Down the hatch

“He said part of growing up was learning how to drink in a mature way.”

I extracted this quote from the current furious debate on how to stop our youth turning up at A & E legless and obnoxious, or jumping off the motorway overbridge. I neglected to note which society pseudo-sophisticate said it. However…

Just how do you ingest ethanol (C2H5OH) in a mature way? Do you have little sips? Is it in a mature way if you are in socially sophisticated company?

“Growing up”, he said. You know when you’re growing up because you are drinking “in a mature way”. Well, isn’t that nice. This chap seems to have missed that they are growing up anyway, however they drink.

Alcohol is inseparable from any human society with the possible exception of the Johnsonville Play Centre -- the tots, you understand, not the mums. The earliest human records show fermentation of grain and the consumption of booze. The same records tell of drunkenness and disorder. The children in Fiji knew how to make a heady toddy from the central shoot of the coconut palm. Plenty of people in every age have gone through life choosing not to take alcohol, but most have happily indulged, many to grave or even lethal excess.

How pompously I am writing about all this. My point is that drinking in a mature way can only mean ceasing when you know you have had enough. “Enough” may mean that you have had all you want right now, or it may mean that if you have any more you will be at risk of behaving obnoxiously, driving dangerously, making an ass of yourself, or simply feeling sick. That point of decision, for whatever reason, is a mature decision, I guess -- and maybe it’s what the societal sophisticate means.

The reality is that once you have already poured some alcohol down your throat your brain has rapidly got less able to make that mature decision. There is also the deep question of will -- if what I want is to drown sorrows and cares, have a joyous time, enjoy getting legless (which is what school kids and others now unashamedly confess on TV), I may be unwilling to obey the call of wisdom and maturity. Peer pressure too may override any sensible decision.

One reaction to recent tragedies among binge drinking secondary school kids was an article by a woman whose name meant nothing to me -- she remembered her own adolescence which was marked by much booze and mayhem. She knew she brought some years of anxiety to her parents and others, and did a lot of damage. “But hey!” she said, “we had fun!” Well that’s alright then. Granny Herald actually published this drivel. We had fun. I didn’t. Being overcome with joy as the room swivelled around at 2 am is not quite the way I recall it.

So I would like to know from our society bloke precisely how he proposes to foster this maturity by feeding free alcohol -- beer and Bacardi, whisky and wine, champagne and cocktails -- to 100 teenagers under “controlled conditions”, before their school ball.

It is idiotic, irresponsible, deeply mistaken, bad leadership and example. Drinking is drinking. No one needs to do it. I personally believe life is better without it. But let’s not fall for this silly myth that you can drink in a mature way, which is innocuous.