hoptis
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As a non-drinker, I particular enjoyed this look into the consequences of not drinking in this great, goon-guzzling nation of ours. I guess it would be even harder if you're a footballer or cricketer.
There's also some good stats about the damage caused by the use and abuse of everyone's favorite legal drug.
Hope everyone has a safe and fun festive season
From The Age
There's also some good stats about the damage caused by the use and abuse of everyone's favorite legal drug.
Hope everyone has a safe and fun festive season
None for the road
December 10, 2005
With the festive season upon them, teetotallers face an extra battle against peer pressure. Claire Halliday looks at how non-drinkers cope in an alcohol-fuelled society.
DAVID Parkin can still remember the day he tasted his first, and last, bottle of Grange Hermitage. "It was 1995. I'd made a pact with John Elliott that if we won the grand final we'd share a bottle of his Grange. It was a 1955, I think. Worth about $28,000. I drank it out of goblet that had been turned from a beautiful piece of 70 or 80-year-old Murray redgum," says the former Hawthorn football player and coach. "It was all wasted on me."
The 1995 grand final victory aside, Parkin doesn't drink alcohol. He is one of the 16 per cent of Australians who are teetotallers. Having made a conscious decision at what he refers to as "the age of reason", Parkin says his avoidance of alcohol had a lot to do with a relative with an alcohol problem and the worry that he might, just perhaps, have an inherent susceptibility to a similar problem.
As Australia launches into the season of Christmas parties, New Year's celebrations and hot summer days, he admits it can be a frustrating time. "The culture of Australian football has been a very heavy drinking — and a binge-drinking — culture. I spent years going to functions and wouldn't even be able to get a soft drink. That used to irritate me. That's changed a bit but I'm still in the minority. I was at a dinner with 120 people the other week and I would have been the only non-drinker." How does he handle it? "I'm a very obstinate, nasty bugger."
Alcohol — the most widely used mood-changing recreational drug in Australia — plays a part in about 4000 Australian deaths a year. But to avoid it is not easy.
The 2004 National Drug Strategy Household Survey found that 83.6 per cent of those aged 14 and over had consumed alcohol in the past 12 months. According to a survey commissioned by the Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation Limited, 60 per cent of people believe getting drunk is an acceptable part of Australian life. More than a third said it was OK to drink as much as you liked, as long as you didn't drive.
As a teetotaller himself (he stopped drinking alcohol after contracting type 2 diabetes and deciding that drinking was "wasted calories"), the foundation's chief executive, Daryl Smeaton, says that drinking is "the Australian way".
"The boys are into the big shout at the bar and you say 'no, I don't drink' and they say 'what's wrong with you?'," Smeaton says. "There's not very many of us."
For comedian Dave Hughes, 35, living in "hard-drinking" Warrnambool and choosing brain cells over beer was "really hard".
"When I was younger I used to get too drunk every time I drank and it just depressed me," Hughes says. "I'd been locked up a few times for being too drunk. I was never violent — just being hopeless, falling asleep on the road, climbing up trees and that sort of rubbish. Then I decided that was it. It was November 1992."
Even today, and despite his public on-air admissions about his non-drinking status, Hughes still encounters the odd person who seems determined to get him off the wagon. "I say, 'I don't drink' and they go, 'Come on, just have one — come on.' You still get that," he says.
Does it annoy him? Hughes takes a sip of his coffee and shrugs his shoulders. "I just accept it because I used to be like that too. More the merrier. When you're drinking you want everyone else to be drunk as well. That only increases the joy."
Although he says he still likes to see his friends drink, Hughes admits that when too much alcohol is involved, people can get annoying.
"I was at the stage where I thought, 'What the f--- did I do last night?' People would tell me I was hilarious but I could never remember it. There were no memories for me there — no memories of the good times," Hughes says.
In many ways, though, he still misses it.
"It was fun," he says. "Probably the most fun times I've had in my life — even to this day, drinking with my friends when I was 18, 19, 20, just sitting on a bar stool with the guys."
Then there is the other side. Although per capita consumption has declined in recent years — Australia is now ranked 23rd for alcohol consumption out of the 58 countries included in World Drink Trends — an estimated 31,132 Australians died from risky alcohol use between 1992-2001. The National Alcohol Strategy found that 41 to 70 per cent of violent crimes are committed under the influence of alcohol. A quarter of the violence happens within 200 metres of a licensed premises.
Ask Leanne Smith, 46, why she doesn't drink alcohol and her answer comes quickly: "My father's father was an alcoholic and it broke his family up. Nobody ever spoke about it but I think it did affect them in some sort of way."
To fit in with an alcohol-soaked society, Smith spent her teenage years testing a "daggy assortment" of drinks that included masala and Coke, Bacardi and cheap wine.
The epiphany for the personal assistant came when she was 18, on holiday in Queensland. "I made myself ill," she says. "For the next year I may have drunk a bit but that was pretty much it."
Smith believes that many people out socialising feel uneasy when they discover a non-drinker in their midst. "I wonder why it is interesting to them and why they have to push the point. I think they are uncomfortable with someone not drinking around them," she says. "They say, 'Wouldn't you just like to sit on one drink?' and I think, 'How on earth would that make you happy?' "
Smith wants to make it clear that she is not ideologically opposed to alcohol. Invite her to dinner and she always brings a bottle of good wine for everyone else. "I don't mind other people drinking," Smith says. "But I do think you can have fun without alcohol and if you mention that you are seen as the biggest wowser on earth. It does annoy me that people feel they can't loosen up without a drink."
It's a feeling that has been part of Australian culture since the earliest days of colonisation, says Coalition On Alcohol Drug Education director Graeme Rule. "I believe that the drinking culture is a problem that is uniquely Australian," Rule says. "Robert Hughes writes about it in The Fatal Shore. Food was hard to get but rum became the currency. When the harshness of early Australian life got too much, people would drown their sorrows. You used to get 100 lashes for whistling, if you weren't supposed to. It's no wonder they hit the grog. We're also a very hot country. Drinking is a way to cool off."
Rule, a life-long teetotaller, says non-drinkers in Australia are made to feel "like social deviants".
"It is hard for people to be non-drinkers in this culture," he says. "Time and time again, restaurants and cafes that should know better provide no alternatives to alcohol. I know of people who have taken non-alcoholic wine to BYO restaurants and had the waiting staff refuse to open it."
Criminal defence lawyer, Rob Stary, 49, swore off alcohol 10 years ago.
"I received a phone call one Saturday night from a client. They were being charged with murder and wanted me to immediately attend the police station and I couldn't," Stary says. "I'd been at home having a few drinks. Doing the work that I do, you have to be on your mettle." Stary decided to stop drinking.
The fact that his parents were only social drinkers, Stary says, helped form his take-it-or-leave-it attitude to alcohol. Among his peers, though, Stary describes himself as "something of an outcast".
"In legal circles, most people drink," he says. "I can't think of anyone else who doesn't. People know I don't and I don't really feel pressured by them, but I still get people saying, 'Go on, just have a drink.' "
For him, though, the nature of his work only reinforces his stance: "In my work I see the damage alcohol can do," he says.
For some teetotallers, it is simply a question of taste.
In the heady 1980s days of Australian Test cricket, fast-bowler Geoff Lawson was entrenched in the most Australian of cultures — through 12 international tours. "A few people were astonished that I didn't have a beer at the end of the day," he says.
"I couldn't be bothered. My father would have a quiet beer and I'd have a sip and I just never enjoyed it," he says. "It's bitter. It doesn't really quench your thirst effectively, either. I don't see the attraction."
One perk of teetotalling, according to Lawson, was the fact that he usually managed to keep his wallet in his pocket.
"I'd offer to shout and they'd say, 'Don't worry, it's just a soft drink,' " Lawson says. "The thing is, a soft drink can cost as much as a beer. I did all right."
Like Lawson, journalist Phil Johnson has spent a lot of time surrounded by heavy drinking but simply doesn't like the taste. "It's funny how many people say 'I wish I had the willpower' but there's no willpower involved," Johnson says. "I wouldn't eat dog poo or anchovies. I don't drink alcohol because I just don't like the taste."
It was a realisation that dawned on him in 1994, at the age of 22, after a fairly ordinary Australian boy's initiation from adolescence to adulthood spent sampling beer, spirits and all manner of sugared-up mixed drinks.
Although he still feels the occasional pull of peer pressure and the feeling that his non-drinking is somehow ruining the fun of other companions, Johnson is resolute in his abstinence. "I know it's not going to make me dance any better; I know it's not going to make me more charismatic," he says. "It's more like a sedative."
Australian non-drinkers
- Criminal lawyer Rob Stary
- Former footballer Tommy Hafey
- Former footballer David Parkin
- Performer Tracy Bartram
- Comedian Dave Hughes
- 3AW court reporter Phil Johnson
- Labor senator Stephen Conroy
- State minister Rob Hulls
- Former cricketer Geoff Lawson
- Basketballers Lindsay and Andrew Gaze
- Former racing driver Peter Brock
Non-drinkers overseas
- Singer and actor Jennifer Lopez
- Billionaire Donald Trump
- Actor and comedian Robin Williams
- Actor John Travolta
- Actor Toby Maguire
- Russian President Vladimir Putin
- US President George Bush
- Actor Mel Gibson
- Actor Denzel Washington
- Soccer player David Beckham
- Singer and actor Tom Waits
From The Age
