Drinking to socialise or vice versa?

Youngsters hitting the bars and pubs to booze much before the permissable age is a common phenomenon in the Capital now. Many of them start taking alcohol in their teens – mostly due to the peer pressure, glamorising consumption of alcohol in films and advertising.

With some seeing their father and relatives to drink at home, the youngsters find it ‘ok’ and socially acceptable. Often, they give excuses of taking alcohol only to get ‘social’ with friends or at the workplace and get offended if equated with drunkards.

But, gradually, the quantity of the liquor they take increases and the interval period between the boozing sessions get shortened. Soon, its becomes an indispensable part of their life and they turn into habitual drinkers. And the habit develops faster if they have friends of similar thinking and background.

Debojit Majumder, executive director of Rama Deaddiction and Rehabilitation Center at Fatehpur Beri, says what make an individual a habitual drinker is not the taste but its after-effects and that makes them go back to alcohol again and again as it becomes their ‘need’.

“Drinking alcohol is socially accepted in our society. There is no stigma attached to it. This is one of the prime reasons why youngsters are big time into it. Pub culture has also gone up in India of late. We get alcohol addicts as young as 19 and there are quite a few in 20s and from all classes,” he shares with Metrolife. In a recent survey done by Community Against Drunken Driving (CADD), more than 30 per cent of youth admitted to having alcohol 2-4 times a week, while 54.1 per cent boys had their first drink between 15-16 years  and 41.1 per cent girls had their first drink in the age group 17-18 years.

The research suggested that nearly 27 per cent of habitual drinkers have had their first drink in their early teens.

“Young boys and girls start drinking at the age of as low as 12 or 13 due to several reasons because they think it is cool. On many occasions, it also starts at home where parents introduce their underage children to alcohol to bridge the generation gap or appear cool, failing to realise the harm they are causing,” CADD founder Prince Singhal says.

On the condition of anonymity, owner of another rehabilitation center in the City says if a person drinks everyday does not necessary mean that he or she has got addicted to it. That person, however, is a habitual drinker for sure. “An addict loses control of his life and goes all the way for it. Habitual drinkers might be drinking heavily but can handle their life. But of about 100 drinkers, 20 per cent turn into addicts,” he says.
Debojit says, “If one starts drinking alone, gulps down the drinks to get high very soon, faces blackouts, then he or she seriously needs to sit and think over.”