Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[.]

Well, what role models did you have?

i had lots of sporting role models who weren't getting busted by cops for drunkenly urinating in public

i also had lots of aunts and uncles who drank in moderation, and not to excess, and still had a good time.

and the bands/artists i liked were never getting splashed across the front of magazines for being in drunken/drug fuelled dramas. we just had people like boy george who liked to dress up like girls

[Kelchables]

I think it's less about their good role models, and more about the bad new ones, that are so amazingly splattered everywhere. Also if you're being talked about who cares if it's bad or good? After all, people are learning your name, and how many people have a desire to be famous?

[GreenFroggie]

Raising the legal drinking age wont help. People will still be able to get the alcohol from somewhere and use it. Same with the cigarettes.

(But i think the pictures on the ciggies do help. I have people at work who want to swap their packet over because they dont like the picture. We are allowed to tell them that if they dont like it then dont buy them)

What they need to do is start educating all the youger ones (say yr 6-8) on the damages of drinking, and if they do have screwed up alcoholic parents, then get them counselling in school so they dont end up like that too.

When i was in year 8-ish, we were shown a slide-show of what smoking and drinking does to your organs. Pictures of rotting lungs and livers would turn anyone off. Unless there is something "cool" about having no liver??

And all the footballers going out and pissing on windows isnt exactly helping. Some kid is going to go out and think it is "cool" because Fevola did it. (Even though i dont think Carlton really have that many fans). The getting drunk part more than the window...

Well thats my bit. possibly just repeated what everyone else did...

[grooviechickie]

My kids know about the effects of alcohol and other drugs - it's taught quite extensively at school.

So far they seem to lose respect for those who do drink to excess, and haven't been to any serious parties. To be honest, if my kids did drink, I'd hope they'd be sensible about it. They've never seen the hubby or I totally pissed, even though we might occasionally have a wine with dinner or a couple of glasses over the weekend. We've been "happy" around them only a couple of times.

We've discussed it with them and talked about drinking to excess, to not mix drinks, and knowing your limits. But you don't know your limits until you actually start drinking and learning from your mistakes, I guess. My son is nearly 16 and so far is not all that interested because he's concerned about his body and what he puts into it. He's a health freak and is so very fit - he has little abs on his abs.

I didn't start drinking until I was 16-17 and moved to a different school and became part of a more interesting circle of friends. But I learned very quickly how to become happy and not so pissed that I passed out hugging the toilet bowl, and have only done it a few times now in my adult life.

Especially now that I have that lervely allergic reaction to alcohol. I've warned the kids that this may be hereditary and that if they do drink any alcohol and experience a tightness across the chest and breathing problems to stop drinking immediately and go to a hospital.

[Azazel]

All this talk of drinking has got me in the mood for a beer, alas I have no beer in the fridge.

[Lord Biscuit©]

I think it's an Australian cultural problem. There appears to be some kudos associated with drinking, which is not as apparent in other countries. After spending some time overseas, and coming back to Australia, it was very apparent to me the Australian pubs were very different to pubs in UK or US. People in Australia appeared to be going to pubs in Australia to get drunk.

This is not to say they don't get teen binge drinking in UK or US, but it seemed to me to be much worse in Australia. As for those below drinking age, they only do what their older siblings, friends or parent s do. It simply needs to become more socially unacceptable, just as smoking has become. I think it will be a bit of a change in culture form many.

[Mez]

I'm a binge drinker.  About once a year I get together with other forumsters and get blotto.  But I don't pass out in the street or do other inappropriate stuff.

I understand I'm already damaging my brain with pot - apparently - though the effects of pot seem nowhere near as extreme as from alcohol.

 

I dunno.  I tend to think the term "binge drinking" is just the latest wowser buzzword, because I know that chronic alcoholics are far worse off than binge drinkers.

[Fashion Zombies!]

I agree with everyone else, raising the drinking age won't do jack. Besides, kids are already underage drinking, what would an age limit do? There would just be more underage drinking anyway. People have put drinking in their everyday lifestyles, some even coaching themselves how to go into work drunk/hangover. It'd be like how most people quit smoking, you can't just say 'I won't do it anymore' and everything will be fine.

As a 'youth of today' I know how bad underage drinking is. And I'm shocked that the statistics say '10%' because I can tell you, that 70% of my year level binge drink on the weekends. I'm literally not exaggerating, however my school does have the worst reputation out of all the schools in my area.

Most reasons why I think it happens have already been covered. Parents allow it, it's in fashion to do, peer pressure, role models, the way our lives are etc.

But I can also tell you most youth today are educated about the dangers. In health, we had to do 6 months about the dangers of alcohol. But these kids still go out and get pissed every weekend. I actually know people who don't just binge drink at parties or when they're out with friends, but they get drunk in their room alone, when their parents are in the loungeroom watching television.

I think it's not the education side which fails, but the fact they think they're immortal and liver damage doesn't happen to young people, just old people who go to the pub every Friday night and are old and about to die soon anyway.

This is becoming quite a big problem now. Sure they might just be a bunch of kids getting drunk now, but what happens when they get their license? What if they get into a construction job and because they've taught themselves to deal with a hangover or being drunk, they operate machinery under the influence? Actually, it doesn't even have to be construction. Factory jobs have machinery you have to work too. Now I'd hope people wouldn't be THAT dumb to turn up to work while using a big slicer or something, however I have family members who have.

It's not just their own personal safety of ruining their bodies, or getting violent on public we have to worry about. There's a whole lot of other things too.

The best way we can deal with this is to evaluate our lifestyles. Parents, if not already should be more weary of where their children are Saturday nights, and who they're staying with. Children don't like their parents being overprotective, but sometimes they just have to be. I think a lot of parents aren't aware of what their kids are doing or who they're with, and would be shocked if they knew.

In health classes, don't just have a quick lesson or two about it. Even then, give a more personal approach. Just doing a few worksheets isn't going to scare anyone into not drinking. Bring in a guest speaker to talk about how alcohol affected their lives.

Just those two examples would help cut the percentages of underage drinking in half, which would also help young adults who are legally allowed to drink and abuse that by binge drinking.

[Keridwen]

This is not to say they don't get teen binge drinking in UK or US, but it seemed to me to be much worse in Australia. As for those below drinking age, they only do what their older siblings, friends or parent s do.

Or do the opposite to what they do.

If a kiddie grows up in a house where the parents are all stiff upper lip starch wearing types, the kid will either be exactly the same or be the perfect opposite. Likewise if a kid grows up in a house of alcoholics, they'll either be the same or the opposite, again. So theoretically, it seems that the only way to go about it is moderation. And it's not even a case of parents being forced to drink in moderation even if they don't drink at all, rather treat the idea in moderation.

Not that there are too many people left in the world who don't drink, so it seems. Our Pols lecturer was talking about the drinking age being 21 in America and said "can you imagine university life with no alcohol?? ZOMGNESS111!!1fifty." And everyone (very audibly) went *groan laugh zomg*  - all of which caused much eyebrow raising on my part until I looked at their shiny laptops and remembered they were all rich kids who a) can afford alcohol or b) have time outside of working for a living and "studying" to engage in such activities.

The point I'm trying to make is our reliance on it. It's not even so much culture anymore, as just basic social (and individual) reliance. I think our society as an entity is an alcoholic!

Wouldn't it be hilarious to introduce prohibition to Australia now?

[Mr. Blonde]

Mkay, well, I'll start by stating that I'm a binge drinker.

Why do I do it? Well, personally, I just enjoy it. It's fun. And being a naturally introverted person who finds it hard to talk to the majority of people (although I am getting better at this) the alcohol helps me loosen up.

I can't really think of anything that may have influenced me - my dad has one or two glasses of wine pretty much every night, but I can only remember him doing that for the last few years. The only time I can remember him being really drunk was when he went out for work drinks the night before he went on a business trip to China, and his colleagues kept buying him drinks (someone may have also slipped something into his drink, because he was pretty messed up that night/the next day). And my mum rarely drinks at all.

I used to have a nice little group of friends who were all anti-alcohol. We used to bitch about all the whores in our year who would go out and get drunk every weekend. But in year 11 that all changed when they were peer pressured into drinking and the next thing I know they're blabbering about how awesome drinking is and how much they love it, blah blah blah.

It wasn't until last year that I started drinking. I was reluctant at first. We had a party to go to and my friends were all excited about how they were going to get me drunk. I agreed to only have one or two, which I did, and all in all, it was a fun night.
Those same friends now spend the majority of their money on alcohol and make out with dirty old men so that they'll buy them drinks.

Now I have a new group of close friends (I'm still close with the old friends but don't see them as much anymore) and I have a different mentality. The girl that I guess you could call my best friend and I always look forward to going to parties and drinking (but we haven't really done much of either lately). It's just fun. We get to hang out in a fun atmosphere. But we don't usually drink so much that we pass out or vomit our insides up (although we have both had our bad nights) - we stop just as we reach that point.
And the alcohol helps me talk to people at parties when my friend and her boyfriend decide to have a make-out session and all my other friends are off drunk somewhere. Otherwise I'd probably just sit in a corner and judge people.

I think it's also a societal thing. We have this whole drinking culture where it's perfectly acceptable to drink beer as a casual daily thing, and the binge drinking stems from that.

I don't think that there's any way to stop the binge drinking. Raising the legal age will do nothing, and you can't exactly make it harder to buy alcohol since most underage kids get others to legally buy it for them anyway.

You know one thing I don't get? Parents who give their kids alcohol and let them drink it at home, with the mentality that they'd rather know where they are when they're drinking than have their kids feel that they have to hide it from their parents. Isn't that just encouraging alcoholism?

[James Farrkoff]

You know one thing I don't get? Parents who give their kids alcohol and let them drink it at home, with the mentality that they'd rather know where they are when they're drinking than have their kids feel that they have to hide it from their parents. Isn't that just encouraging alcoholism?

I see where you're coming from. The thing is that everyone's different and while one teen might go out and binge after seeing their parents encouraging them to have a little bit at home, another might just accept that some people drink and that they don't want to be one of them. There is obviously not just one possible outcome. It probably depends more on the words said when the drink is offered by the parents.

Jim

btw pls ignore a lot of wat I said in my first comment bcos I was half asleep. just like now. thats y im using msn or "txt" speak. thankyou.

[blue]

Those same friends now spend the majority of their money on alcohol and make out with dirty old men so that they'll buy them drinks.

Now there's something that needs to be included in any future education campaign! 

It's a complex issue... my parents took the same approach with both my brother and myself, with the result that I rarely drink, and have a low tolerance for alcohol, and my brother can drink almost anyone under the table... we're almost completely opposite. And sure there's the boy/girl difference, but it doesn't account for everything...

Recently I was in a terrible mood, and I think I then understood a little bit of how people feel when they just want to get smashed... this sort of reckless, self destructive wave came over me... and I wondered if I could ever become an alcoholic... 

Aaand then I went to bed like the nanna/nerd I am

Which is fortunate, because it would have ended up pretty messy 

But yeah... I have teenage cousins that I worry about. It's not just the loss of brain cells, it's the danger from pissed idiots around them doing stupid shit, and also from the type of people who prey on inebriated teens 

[Mez]

I have offered alcohol to Ms 16 a couple of times, but she doesn't like the taste.  Nor does Emo Child, though a lot of her friends do drink - she goes to the bogan school.

I would really rather have them at home no matter what they're doing.  Even if they're sticking needles in their arms, I'd like to be able to ensure the needles are clean and the ambulance called if necessary. 

I'm like that in theory.  In practise, I would probably scream bloody murder and send them off to boarding school.    Just like my parents did to me.

[.]

I would really rather have them at home no matter what they're doing.  Even if they're sticking needles in their arms, I'd like to be able to ensure the needles are clean and the ambulance called if necessary. 

nah if i had kids and it got to that stage i'd boot their arses out.

i wonder if part of the problem is because there are so many families with both parents working...parents are too busy to give a shit etc?

[Star Fish]

I agree with those who have said it is a cultural thing. It is an uphill battle to change anything that is seen as cool. Education will help... I'm not so sure about the labelling thing. It  may work to a certain extent, but is it fair on those who want to enjoy alcohol responsibly like having a nice bottle of wine with a meal? And who cares how many pictures of rotting livers are on the labels of the ten or so bottles of assorted cheap piss that go into the party punch?
Probably the most effective way to reduce binge drinking in young drinkers would be upping tax on alcohol. They can't do it if they can't afford it. But again, that isn't going to be a popular solution, and again, punishes those who do drink responsibly (though to a lesser extent than those who drink a lot).
I didn't binge drink as a teenager due to two factors. One was when some of my friends were just getting into alcohol, I rocked up later then most to a party. Some of my friends were merry, one was way beyond that point. The others had essentially decided to stop drinking at that point as they were quite disturbed by her behaviour. She ended up not only vomiting multiple times, stripping off her top and bra, falling over and spraining her ankle but also sleeping with two different guys - one while we were all still there, another stayed over - after punching out the first guy. That was one of her more controlled sessions....
Second was the father of another friend of mine who was a chronic alcoholic and even more chronic sleaze bag.
Seeing the behaviour of these two could possibly have put any one off alcohol for life, but then I discovered what a great social lubricant it could be and that I was cool when I could keep up with the guys. And I could - I was a bit of a champion drinker through later uni years and after. I don't mean drinking till I threw up all the time - I didn't actually do it that often, and I rarely got to the point of throwing up even, but I could drink quite a lot. I'd always stop at a certain point though because I didn't want to lose control completely. I'd always like to know where I was, who I was with, how I was going to get home, that kind of thing.
Now I'm more sensible and maybe only do it twice a year... and that's mainly because I'm worried about the health effects. Unlike some I *like* my brain cells. Plus, alcohol does have quite a few calories