We drink less than ever, so why does our booze obsession still consume us?
Bingeing on alcohol is in our DNA and some finger-wagging or price hikes won’t change that
Ahistorian recently found documents showing that stonemasons at a quarry in Dublin in the 16th century were each given an allowance of 14 pints of beer a day. Life was brutish and short back then. Is it any wonder people drank? Imagine the furore if RTÉ radio had been around at that time, though.
Experts would have been constantly on air, demanding that politicians do more to discourage excessive drinking.
Campaigners were at it again last week, despite new figures revealing that average alcohol consumption in Ireland has now dropped below 10 litres of pure alcohol per person per year — almost down to the EU average.
Some of that reduction was to be expected. Drinking soared during lockdown, when people were stuck at home, stressed and bored.
What’s remarkable is that consumption of alcohol is now at its lowest since 1987, having dropped an impressive 31pc from the peak during the Celtic Tiger days, when everyone was popping corks to celebrate finally having some disposable income.
You’d think that campaigners would be happy to see these figures come down so far, not least when so many young people are not drinking at all.
And they are pleased. To a point. Then comes the inevitable “but”.
Being a campaigner is, after all, about pocketing each win, then moving on to the next stage of the battle.
Ireland may now be closer to the EU average when it comes to drinking, but Europe remains the heaviest drinking region in the world, so there is obviously scope to bring the figures down further with one more push.
The focus these days is also not only on the amount of alcohol being consumed, but on how it’s being drunk.
The Irish tend to binge drink — that is, have more than three pints of beer, or six 100ml measures of wine or pub measures of spirits, in a single sitting.
Some will argue that this definition of binge drinking is too strict.
To be fair to doctors, the definition is not based on what’s considered normal in a social environment, but how fast the liver metabolises alcohol.
How much damage each individual regards as an acceptable sacrifice for the pleasure or oblivion they get from drinking will vary widely, but it is true that Ireland has historically been, let’s say, somewhat prone to overdoing it.
We remain the eighth heaviest binge drinkers in the OECD.
Whether it’s helpful to make simplistic comparisons with other countries is another matter altogether.
Both men and women in Denmark are among the heaviest binge drinkers in Europe, but their life expectancy is roughly similar to that of the Irish.
The Turkish are among the least likely to binge drink, and our life expectancy is greater than theirs.
No health metric exists in a vacuum. It’s linked to other factors, too.
It could be, for example, that one reason for the reduction in drinking by young people is because they’re getting their kicks from other, equally harmful substances, and the extent of that use is going under the radar.
The Ana Liffey Drugs Project told Hot Press magazine in July that, between 2017 and 2023, there had been a 594pc increase in the use of crack cocaine — a product which contributes nothing to the Exchequer.
Alcohol has a huge social cost, too. Days lost in work from hangovers soon add up.
Hundreds of babies are born every year with foetal alcohol syndrome.
There are deaths on the road as a result of drinking, as well as domestic violence and sexual abuse.
Depressed people drink more, and drinking leads to depression. That vicious circle has a cost in suicides, too.
The figure mentioned on RTÉ’s Drivetime in midweek was that alcohol misuse eats up 2.5pc of GDP annually in high-income countries, which is over €12bn in Ireland.
Some of these figures do seem to have been done on the back of an envelope.
Drink also contributes to the economy. It’s about the trade off.
An obvious example is the ongoing Sale of Alcohol Bill, which would extend licensing hours in nightclubs until 5am, and allow the creation of a “cultural amenity licence” allowing museums and art galleries to sell alcohol subject to certain conditions.
Leo Varadkar, who was taoiseach at the time of publication of the legislation, thought that opening up the night-time economy in this way would be “good for hospitality businesses… and generate employment”.
Research, meanwhile, suggests that changing the law will impact negatively on public health and safety.
It’s not necessary to come down on one side or another. It’s likely that both arguments are correct.
So how do you find a balance between them?
For many, the answer is simple. Alcohol’s social and medical harms exceed any economic benefits, so everything that can be done to curb its use must take precedence.
Believing that the Irish have an especially addictive and destructive relationship with alcohol compared to other countries may, however, be just another example of exceptionalism, turning a common human weakness into something unique to us as a race.
What we certainly do have is an addiction to going on at length about our relationship with alcohol.
The countless books and articles and radio and TV discussions on the subject keep piling up faster than the empties in the recycling bin after a party.
It’s like when you encounter someone who’s had too much to drink and they insist on talking to you at length about something that fascinates them, without realising that they’re actually quite dull and repetitive.
Many former heavy drinkers can be a bit like that.
Their own experience has been so important in shaping who they are, that they become evangelical about saving others from the same fate.
That’s hardly a sin. We should all do everything that’s sensible to reduce the harm wreaked by alcohol.
But it’s also important to remember that there’s nothing new under the sun.
The heaviest drinkers in Europe are in regions once dominated by Vikings, Celts and Anglo-Saxons, where drinking to excess was part of the culture.
Since ancient times, writers have been unflatteringly contrasting them with the more sophisticated people of the southern Mediterranean, who drank wine with food, just as many contributors on radio, horrified that the Irish stubbornly refuse to be more like the Italians, do to this day.
Describing German tribes he encountered on his travels, the 1st-century Roman historian Tacitus noted: “To pass an entire day and night in drinking disgraces no one.
“Their quarrels, as might be expected with intoxicated people, are seldom fought out with mere abuse, but commonly with wounds and bloodshed.”
It sounds like Dublin city centre on any Friday or Saturday night.
Maybe it’s buried deep in our DNA. If we have been like this for millennia, it will take more than some medical finger-wagging and well-meaning tweaks to alcohol pricing and availability to change us.
The Irish seem to love talking about alcohol almost as much as they once liked drinking it