Last week, Drinkaware
published a report called ‘Drunken
Nights Out’. It’s definitely worth
reading, and the analysis of drinking practices and beliefs underlying it is
surprisingly nuanced and thought-through.
Perhaps that’s testimony not only to the researchers but to those who
sat on advisory panels. If you don’t have
time to look through even just the executive summary, then I can recommend a summary
provided by Alcohol Policy UK.
The report carefully assesses people’s beliefs, behaviours,
activities, fears and motivations. For
example, it’s noted how (certain forms of) drunkenness are considered normal, that
many people’s early experiences of drinking enforced an instrumental approach
to alcohol (drinking to get drunk), but that even such determined drunkenness
(as Measham
and Brain would call it) is ‘within limits’.
It’s this last point that’s particularly interesting,
because it’s noted that these ‘limits’ aren’t like the limits government refers
to, and in fact are framed in completely different terms.
However, the report falls down, in my opinion, when it moves
to solutions to the perceived problems.
This is partly due to the restrictions applied to the scope of the
report, but it’s also due to certain assumptions applied.
First, the report sets its terms of reference by stating
that it’s only concerned with what’s in Drinkaware’s remit. In the eyes of some public health professionals,
this will immediately limit its usefulness, as the key factors of price and availability
are not within Drinkaware’s gift.
Moreover, it’s stated that the report takes a harm reduction approach,
meaning that it’s not aiming to reduce the number of ‘drunken nights out’ so
much as reduce the harms associated with them.
This statement leaves me in a slightly uncomfortable
place. I agree that the focus shouldn’t
particularly be on reducing the number of drunken nights out per se. If people want to spend their evenings (and
money) on this, I can’t immediately see why it’s any more execrable than partaking
in state-subsidised opera, or skiing (so long as they know what they’re getting
into). Both of those alternatives often (or
always in the case of certain opera companies) involve the state paying for the
choices of individuals, which is the only real downfall of ‘drunken nights out’
as identified by Drinkaware.
On the other hand, that limiting of the scope of the report
doesn’t actually follow from the initial statement that it will only look at
interventions that are in the gift of Drinkaware. In fact, given the
strong links between drinking, drunkenness and the carnivalesque (or simply
outrageous behaviour) in the way we think about alcohol in today’s Britain,
it could be argued that educative approaches would be more likely to persuade
people to go out on such nights less often, than to completely change their
understanding of alcohol.
This brings me back to my old frustration with the alcohol
industry (though I shouldn’t lump a whole range of interests together like
that). I often agree with them, but sometimes
for completely different reasons, but other times find
myself hugely disappointed by their cynical, self-interested approach – and
I can’t help feeling this report is too constrained by a particular way of
thinking about what is appropriate for Drinkaware to do. I don’t think in this case these limitations
are due to the same calculating cynical approach I’ve seen from the WSTA and
Portman Group, but rather just accepting what they already do as inevitable restrictions.
But back to the practical recommendations of the
report. First, there’s one suggestion
that people with a public health perspective should be applauding. The report notes that education initiatives
should challenge the assumption that if you ‘get away with it’ on the night,
there’s no long-term problem. Once the
hangover is gone, you might feel fine on each occasion, but you could be doing
long-term damage to your health. I don’t
expect to see a magical intervention that can successfully defeat this
assumption, given that a
belief in one’s immortality is something we cling to despite mountains of
evidence – but this is an appropriate target for intervention.
After this, though, my academic perspective saw a couple of
key flaws in the approach. First off,
methodologically, there are problems with simply asking people what they think
or do regarding drinking. We’re actually
concerned with what they do, which doesn’t always correspond exactly with what
they say – particularly regarding drinking within limits or having safekeeping
strategies. Most people know that some
of the best laid plans for a night out can often fall apart in reality. You have just one more drink, and raid the
money you’ve saved for the taxi home to do this, but you might well still talk
about knowing your limits and setting boundaries when you describe your drinking
to other people.
This then leads into the broader point around limits. Although the report is refreshingly clear
about people having limits around their drinking, it doesn’t pay enough
attention to its own acknowledgement that these are founded on completely different
principles to the limits the government espouses, or indeed those placed on the
same individuals’ behaviour at other times in the week.
I never seem to stop citing MacAndrew
and Edgerton on drunkenness and limits, and here’s another opportunity. Basically, they compared how drunk people
behaved (and were treated) in different societies, and argued that drunkenness
is set of norms and is ‘learned’ as much as everyday behaviour. To give a simple example, in some societies
people became fired up when drunk, whereas in others they chilled out.
And the ‘limits’ were different too. Even when apparently blind drunk and on a drunken
rampage, a reveller in one society found time to apologise to a researcher –
acknowledging that his actions were ritualised and the outrage shouldn’t apply
to a visitor.
These sorts of limits aren’t what Drinkaware is talking
about in the report; they’re wider and more fundamental. They are not about whether you set yourself the
limit of four drinks or five on a works night out, but instead whether murder, drink
driving or domestic violence when drunk is acceptable.
These sort of limits aren’t just individual; they’re
influenced by broader issues like the legal framework surrounding alcohol. That doesn’t mean Drinkaware can’t do
anything about them, though. And more
importantly it has serious implications for the solutions proposed in this
report.
The report makes the same mistake as the ‘Would You?’ campaign, which I’ve written
and spoken about a number of times at conferences and in academic articles: it
suggests that education campaigns should remind people that ‘they would not
accept such behaviour outside the context of drunken nights out’ (p.10).
This is irrelevant.
The whole point of ‘drunken nights out’ is that these evenings operate
under different norms to the everyday.
To tell someone they wouldn’t accept this behaviour outside of a drunken
night out is just to remind them that’s why they go on these nights out in the
first place.
I’d suggest that a more appropriate response is to stress
certain absolute lines. Looking at the work
of MacAndrew and Edgerton, or indeed our experience in recent decades in the
UK, we can see that certain things can be branded unacceptable regardless of drunkenness. The claim shouldn’t be that you wouldn’t do
something sober, making the comparison between the two scenarios; it should be
simply to state that certain behaviours are unacceptable regardless of
context. We’re perfectly capable of
holding onto certain norms when drunk, and there’s no reason to think this
approach shouldn’t be considered within the scope of Drinkaware.
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