poledriver
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Alcohol is destroying us: Four Australians share their stories
LIKES a drink, or drinks too much? Whether it’s an indifferent attitude to the excess consumption of alcohol, or our ignorance when it comes to the effect it has on our bodies, Australia’s most socially accepted drug is indeed destroying lives.
The newly-released Alcohol’s Burden of Disease in Australia report found that alcohol is responsible for 15 deaths every day. That’s a 60 per cent increase from a decade ago. In addition to this, another 430 people are admitted to hospital for treatment for alcohol-related injuries or disease every day.
If you are surprised by these statistics, you’re not alone.
“The Australian medical profession is profoundly concerned that the harms of alcohol are getting worse — domestic violence, depression, deaths from trauma, obesity — the list goes on,” Dr Stephen Parnis, Emergency Physician and Vice President of the AMA tells news.com.au.
“It is time to deal with this epidemic, and denial will only allow it to get worse. The evidence of harm is absolutely conclusive.”
Indeed, the latest Cancer Report from the World Health Organisation found that while 8.2 million people died from cancer globally in 2012, 3.7 million of those deaths could have been avoided by “lifestyle changes”, including limiting alcohol.
“About 5 per cent of all cancer is due to alcohol consumption — that’s an important part of the preventable cancer story,” the Cancer Council Australia’s Terry Slevin said at the time. “Let’s make no bones about it: alcohol is a class one known carcinogen, it’s listed by the World Health Organisation as such.”
But the affect alcohol can have on an individual’s health is only part of the story. In 2012, the Salvation Army commissioned research as part of Alcohol Awareness week into the effect alcohol abuse has on families. Among many worrisome findings, they revealed that 4.2 million Australians know families where they think children are not being properly cared for because of someone’s alcohol abuse. Add this to the fact that almost half of all domestic homicides are alcohol related, and that the proportion of people experiencing physical abuse by someone under the influence of alcohol increased from 1.5 million in 2010 to 1.7 million in 2013, and you’ve got yourself a worrying epidemic.
News.com.au spoke to four people whose lives have all been affected by alcohol in different ways. When we asked each of them if they thought the Australian public were aware of just how damaging alcohol can be, the answer was a resounding ‘No’.
“Alcohol is such a huge part of the Australian culture, drinking at every social gathering is just widely accepted as ‘normal’,” Rebecca Wheller told us. “I think it’s only when we take an extended break from drinking that we realise just how damaging and unnecessary it really is.”
“A lot of people are shocked when they find out the reason that I don’t drink is because I’m a recovering alcoholic,” adds 33-year-old Emma Fahy Davis. “But the truth is, you don’t have to be an alcoholic to have a problem with alcohol. If your drinking impacts on other areas of your life, you’ve got a problem.”
Here’s how alcohol has changed four Australian lives …
WHEN YOUR FATHER’S AN ALCOHOLIC: Finn, blogger at throughthickandfinn.com
I’d say I have a somewhat conflicted experience and relationship with alcohol. This is because while I socially drink in moderation, and don’t yet intend on giving up, I also grew up with an alcoholic father who was more than a stool-perched, beer-drinking alcoholic.
Growing up with his alcoholism involved police visits to the family home, crisis teams for attempted suicides and often myself and other family members leaving the house to stay elsewhere in the hope to just get away from the drama caused by the erratic behaviour. It also resulted in me developing personality traits that are characteristically common when growing up in with any addicted person or in a dysfunctional environment. These traits, such as perfectionism, feeling ‘different’ from other people, people-pleasing, an inability to ‘follow through’ and being hyper-vigilant, meant I wasn’t just left with the grief and anger around the loss of a parent.
I got pretty quickly things were different in our family compared to others, but I was also lucky because my mother spoke openly about the problems. I know a lot of families exist in the shame or it becomes the “elephant in the room”, and I am grateful I didn’t have to deal with that added burden of not being able to share my problems. Having said that, at a young age you don’t really sit around talking with primary school friends about the problems at home and I just knew that our family life was stressful compared to other friends’ homes.
I would say I performed fairly well at school, but the problems at home always outweighed my concern for my grades. Quite frankly, surviving emotionally becomes a higher priority than worrying about what you’re learning in English class. Socially I was healthy and had many friends, but I always had the characteristic of being “the responsible one” and not easily being able to let go and have fun. This still manages to be a problem and I do take life pretty seriously. I am always waiting for something terrible to happen and I always think forewarned is forearmed, but it’s tiring being that way.
As a teenager I would often wonder if I would grow up and be an alcoholic, because there were times where — like most young teenagers or young adults do — I drank too much. However, as I got into my mid-twenties I realised I didn’t feel the compulsion to keep drinking and I could stop when I knew I should, which alcoholics — like my father — find virtually impossible to do.
Alcohol, at its worst, disintegrated my family before my very eyes. I’ve often looked back and thought, “how did it get to this?”: immediate and extended family members all estranged and not in relationships with each other, the breakdown of my parent’s marriage, the decaying of my father’s health, and my sibling and I left with psychological issues; such as panic attacks, generalised anxiety and, at various times, deep depression.
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/he...re-their-stories/story-fneuzlbd-1227032066650
LIKES a drink, or drinks too much? Whether it’s an indifferent attitude to the excess consumption of alcohol, or our ignorance when it comes to the effect it has on our bodies, Australia’s most socially accepted drug is indeed destroying lives.
The newly-released Alcohol’s Burden of Disease in Australia report found that alcohol is responsible for 15 deaths every day. That’s a 60 per cent increase from a decade ago. In addition to this, another 430 people are admitted to hospital for treatment for alcohol-related injuries or disease every day.
If you are surprised by these statistics, you’re not alone.
“The Australian medical profession is profoundly concerned that the harms of alcohol are getting worse — domestic violence, depression, deaths from trauma, obesity — the list goes on,” Dr Stephen Parnis, Emergency Physician and Vice President of the AMA tells news.com.au.
“It is time to deal with this epidemic, and denial will only allow it to get worse. The evidence of harm is absolutely conclusive.”
Indeed, the latest Cancer Report from the World Health Organisation found that while 8.2 million people died from cancer globally in 2012, 3.7 million of those deaths could have been avoided by “lifestyle changes”, including limiting alcohol.
“About 5 per cent of all cancer is due to alcohol consumption — that’s an important part of the preventable cancer story,” the Cancer Council Australia’s Terry Slevin said at the time. “Let’s make no bones about it: alcohol is a class one known carcinogen, it’s listed by the World Health Organisation as such.”
But the affect alcohol can have on an individual’s health is only part of the story. In 2012, the Salvation Army commissioned research as part of Alcohol Awareness week into the effect alcohol abuse has on families. Among many worrisome findings, they revealed that 4.2 million Australians know families where they think children are not being properly cared for because of someone’s alcohol abuse. Add this to the fact that almost half of all domestic homicides are alcohol related, and that the proportion of people experiencing physical abuse by someone under the influence of alcohol increased from 1.5 million in 2010 to 1.7 million in 2013, and you’ve got yourself a worrying epidemic.
News.com.au spoke to four people whose lives have all been affected by alcohol in different ways. When we asked each of them if they thought the Australian public were aware of just how damaging alcohol can be, the answer was a resounding ‘No’.
“Alcohol is such a huge part of the Australian culture, drinking at every social gathering is just widely accepted as ‘normal’,” Rebecca Wheller told us. “I think it’s only when we take an extended break from drinking that we realise just how damaging and unnecessary it really is.”
“A lot of people are shocked when they find out the reason that I don’t drink is because I’m a recovering alcoholic,” adds 33-year-old Emma Fahy Davis. “But the truth is, you don’t have to be an alcoholic to have a problem with alcohol. If your drinking impacts on other areas of your life, you’ve got a problem.”
Here’s how alcohol has changed four Australian lives …
WHEN YOUR FATHER’S AN ALCOHOLIC: Finn, blogger at throughthickandfinn.com
I’d say I have a somewhat conflicted experience and relationship with alcohol. This is because while I socially drink in moderation, and don’t yet intend on giving up, I also grew up with an alcoholic father who was more than a stool-perched, beer-drinking alcoholic.
Growing up with his alcoholism involved police visits to the family home, crisis teams for attempted suicides and often myself and other family members leaving the house to stay elsewhere in the hope to just get away from the drama caused by the erratic behaviour. It also resulted in me developing personality traits that are characteristically common when growing up in with any addicted person or in a dysfunctional environment. These traits, such as perfectionism, feeling ‘different’ from other people, people-pleasing, an inability to ‘follow through’ and being hyper-vigilant, meant I wasn’t just left with the grief and anger around the loss of a parent.
I got pretty quickly things were different in our family compared to others, but I was also lucky because my mother spoke openly about the problems. I know a lot of families exist in the shame or it becomes the “elephant in the room”, and I am grateful I didn’t have to deal with that added burden of not being able to share my problems. Having said that, at a young age you don’t really sit around talking with primary school friends about the problems at home and I just knew that our family life was stressful compared to other friends’ homes.
I would say I performed fairly well at school, but the problems at home always outweighed my concern for my grades. Quite frankly, surviving emotionally becomes a higher priority than worrying about what you’re learning in English class. Socially I was healthy and had many friends, but I always had the characteristic of being “the responsible one” and not easily being able to let go and have fun. This still manages to be a problem and I do take life pretty seriously. I am always waiting for something terrible to happen and I always think forewarned is forearmed, but it’s tiring being that way.
As a teenager I would often wonder if I would grow up and be an alcoholic, because there were times where — like most young teenagers or young adults do — I drank too much. However, as I got into my mid-twenties I realised I didn’t feel the compulsion to keep drinking and I could stop when I knew I should, which alcoholics — like my father — find virtually impossible to do.
Alcohol, at its worst, disintegrated my family before my very eyes. I’ve often looked back and thought, “how did it get to this?”: immediate and extended family members all estranged and not in relationships with each other, the breakdown of my parent’s marriage, the decaying of my father’s health, and my sibling and I left with psychological issues; such as panic attacks, generalised anxiety and, at various times, deep depression.
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/he...re-their-stories/story-fneuzlbd-1227032066650
