Sober N Clean

Seven out of 10 Korean males and three out of 10 females drink alcohol every day, a survey showed Monday. About 8 percent of them drink an average of 40 grams of alcohol per session, equivalent to five glasses of soju distilled alcohol made from grain a day.

According to Prof. Park Jong-tae and Chung Hyung-jun of Korea University medical Center, about 72 percent of 3,578 male respondents and 32 percent of 4,298 female respondents in Korea drink alcohol seven times a week.

The older or the less educated they were, the chances of their drinking heavily were higher. In the case of males, the earlier a man started to drink, the more often he drank. The researchers also found that those who tend to binge drink were also more likely to drink often.

The drinkers themselves often perceived their drinking as a problem _ about 27 percent of men and 12 percent of women answered that they have a serious drinking problem.

Both groups said they feel they should quit drinking; are always being criticized for it; feel guilty about their drinking behavior; or always have to eat something to deal with a hangover.

'In Canada, only about 5.8 percent said they had a problem with drinking in a similar study. Now that people know it is a problem, society should help them solve it,' Park said.

Drinking has been a major concern in Korea for quite a long time. According to the National Tax Service, about 3.29 million kiloliters of liquor were consumed here last year, up 3.8 percent from 2006. The figure is equivalent to 72 bottles of soju or 107 bottles of beer per adult.

According to the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention, drinking eight or nine glasses of soju can double the risk of hypertension or diabetes.

The center suggested in 2005 that at most a man should drink less than two glasses of soju, and a woman one glass three times a week.

source: Korea Times

A study of U.S. college students found that binge drinkers, even when legally intoxicated, believe they having adequate driving abilities.

"Binge drinkers are individuals who, when they drink, typically drink to get drunk," first author Cecile A. Marczinski of Northern Kentucky University said in a statement.

Study participants were 20 male and 20 female social-drinking college students -- 24 binge drinkers, 16 non-binge drinkers -- ages 21 to 29. All participants attended two sessions: one during which they received a moderate dose of alcohol, 0.65 g/kg, and one during which they received a placebo.

Following each session/dose, researchers measured the students' performance during a simulated driving task, and also measured their subjective responses, including ratings of sedation, stimulation and driving abilities.

"After being given an intoxicating dose of alcohol, all of these individuals -- both binge and non-binge drinkers -- were very poor drivers when tested on a driving simulator," Marczinski said. "However, when all of the participants are asked to rate their driving ability, the binge drinkers reported that they had a greater ability to drive compared to the non-binge drinkers."

The findings are scheduled to be published in the July issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and is available online.
________
source: United Press International

Alcoholism is among the most savage, heart-breaking and destructive of all forms of entertainment. Its awful legacy includes sundered families, highway fatalities and "Arthur 2: On the Rocks." But Kingsley Amis's drunkopedia "Everyday Drinking" renews one's faith in the bottle. How bad can it be to tuck away five glasses of wine and a couple of belts of Scotch on a Saturday night, one wonders, when the King did worse on a Tuesday afternoon (and lasted an above-average 73 years)?

The newly-collected volume of Amis columns and essays about how (and, crucially, why) to drink does not lack for authority. Amis was not just a tippler but a "drink-ist," in the formulation of fellow specialist Christopher Hitchens, who provides an introduction and an (invaluable, to Americans) glossary. (Poteen, Hitchens says, is "an aggressive species of Irish moonshine," while dipsography is "writing about drinking (in reverse of the more common practice)."

I'll go a step further than Hitchens: Amis was an alcoholite. In this (of course) bar-sized book you will find no nonsense about the dangers of crawling into the bottle but brisk advice on how to make yourself comfortable there. There are chapters on the boozer's diet (cut back on solids), a recipe for a morning pick-me-up ("an excellent heartener and sustainer at the outset of a hard day, when you have in prospect one of those grueling nominal festivities like Christmas morning, the wedding of an old friend of your wife's or taking the family over to Gran's for Sunday dinner") and maintenance of the hangover.

This last is helpfully divided by Amis into the P.H. (physical hangover) and the M.H. (metaphysical hangover). Other day-after analysts, Amis astutely notes, "omit altogether the psychological, moral, emotional, spiritual aspects: all that vast, vague, awful, shimmering metaphysical superstructure that makes the hangover a (fortunately) unique route to self-knowledge and self-realization."
___________
source: New York Post

India is one of the largest producers of alcohol in the world and there has been a steady increase in its production over the last 15 years, according to fresh statistics.

India is a dominant producer of alcohol in the South-East Asian region with 65 per cent of the total share and contributes to around seven per cent of the total alcohol beverage imports into the region.

More than two-thirds of the total beverage alcohol consumption within the region is in India, according to figures in the newly compiled Alcohol Atlas of India.

There has been a steady increase in the production of alcohol in the country, with the production doubling from 887.2 million litres in 1992-93 to 1,654 million litres in 1999-2000 and was expected to treble to 2300 million litres by 2007-08.

The prevalence of alcohol use is still low in India as per some studies done across the country. The consumption is two litres per person per year.

However, though the overall consumption is low, patterns of alcohol consumption vary throughout the country. Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Goa and Northeastern states have much higher proportion of alcohol consumption in the country.

Women tend to drink more in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim in the North East and Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh in the rest of the country.

The statistics show an extreme gender difference in patterns of consumption of alcohol.

Prevalence among women has consistently been estimated at less than five per cent but is much higher in the northeastern states.

Significantly higher use has been recorded among tribal, rural and lower socio-economic urban sections. The unrecorded consumption and expenditure on alcohol still remains high in India as in other South East Asian countries such as Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

A substantial portion of family income is spent on alcohol, more so in rural households, which also tend to be poor and marginalised (32 per cent urban and 24 per cent rural).

The statistics also show that alcoholism increases suicidal tendencies, incidents of domestic violence and affects the ability of a person to concentrate at work.

A study conducted by the NIMHANS, Bangalore and sponsored by the World Health Organisation shows that 20 per cent of women reported domestic violence and 94.5 per cent of women identified their husband's alcohol consumption as a significant risk factor in incidents of domestic violence.

The study shows that people indulging in alcohol use are much more likely to skip work and college as well as indulge in gambling and lottery.

While non-users of alcohol missed going to college or work 13.8 per cent of the time, users skipped work and college 33 per cent of the time.

It also found that alcohol and crime are closely related.
_____
source: http://www.financialexpress.com

The Ottawa area will be getting two residential drug treatment centres for youth between the ages of 13 and 17, says the chief executive of the Champlain Local Health Integration Network.

The long-awaited plan, which will goes before the health network board for approval on May 28, calls for a 15-bed residential facility for English-speaking youth on the west side and a separate five-bed facility for francophone youth on the east side.

The program already has strong support from the province, the city and police Chief Vern White, Dr. Robert Cushman said in an interview yesterday. "It's gonna happen."

As it stands, there are no residential treatment facilities in the region for youth under the age of 16. Some addicted young people are sent to Thunder Bay and even farther away for treatment.

Community leaders have been pushing for a youth residential facility for about 20 years and a handful of plans have never come to fruition. In June 2006, for example, then-mayor Bob Chiarelli said he would ask fellow councillors for support to buy the former Rideau Correctional Centre near Burritts Rapids and convert it into a treatment centre. The proposal never coalesced.

The treatment centre, as outlined yesterday, is scaled down from earlier plans, which called for as many as 48 beds. The most recent report, delivered only last month, considered a 28-bed model.

Dr. Cushman said the new model is even smaller because the centre can't sacrifice quality. Research shows that the best residential programs result in a success rate of up to 80 per cent. This is what the Champlain region should aim for, he said.

That means the program must invest in the best interventions and staff and have supports in the community for youth when they return home from the residential program.

"You don't just want to parachute these kids back into the community," said Dr. Cushman. "It's better to start with a few beds and do it right and build it over time."

Although there has been no cost suggested for buying or renovating facilities to house the centres, the cost of running the residential program is estimated at more than $2 million a year, which would come from health network's budget for addictions and mental health.

The health network is considering a Carp Road facility as the west-side location. The building is currently used by the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group as the Meadow Creek adult addiction centre, but the program is scheduled to be moved into Ottawa this summer, said Dr. Cushman.

The youth program is to accept about 80 teens a year, each for a stay of about 90 days. Dr. Cushman estimates that triple that number of addicted teens would benefit from a residential program.

Pauline Sawyer, executive director at the Alwood Treatment Centre, said the residential facility with 14 beds for 16- to 22-year-olds near Carleton Place has a waiting list that is three to six months long.

"There's a huge need for beds for those 16 and under," she said. "We've been waiting for this for 15 or 20 years."

Mike Beauchesne, executive director of the Dave Smith Youth Treatment Centre on Bronson Avenue, said there may be considerable pent-up demand for the program because nothing like it has been available before.

He has sent teens as far away as Manitoba for treatment, which he admits is not an optimum solution because they are so far from their families. "We're seeing kids come through the door who commence use at 12 or 13 years of age."

While the number of beds in this proposal is smaller than the original plan, the important thing is that the centres are being established, he said.

"I can't say at this point that it is a fait accompli," said Mr. Beauchesne. "It looks good. I'm not ready to pop the champagne yet."

Dr. Cushman says youth addiction has been the "orphan" of health care. Although he can't explain why little has been done about establishing a residential program for drug-addicted youth, despite decades of effort, he says he should be held responsible for his term as head of the health network.

"What we're doing is building a foundation. We want to build from there."
_____
source: © The Ottawa Citizen 2008

Drinking alcohol dulls the brain's ability to detect threats, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday in a study that helps explain why people who are drunk cannot tell when the guy at the end of the bar is angling for a fight.

They said the study is the first to show how alcohol affects the human brain as it responds to threats.

"You see this all of the time. People get into confrontations when they are intoxicated that they probably wouldn't get into when they are sober," said Jodi Gilman of the National Institutes on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, whose study appears in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Gilman studied 12 people who were given intravenous infusions of alcohol and then monitored their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging while they looked at pictures of frightened and neutral faces.

Her team did the same study on these people when they were given a simple saline infusion as a placebo.

As expected, when people were given the placebo, their brains responded to the fearful faces.

"Our brains respond more to fearful stimuli," Gilman said in a telephone interview. "They signal to us that we are in threatening situations."

When these same people were given infusions of alcohol, however, this response was dulled, suggesting that while intoxicated, "our brain can't distinguish between the threatening and nonthreatening stimuli," said Gilman.

She said this impaired appreciation for threats could lead to a host of risky situations, including drunk driving. And it also explains why alcohol is sometimes called a social lubricant.

"People have used alcohol for years to become euphoric and to decrease anxiety. Alcohol has been used in particular to increase sociability. How alcohol acts on the brain to produce these effects has not been well understood or studied," Gilman said.

Her study found that alcohol increases activity in a reward center of the brain known as the striatum. And they found a link between the level of activation in this region and how intoxicated people said they were feeling, which could help account for the addictive properties of alcohol.

"This is important because we think we can develop potential treatments for alcoholism," Gilman said.

People in the study were social drinkers, not heavy drinkers. Gilman said the research team plans to conduct the study in heavy drinkers next.
____
source: Reuters

The Government's decision to implement legislation to regulate the sale and use of alcohol is winning widespread praise from those who deal with the fallout from alcohol abuse.

"Families can now close ranks and look at the real dangers of alcohol abuse," says Andrew Conway, senior clinical child psychologist with the Mater hospital.

"Our children are supposed to be our treasures, but what are we doing to protect them? The permission we give our children to drink is a national scandal.

"We need to deal with this urgently, because we're talking about a lot of children and the tremendously disabling brain disease of alcoholism, which robs a child and their family of the personhood of this child."

Like many people working with adolescents in the county, Conway recognises the value of this legislation."If we did not have new laws, the country would need a rash of treatment centres in 10 years' time to deal with the problem," he says.

Addiction counsellors will be the first to recognise the Government's vital step towards national recovery. Because when an alcoholic admits that they have a problem, they're more than half-way into the solution.

When a government recognises its country has a problem, it stands on the same ground. These new laws, and more to follow, bring hope -- a national campaign for recovery can begin. Of course, it's regrettable that the legislation has taken this long, but denial and resistance is the nature of the beast. Like an addict, the country needed to hit rock bottom before it was ready to face its problem.

Until now, those working with the negative consequences of alcohol abuse were managing upwards -- it was difficult to create awareness of the ill-effects of excessive drinking when our Government was colluding in the denial.

But that's over now. Every great journey begins with a first step. So where to from here?

Conway wants a well-funded prevention campaign across the board (health, justice and education). In particular, he'd like to see a huge improvement in recreational facilities in schools. "This will offer kids a resource they need, particularly the disadvantaged ones, who are going to off-licences after school," he says.

Standing on this, in terms of adult awareness, I would suggest a national advertising campaign targeting 30 to 50 year olds.

The advertisement showing a boy jumping off a building and smashing to the ground because he thinks he can fly is excellent for adolescents. But what about demonstrating the dark powers of alcohol for adults who, when they drink, think they too can fly?

What would we see if we televised a dinner table of adults getting drunk, or a group of parents with children nearby?

Last week a friend of mine told me about her drinking escapades in the Eighties -- which, on hindsight, she regrets.

A group of mothers would meet for a boozy lunch in a Dublin hotel and get the doorman to collect the children who would do their homework in the lobby while they got smashed next door. I didn't ask if cars were crashed as a result of these sessions, but I bet many little hearts crashed when they saw their withering mum on a bar stool.

"We didn't know the extent of the harm we were inflicting," she said. Which is understandable. Because when we're drinking, we don't see ourselves.

Far from it, we think all is well. That's the magic of booze -- it casts a spell. Because alcohol tells lies -- some are harmless and fun but others hurt how we want to see ourselves and behave towards those around us. A sensitive television campaign, informing not shaming, could be effective for a new national mental health programme.

The idea of a country in recovery from addiction is not new. Anne Wilson Schaef, a no-nonsense best-selling author, introduced this idea more than 10 years ago in her book, When society Becomes an addict.

It has had several editions since, but each book outlines the symptoms of a society that admits it's an addict and offers a programme on how that society can get well.

Introducing her subject, she says: "The good news is that, like the individual alcoholic/addict, an addictive system can recover. But before this can happen we must name and accept the disease. We must admit that the society we care about has a disease and can recover from that disease.

"We must also be willing to do the necessary work towards recovery. This is a long process that eventually requires a shift to a new system, one I call the Living Process System." Schaef recognises that addictions can be divided into two categories: substance addictions (alcohol, drugs, nicotine, caffeine and food); and process addictions (accumulating money, sports, gambling, sex, work and worry).

Her views on how to deal with them are controversial but thought-provoking.

She says an addicted society is a dishonest one and that its addictive system reveals itself in the three "ifs" of the individual addict -- 'If only', 'As if' and 'What if'.

Defining these addicts, Schaef says the 'if only' addict is dishonest about the past. The 'As if' addict is dishonest about the present, while the 'What if' addict is dishonest about the future.

For many working in the complex field of addiction, it's wholesome stuff. But, staying in the present, the Government legislation is the first and vital step for a national recovery programme.

It's great news.
___
source: Independent ie