yellow jacket it is a whole different world. It’s a good reaction. Most of the kids need a grown-up to talk with. For many of the young people the parents don’t care. If the parents did care then they wouldn’t allow their kids to run around the streets drinking and yelling and wearing short skirts.’ I wonder how the volunteers react when someone they come across is in a distressed state and requires medical assistance. ‘We try to get in contact with their family. If they are drunk we call the police or ambulance. When they know we are calling then they come,’ said one of the Night Ravens.
Other kids I talk to say there is not much pressure on children to drink at a young age in Copenhagen. Most do, but crucially, those that don’t say they can go to parties and drink minerals and not feel left out. The volunteers take me to see shop windows where alcopops and minerals are sold side by side and point out that it’s these types of premises that are allowing children easy access to alcohol with few restrictions in place.
The Night Ravens are, if nothing else, a novel way of patrolling the problem, although finding adults with time to volunteer is their biggest challenge. How many Irish parents would be willing to give up their Friday or Saturday nights in order to hold the hands and hair of drunken teens in Temple Bar?
Although it’s not like they’re queuing up to volunteer in Copenhagen either. ‘We have only about twenty-five volunteers in the whole city of Copenhagen,’ one of the older volunteers told me. ‘We have a lot of parents in the block where I live and I mentioned this to them, and said, “Why not come and join us and try it?” The answers are “We don’t have time” or “I have to be home with the kids” and all that. So it’s very hard getting volunteers in a city. Some of the ones we have are coming from thirty kilometres away. I think I am one of the only ones who live in the city centre who also volunteer. I do it to make a difference. I like to go in town and drink beer sometime but I see a lot of people fighting and causing trouble. I don’t want to see that.’
Closer to 1 a.m., in another part of the city centre, we meet 16-year-old Sinit and a friend, out for the night. I asked them what young people’s attitudes towards drinking were. ‘Some people don’t control themselves and drink a lot. But I know a lot of young people who can control themselves so I think it’s okay. I think it’s okay to drink at sixteen. The Night Ravens’ attitude is kind of respected. It’s very easy to get drink here. At fifteen, I went to a club where you had to be twenty-one. There were a lot of guys buying me drink, as well as the bar staff! In shops, if they are old ladies, they might not let you buy drink, but anywhere else there is no problem. At a party, though, there’s not really pressure to drink if you’re in the right company. Everyone knows about the free sweets and condoms. Maybe it’s different in Ireland?’
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In a secondary school in County Clare, I arranged to spend time with a group of Leaving Certificate children. The principal and some of the staff organised my visit on condition I didn’t divulge the name of the school, which I agreed to. At the school itself, I was keen to hear how attitudes had changed since my adolescent days in the same region, a decade or more earlier, and to compare notes with the Danish adolescent experience. What I was struck by was the fact that seemingly little discussion takes place in secondary schools around alcohol issues in Ireland. The children I met, mostly 16–18-year-olds, told me my visit was one of only a handful of times they had ever discussed alcohol in a school setting.
It’s not something, in retrospect, that surprised me all that much. I remember in my own school days the only real discussion on addiction was when we were all herded into the computer room early one morning, without warning, where a hardened Dublin heroin addict told us his story. Now, for secondary school students in the west of Ireland, a hardened Dublin heroin addict was about as far outside our cultural reference points as an Islamic shoe bomber would be to a class of trainee Texas Rangers. So, aside from the initial shock value of hearing about needles on skin and so on, it had little meaningful effect. At least with the movie Trainspotting, there was a soundtrack we could relate to. Of far more symbolic significance were the nights out with teachers towards the end of Leaving Certificate, such as the Graduation Mass, when students and teachers mingled in a bar afterwards. One teacher drank beer out of a cup that had been won by the one of the school sports teams. We egged him on as he took an extra-long sup of the stagnant lager, and afterwards students and some teachers all made their way to the local disco together. But this was in the early 1990s, when only a fraction of the statistical research into alcohol abuse existed. Teachers and students alike could be partly admonished for not knowing any better—yet nowadays there seems little excuse.
The first question I asked was, at what age did the students feel it was okay to start drinking? In the majority of cases, the answer was 15, and often with parental consent.
‘My parents would know where I was and so on. I would come home sober usually. It wasn’t a problem,’ said one girl. In terms of getting access to alcohol in the local town, the general feedback was that there was little trouble. ‘You might be stopped for id or that but there’s always some ways to get around that,’ said another girl. One of the lads in the class commented, ‘There’s never really that much of a problem getting drink from whatever age you want to get it.’
Of the class of 19, I asked for a show of hands as to who went out regularly, and all but five put their hands up (two in the class abstained from alcohol completely). Four in the class said they were allowed drink at home. ‘When we are sixteen or seventeen our parents have no problem with us drinking. I was fifteen when I started,’ said another girl.
One girl, prompted by the others, gave an account of her drinking life, which often occurred at home with parental consent: ‘I drink at home. I started when I was fourteen or that way and it was only small bits, but now it’s getting more. Now I’m sixteen. I drink cans no bother at home. I might have about six or seven cans and that would be no problem with my parents. I go to pubs also. They don’t want me out in fields.’ When I asked if the school had promoted debate around alcohol-related issues, one of the guys said, ‘In school there is no awareness around the issues. All we had is a questionnaire asking do we drink. But what can be done? Most of us drink and with it so cheap now—can get three cans for a fiver—there’s not much school can do or say about it.’
Later, I handed out a survey to all Leaving Certificate students in the school, and asked them to fill it out overnight. It contained 11 questions, asking about drinking patterns both within the adolescent group and their wider family, how much money was spent weekly on alcohol among the group and whether or not Ireland was becoming a more café-orientated society.
Of the 66 students who filled in the questionnaire, 40 per cent felt there is peer pressure on them and their peers to drink alcohol, while 60 per cent felt it is up to the individual. Of those who answered the question ‘Could you envisage not drinking alcohol as an adult?’ 38 per cent said they could, while 62 per cent felt they would drink alcohol when older.
When asked, finally, if alcohol had ever affected the students or their families adversely, 40 per cent said it had, while 59 per cent said it had no effect. From those who said it had a negative effect the comments included ‘My parents divorced because my mother became an alcoholic and couldn’t raise the family’ and ‘My uncle likes to take a few too many drinks, and it upsets my Granny which upsets me.’ Another said, ‘I have an uncle that has problems with alcohol, and after seeing him it turned me off binge drinking’ while another said, ‘One of my Grandfathers died from liver failure due to alcohol and also my uncle is a recovering alcoholic.’ Asked whether or not the st
udents thought Irish people drink too much, one answered, ‘Yes, nightlife in Ireland is famous worldwide and we are developing too much of a bad reputation.’ On a lighter note, one respondee said, ‘No, I don’t think the Irish drink too much. We are widely perceived as alcoholics by the Americans, but what do they know? I mean, most of them think we have leprechauns.’
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The Aislinn Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Centre in Ballyragget, County Kilkenny, is the only place in Ireland where youngsters under 21 can receive residential treatment for addiction. It has a total of 14 beds, and that has to cater for a wide range of addictions, from eating disorders to drug and drink issues and also gambling. Some of those beds are taken up by the HSE, and others by the probation services, which leaves only a handful of beds for the wider population. Last October, 91 children were on waiting lists to get into the centre for treatment in an attempt to get their lives back on track. The centre struggles for funding and has been trying for years to get government assistance. Thus far its efforts have fallen on deaf ears. The Alcohol Taskforce Report had made recommendations that some of the considerable excise gained from alcohol sales in Ireland should be put towards treatment services such as the Aislinn Centre, but this recommendation was not taken up. (Public health officials have said privately that the Department of Finance didn’t like the idea of other government sectors dictating how excise was spent.) When I asked the Minister of State with responsibility for health promotion within the Department of Health, Mary Wallace, about the centre and its lack of beds and funding, she said, ‘I’m not familiar about what happens in Kilkenny, I can only talk about my own community.’ The public health lobby will say her reply could be interpreted as indicative of wider government ambivalence towards the need for comprehensive treatment services for young people in Ireland. Or perhaps the question should be this: given the wealth of statistical information showing how binge-drinking and rising alcohol-related harm have impacted on Ireland’s young people, is it good enough that the government minister with responsibility for health promotion within the Department of Health only knows about her own community?
The day I visited the centre, clinical manager Geraldine Hartnett said that alcohol remains the number one drug problem for adolescents who come into their care, although increasingly in recent years clients have more than one addiction. The centre provides a wide-ranging response to the emotional and psychological needs of the young adults and children who are admitted to its six-week programme. Daily counselling sessions are combined with arts and crafts, personal development and other therapeutic approaches, and the children are drawn from a wide cross section of society.
Hartnett wouldn’t be drawn on the percentage success rate for those who are treated at the centre, yet international statistics suggest as few as one in three will beat their addiction following treatment. Hartnett takes a wider view and believes every youngster who passes through a treatment process benefits, but the programme doesn’t come cheap, costing in the region of €350 per day. Despite the best efforts of the staff, the social environment clients come from and return to is what makes breaking the cycle of addiction at a young age so difficult. Yet, again, the message from the centre’s staff is that Irish parents need to take more responsibility. ‘The culture of alcohol in Ireland almost encourages relapse. In terms of rates of addiction reoccurring, or relapse, I wouldn’t like to put a percentage on it. I think, though, parents’ own drinking has a lot to play with the kids ending up in here,’ says Hartnett.
While the centre is not directly funded by government, it does receive income from providing beds to the probation services and the HSE. With studies in Northern Ireland showing that an untreated addict can cost society upwards of £500,000 during his/her lifetime, it’s difficult to understand why government places such lack of emphasis on residential treatment funding for young addicts. ‘We don’t actually get any funding from government,’ says Geraldine Hartnett. ‘It’s very expensive to keep someone in prison. But if money is invested in services such as ours, and people are worked with therapeutically, then that gives them a greater chance of becoming effective members of society.’
In recent years, like many others on the frontline tackling Ireland’s addiction issues, Hartnett has seen an increase in the number of youngsters presenting with multiple addictions. ‘A few years back alcohol was the main drug in Ireland and there wasn’t a lot of disposable income knocking around. Five or seven years ago, the trends began to change. The sheer volume of drugs and the number of drugs being taken and that was very noticeable to us. There is this whole subculture emerging and everyone knows who is dealing and how to get in touch with the dealers. Most of the youngsters who come in here ended up dealing to fund their own habit. This creates a culture of violence. There is a sub culture in Ireland where drugs are freely available and there is no need to control use and people don’t have to work to get large sums of money.’
Defining problem drinkers, though, is still an issue in Ireland, says Hartnett, who also believes many youngsters don’t seek treatment because the terms ‘alcoholic’ and ‘drug addict’ have quite severe social definitions placed on them. ‘I don’t know if you can define someone under eighteen or twenty-one as alcoholic. Perhaps they are not psychologically developed enough to know alcohol is a problem. But I do know in my heart if someone is a true addict. Often, it is someone who suffered or is suffering from something such as sexual abuse, and to live with that pain they have to drink or use. They often don’t have coping skills to live with the pain. Sometimes, alcohol and drugs keep someone alive until the pain is too much.’ Again, Hartnett points the finger at the society these youngsters come from: ‘In Ireland drinking alcohol is normal even when it is causing problems. There’s a delusion around the effects of drink. Even if is someone is holding a business together, often alcohol is robbing their family of their presence, be it due to too much time spent at the golf club or the GAA club and so on.’ The solution, she feels, lies in greater parental responsibility. But it’s not easy.
‘People always talk about school playing a role, but it needs to be parents. Everything we do in life reflects how we are in our own family. Parents need to be educated around alcohol and abuse and use. Another thing which has had a huge effect on our culture is suicide. Parents have been emotionally disabled in a way and now have huge fears for their children. Some of them will say it is okay for them to behave any way they want, as long as they are alive. It’s hard not to despair sometimes. I mean, having ninety-one youths on a waiting list to get in here is really saying something about our society and how seriously we are taking this problem.’
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Three of the youths at the Aislinn Treatment Centre agreed to speak with me on condition that I didn’t name them. These are their stories.
‘Mary’ was a 21-year-old from the south of Ireland who had developed an enormous capacity for drink and drug use from a very young age. This was her second time attempting to get sober.
I started drinking when I was twelve. There would be a lot of alcoholics in my family. My dad is in recovery twenty-five years and it is in both sides of the family—both my mam and my dad’s. The thing is I would have been aware of it all my life but you don’t accept it when it is happening to you. I would have really seen myself at sixteen or seventeen as just having a good time and having drinks and doing what all my other friends were doing.
I grew up in a rural town in Kilkenny and would have moved to Callan and then on to college in Waterford. From the age of twelve to fifteen, it would have been just naggins of vodka or stuff before a disco maybe once a month. Then the time intervals got smaller and when I got into college it was four or five days a week. Drink was so widely available and so cheap and everybody was drinking. That was the thing to do in college. Then when I went to work full time I had a week’s wages, so was coming out with six hundred euro or seven hundred euro a week. I would spend my days off sitting in the pub from half nine in th
e morning until closing time that night. That’s what I did on my days off. Obviously it became a problem as my life just became too unmanageable. I wasn’t able to get into work. My friends were slipping away and I was in with different crowds. The drugs came with the drinking. It blew up from there. March last year I went for treatment and it lasted for three months and I relapsed after that.
You have to give up a major part of your life and start a new life. I have to give up all my friends this time and my meetings are going to be my social life from now on. When I got out of treatment the first time I stayed with it. Someone gave me an example, saying that addicts and alcoholics are so used to these massive highs that normal life seems boring.
I would have been away from home a lot so most of my drinking and using would have been hidden. My dad would have known the signs. I got in trouble before I came into treatment last time and my back was against the wall. I went into treatment not having a choice. This time I decided I wanted to go in for myself. I was drinking in pubs very young, from the age of fourteen upwards. You don’t know when you go in what you’re going to like, so I would have started on alcopops and vodka. Then it progressed to cider when I was around sixteen. I’m now twenty-one years old and if I went into a pub now I could drink twenty-five plus bottles of beer along with ten tequilas and a half bottle of wine on top of all that. I have a massive tolerance. I could be sitting beside a man of forty or fifty years of age and sit at the bar beside him all day and have drink for drink with what he was drinking.
I knew one of the counsellors here and talked to him about two weeks before I came in. He knew I had problems with drugs and alcohol and so he pulled a few strings for me and got me in. I was ready to leave Ireland before I came into treatment. I wanted an easy way out and now that I’m here, it’s making me stay. My dad was in recovery when I was born and my mam and my two sisters don’t drink, so none of my extended family drink.
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