Personal change is deeply complex and subject to an array of influences. However, we know that people’s relationships with alcohol are not set in stone. Indeed, people alter their relationship with alcohol throughout their lives.
Young people have to learn to drink. Alcohol is an acquired taste and intoxication an acquired ‘pleasure’. That is partly why alcohol marketing has to continuously target younger drinkers, and reaffirm the notion that not enjoying alcohol is odd.
As we grow older, what, how and where we drink changes. Older people are more likely to drink at home and to drink regularly; younger drinkers to drink less frequently, but get drunk when they do. The routine consumption of alcohol by middle-aged and older drinkers – sometimes referred to through clichés such as ‘wine o’clock’ – can easily slide into a habit that becomes hard to break.
For some people, their relationship with alcohol develops into dependence. It is estimated that there are around 600,000 dependent drinkers in England alone and over a million people are drinking at levels which are likely to cause damage to their health. While some people view alcohol dependence as a disease, we recognise that problem drinking exists on a spectrum – there is no clear line at which dependence begins. Words such as ‘addiction’ cover a variety of experiences and diagnoses and the concept of addiction is not as straightforward as we might think.
But just as people begin to drink more over time, changes in drinking behaviour in the other direction are possible. Decades of research have shown that the majority of dependent drinkers successfully achieve recovery.
