New Zealand and the Booze Culture

Yes many of us Kiwi's have been through the ages of 16 to 30, and many equally users of alcohol during those ages.  I'm a hypocrite here, because I too was an imbiber, met my wife drunk, married my wife and got drunk, and carried on drinking until I saw the brighter side of life and stopped being a drunk around age 42.  I have lived that life so I'm appropriately qualified to write this piece.

What am I going to touch on?  Several things really.  The damage drinking does to relationships.  Family violence.  Child Sex Abuse.   Good Health versus Bad Health.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not about to ban alcohol.  I'm more in the mould of prevention and safety.  But what is realistic is that many relationships between the ages of 16 and 30 (maybe even older) are brought about by alcoholic meetings.  Night clubbing, parties, social occasions where people drink to gain courage, and to find like minded folks that share a common thread, in this case how they behave drunk.  It's reality.  The drinking culture is probably the cause of many relationships and herein begins my story.

Let's start with those one night stands.  How many people have found themselves having casual sex when drunk, and then having to carry the burden of that meeting?  You guessed it, two repercussions.  Unwanted stigmatism (he or she is loose) and unwanted pregnancies.  And how many of those unwanted pregnancies lead to bad marriages?  In fact this leads onto why a lot of marriages don't last.  It's not just that both couples sober up and find they aren't really compatible, more like one of the couple sobers up (during pregnancy) and the other remains drunk.  And that is a huge issue.  Many women do the right thing for their baby, stop smoking and drinking and care for the life of their baby.  But inevitably the male partner continues his lifestyle as he's not burdened with the life of a child.  Ergo, the relationship collapses through pressure and imbalance.

And through this collapse is borne the issues in society we all cringe about when we hear about them, but many are not willing to tackle the real issue.  The imbalance in relationships, as mentioned, suddenly manifest themselves in both family violence and child sex abuse, not to mention gambling and other issues.  The break down in the partnership where a woman comes clean and a male continues his boyhood habits without check is evident in many relationship breakups throughout the country, probably throughout the world where alcohol is freely available.

What to do about it?  Join the States and make alcohol only available to over 21's.  Too often many 16 - 21 year olds formulate their life skills based on alcohol, and more importantly alcohol abuse.  Binge drinking is a societal problem that could be avoided through regulation.  If these at risk teens are denied access to alcohol that leads to alcohol abuse (and for some further into drug abuse) then they grow up with a cleaner living perspective and if relationships are formed, it's alcohol free and less prone to accidental pregnancies and poor relationships.

Yes I speak after the facts.  I was 27 when I met my wife, I was a drinker, I became a drunk, I became abusive when I couldn't understand why my wife didn't want to join my drinking circle.  I was living my life, she was living the family life.  I was out of place, out of time, and out of luck.  All my issues lead to a breakdown.  I lost what I had, everything, and had to fight hard to try and get it all back.  I still drink, maybe one pint a month if I'm lucky.  I have a distant relationship with my daughters, my estranged wife and I speak well to each other, better probably than at most parts in the latter part of our doomed relationship, but I still lost a lot.  As many New Zealanders lose too, especially children of damaged relationships.  Maybe it's time we stopped spending money on fighting Family Violence, fighting child sex abuse, all after the fact, and confront the real issue, drinking relationships that suffer dire change.  If under 21's are brought up alcohol free, and find themselves in good employment with a steady social life, then when they hit 21, it stands to reason far less will have behavioural drinking problems and will become more aware of how they interact with others sober rather than drunk.

Mental Illnesses - a Family Affair

I'm fully aware that mental health services like to say that an individual with a mental illness is an individual.  Very rarely do they look deeper into the family situation.

In my 44 year association with mental illness (my father was diagnosed with Manic depression [Bipolar] and Paranoid Schizophrenia in 1967) I have views that tend to be overlooked by the experts in favour of just dealing with that sufferer.  My research through other family members shows that maybe I was predisposed to be mentally ill, as are all my siblings and wider whanau.  And my further research once I was diagnosed tends to suggest that the hereditary link is an important component in someones own affliction and how they react to The Experts.

My own family suggests that all mental illnesses are hereditary, a rogue gene or something similar.  My paternal grandmother needed treatment in hospital, my father's younger sister required intervention and hospitalisation, and my father had numerous visits to hospitals for his care.  In 2000 I too required hospitalisation and since have been hospitalised 5 times for my own Bipolar and Schizophrenia (since rediagnosed as Schizo Affective Disorder).

Why this intrigues me?  Since I have been in the system I have talked to people at length on their own backgrounds as far as a mental illness is concerned and though many didn't have a parent with a full blown mental condition, they did have family members that were into doing drugs or alcohol (self medicating) and these people had mood disorders and due to this they themselves found themselves clashing with those parents afflicted.  As teenagers their lives often became unbearable and they either left the nest early due to that conflict, or continued to clash until they then needed medical intervention.  Now we are aware that with a lot of families there is always a predominantly dominant partner and they are the ones that cause the most grief to the susceptible.

This happened with me, although I will give my father some credit knowing he was mentally ill and mostly was alright.  But when we clashed it was world war three.  For reasons of my own sanity and to try and quell the family issues, my mother suggested I join the forces, so in May 1975, under duress, I joined the Navy.  Therein my dealings with mental illness ceased (my father wouldn't talk to me for years for not going to university). Then in the 90's, happily married, very successful at work, and enjoying the great middle class life offered by our wonderful country, the pressures started growing.  All through my life I had been counting the days when I passed milestones my father hadn't passed.  That too brought pressure until in 1998, my father died the day before my sisters wedding and the added pressure burnt a whole in my psyche and I started regressing. For two years I was a walking timebomb, and it I didn't see in myself the warning signs I'd seen in my father, and eventually I bombed.  I was having issues with my oldest daughter and they mirrored the scraps I had with my own father and I missed those warning signs, as you do when you are unwell.

But back to families and conflict.  A lot of people in families have relationship issues and these lead to widespread conflict.  I think when Mental Health services are dealing with individuals, they also need to take into context the family dynamic, afterall when most of these young people are released back to the family they are stepping back into a conflict situation.  The old adage "Opposites attract, Likes repel" is brought to bear in this scenario and often young sufferers are sent back into a situation they don't won't to be in.  And to make matters worse, not many young people with a lived experience of mental illness are able to go out by themselves to live and have only the family/whanau to go back to.  SO!!

Should we also get MH services to widen their brief and check out the family situation to help them cope with their young family member?  A big ask, but something that I suggest needs to be addressed to allow our tangata whaiora to slip smoothly into a family unit that will care for their loved one, not disassociate them!  If a family member that is causing the strife is addressed and their life made better then I see an improvement for the outlook of our tangata whaiora.