Are We Baby Boomers The Worse For Drink And Drug Abuse?

[EDDIE51]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/23/wednesday-briefing-baby-boomers-worst-drinkers-and-drug-users
Apparently we are far more likely to buy cheap supermarket booze and drink it at home rather than the pub! Just sounds sensible to me , why pay £4.50 for a pint that you can buy at a supermarket for less than £1 ?

[ummmm]

It's not just the baby boomers...

[EDDIE51]

That's what I thought but the artical says we are the worst by a considerable margin. The media portray the youngsters as being the worst.

[woofgang]

I suspect that part of the problem is not the amount ingested but the ability of the liver to deal with it.....also the actual article says that a great part of the drug misuse is misuse of prescribed drugs....now I’d like to know what is meant by that?

[woofgang]

Actually, thinking back to my work days, overuse of alcohol among our community patients was a known issue...maybe not of epidemic proportions but certainly unsurprising when it was encountered....the thing was, how much of a problem it was depended on the social standing of the people concerned. Among the well to do who could afford the booze and their bills, owned their own houses and could pay for domestic and personal care, we did very little. A safety check of the house, advice to relis about things like keeping the cooker switched off unless the carer was there, strategies for supporting eating and so on. While I agree that being alone and unoccupied doesn’t help, personally I am not sure that “loneliness” as a phenomenon is as contributory as is thought. Often people had plenty of options for society but didn’t want them.
Among the less well to do there were different practical issues like paying the rent and utilities and where people were happy to have their money managed for them, and there was a friend or relative to do the managing, then this stabilised the situation. I remember very few cases where intervention actually reduced the amount that was drunk apart from where people had their money managed and just couldn’t pay for it any more. Having now seen the issue from both ends a bit, I really don’t know what the answer is.....There have been times in my life where I might have over imbibed, what stopped me was knowing that I had family responsibilities that meant that I might need to drive at any time of the day or night....but then knowing that and being able to act accordingly might have meant that I wasn’t at risk anyway......

[Old_Geezer]

Well I'm not; but I can't speak for you lot.

[Truthteller88]

Not from what I've seen.
However, we have clearly bequeathed a very poor attitude towards responsible use of alcohol and tobacco to the next generation and virtually encouraged drug experimentation.
As usual, it's the youngest and most vulnerable that suffer.
I've been in homes where the kids are cowering as a drunken or high parent has totally lost all restraint.

[dunnitall]

As for drink for oldies....personal experience is that....some of us loathe and despair of society today and how the down turn has been swift and without thoughts for others! So some if us consume alcohol more than we should? What else have some of us got?m

We need things IMO to be returned to what it was....but it will never happen unfortunately. In my own personal experience..with today's society I can't wait until I pop me clogs....I need to escape and I'm a coward in facilitating this as my end. Wish it wasn't thus..sigh!

[andy-hughes]

When I was a teenager, law and culture was in the hands of the previous generation. They accepted alcohol and tobacco misuse - both are permanently woven into the fabric of our culture, but they detested and feared pop music and other drugs.

Now, law and culture are in the hands of my generation, and interestingly, the distrust and hostility towards popular music has evaporated completely, and embraced by 'older' people, alcohol and nicotine remain a bain of the earth, but accepted and encouraged.

Gambling is the new vice that is sweeping the nation, with help from the government who benefit hugely from its revenues, but oddly, cannabis, the 'hippy' drug, has never made its way into the mainstream in a way that logic suggests it should have done.

I think the issue the media is highlighting with 'baby boomers' is that the notion of drinking alcohol as a social activity, is largely dead and buried.

The traditional pub, where people socialised over a drink, is dying out, and bars cater to people who drink to be drunk, not to enjoy the social aspects of drinking. This view is encouraged by 'vertical bars' - research shows that people consume more alcohol faster if they are standing rather than sitting, and the loud music makes any social activity almost impossible.

So if people are drinking and drugging at home, they are not socialising, but more likely anesthetising themselves from the misery of their lives, assisted by the seriously low price of alcohol and wide availability of drugs (I refuse to use the term 'recreational' - it's meaningless and trite).

Society needs to wake up, wise up, and completely re-align its attitude towards drugs.

Remove the imagined distinctions between 'acceptable' drugs like alcohol and nicotine, and 'unacceptable' drugs like dope and heroin, and start being grown up about licencing drug consumption, and ditching the so-called 'war on drugs' which is a money-draining failure which cannot ever work.

[dunnitall]

How right you are A H