Good question! It's going to take a long time to change things. Has to come from governments, food and drink industries, families, the entertainment industry, communities, healthcare system, schools and of course the individual. Everyone has their part to play.
Thank you for posting. Very interesting indeed. I wonder how this new culture of binge drinking will impact the populations long term health. I can only imagine it will likely lead to more socail and health problems. How do we go about changing this do you think?
"If,
when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, and if
when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are
probably alcoholic."
Its sounds about right. I was looking at the questionaire to determine whether a person is an alcoholic or not. One of the simplest set of questions is included in the big book (may deride the book, they claim its out-dated) is as follows:
If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, and if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic.
The first part is about the obsession of the mind. One recognizes he/she has a problem, but he/she cannot stop because of the obsession of the mind, that keeps them going back to the 1st drink and the latter half is the physical craving. After succumbing to the obsession, he/she picks up a drink and after that the allergy kicks in.
The important piece of this is the compulsion. Thats why the book squarly plays the problem on the mind rather than the phsyical craving (body).
I found this article from a local online newspaper. I'm a New Zealander and I found it interesting to read 10% of us are now considered alcoholic. That seems rather high. I know it's ingrained in our culture that heavy drinking is acceptable from teenage years. We really have a binge drinking culture going in New Zealand and it's doing a lot of damage to people and society in general. Yet, most New Zealanders would say they don't have a problem.
