Substance Abuse

Society's accepted, valued and much appreciated relaxant, alcohol. What social occasion would be complete without alcohol freely available and pressed upon those present to enjoy the company of others?

Alcohol consumption is considered great good fun, an innocently enjoyable past-time for people who appreciate the finer things that life has to offer. Alcohol, a socially-imbibed spirit-raising substance that makes it so much more pleasurable to be out and about in the company of friends.

Whoa, here's another take on alcohol consumption: group therapy sessions, rehabilitation, individuals caught in the trap of alcohol dependency, temporary loss of mental capacity, loss of employment, their friends, their occasional sobriety, their self-respect, their families, their matrimonial homes, their future.

Women entrapped by their need to consume alcohol turning to the sex trade for a living. Men incapable of facing the realities of life without the support that alcohol provides for them. Children observing the behaviour of their parents, and eager to partake of this treasured relaxant and social disinhibitor, learning a life-time of grief.

Alcohol-induced illness, hospital stays, domestic violence, highway accidents resulting in great harm to other innocent people, suicide attempts, cirrhosis of the liver, cancers in places where alcohol manages to ingratiate itself into the body's vulnerable areas. The incidence of injuries, illnesses and accidents related to the use and abuse of alcohol far outstrips those attributable to the use and misuse of recreational and illicit drug use.

Identify alcohol-dependence? Responses to three vital questions tell the story.

1. Do you drink alone?
2. Do you drink to attain a modicum of self-confidence?
3. Do you drink as a way of eluding reality?

Immoderate alcohol consumption not only has the potential to destroy an individual's life, with sufficient fall-out to do the same to that individual's family members, but it has its considerable costs to society in lost productivity, health-care costs, policing and monitoring costs. Then there's the issue of premature deaths.

How difficult is it, really, to accommodate oneself to the sanity of "the golden mean". Moderation in all things is a dictum brought down through the ages, as a way in which individuals can accustom themselves to living a reasonable lifestyle. Try it. It works.