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ALMOST HALF OF Irish people think drinking to excess is “no big deal”.
A Behaviour and Attitudes survey on behalf of industry-funded group Drinkaware has revealed the attitudes Irish people have towards drinking.
The research shows a gap between people’s intentions to drink less and their actions. While some people revealed their wish to drink less often, others feel their drinking habits don’t have any negative effects and revealed they do not take binge or excessive drinking seriously.
1,000 Irish adults aged 18 and over were interviewed as part of the research, which revealed attitudes towards excessive drinking and risky behaviour around alcohol.
It showed:
However, many are now beginning to see the health implications of alcohol misuse.
When asked what might help people to cut down, 82% of respondents agreed that alcohol education helps to encourage people to reduce their alcohol consumption.
Dr Liam Twomey, Chief Medical Officer of Drinkaware said:
“While this report shows that many people understand the impacts of alcohol and their health, it does highlight worrying behaviours and attitudes among many people around excessive drinking.
“As a GP, I regularly see people in my surgery who recognise the health implications of alcohol in theory, but find it very hard to put that understanding into practice. I often see this disconnect between what people intend to do and want to do, and what they end up doing on a night out.”
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Having every visitor to the country photographed with a pint of Guinness to their mouth does nothing to remove this perceived part of our culture.
Nothing wrong with alcohol being part of our culture unless you follow the Koran. The Irish have been drinking alcohol for thousands of years.
And with this drinking and driving , i’ve had to cut back on my driving .
Ah! The pint of harp and Sally O Brien and the way she might look at you.
Well… when they come up with idiotic guidelines like binge drinking is more than 4-5 drinks in two hours and say a pint of beer is 1.6 standard drinks.
Literally everyone I know would drink 3 drinks over the course of a dinner, an evening in a bar or an afternoon watching rugby and think nothing of it.
So when health promoters say that normal behavior makes you a reckless binge drinking alcoholic… it’s no wonder they’re ignored and people say following their advice is no big deal.
You can see the Irish attitude to drinking very clearly in the comments of any journal article on our drinking problem. Within the space of two or three comments the crappy jokes trivialising the issue begin and take off from there. When it comes to alcohol we are truly captured
I will drink to that
That’s it Les.
And unfortunately many non-Irish abroad have the same image of Irish people. TBH it is a real stigma.
The reason people abroad have that impression is because we are proud of the fact that we’re p!ssheads and try to demonstrate it at every opportunity when abroad.
Agreed, it’s just that they can’t keep up and costs me an arm and a leg on a night out.
A stigma we utterly deserve
Used to love it when I was younger but just makes me feel shit now so I hardly drink at all much anymore so I can understand the wellbeing side of it now.
But shure drink is one of your five-a-day.
Guinness makes you stronger
Substance abuse that is 100% legal. Is it 10:30 yet?
Drink and be merry. Life’s too short.
Too short for what?
Have u seen how badly our country is run, it’s a joke. We need something to forget
So you forget for a few hours, wake up with an empty wallet and feeling lousy. The country is still the same. You need something to forget. You wake up with an empty wallet and feeling lousy…
I often just sit in my mental happy place and stare at my martini glass making monosyllabic noises and periodically nod when forced to converse or socialize with an atypical Irish moaner.
The weather is terrible… these drinks are expensive… The government is a terrible, Enda is a joke, the EU sucks, water charges, vulture funds, banks, immigrants, muslims, Brexit, recession this recession that.
After two stiff drinks they kind of descend into a non-coherent drone and I can just ignore them and silently plan my week or things I need doing in my head
i blame the weather
I reckon it showed 73% realised life is too short and want to enjoy themselves when they can.
@Martin, please let this be subtle irony or it’s so funny it hurts.
Agh go on sure. I’ll have one more .
Peer Pressure.
…or beer pressure!
Drink turns irish women into lovely girls
“Health implications ” sure that guy in the picture lost his pinky finger! I’m going dry!
Enda probably took that photograph of the lads with 2 pints. Good mates they are
Jaysus I’m parched reading about all this I could murder a pint now,
I thought the government liked us being pissheads cause we keep voting the same clowns in to run the country time after time.
My doctor warned me that if I didn’t give up drinking alcohol my liver was going to fail. Should have given up going to the doctor ages ago
There’s duck all else to do in most parts of the country.
And “drinking to excess” is what exactly?
I drink a fair bit, it’s part of what defines me in some ways.
To me, drinking to excess would be drinking with a goal of getting drunk. I don’t do that myself. It can happen sometimes yes but my goal is to enjoy the flavours of the beer (or whiskey) and the social aspect.
If you stuck me in a room full of gin, I might sample a couple and then leave. It’s not about the alcohol itself for me so I don’t drink to get drunk, in fact I prefer not to get drunk.
If they mean drinking to excess is anything beyond the arbitrary numbers used for the recommended guidelines or what they believe defines “binge drinking” then they can feck off with that BS.
Would that make me an alcoholic having a pint at 08:30?
taking blunts to the face till you sleep is also a part of our culture
More poorly informed bullshit from the busy body “experts”!
france is wine,holland is weed, ireland is guinness,england is football and so on
Corrupt and sick sh!te hole of a country, why wouldn’t you drink?
Why spend your hard earned money on stupid things like food, bills, and clothes, ,, are girls drink and feck as the local priest says
Ohhh!!!! Goodbye to the port and brandy, to the vodka and the stag, oh the smithwicks and the harpic, oh the bottle, the draft and keg!
have your say