The principal drug that emerged in the research was alcohol. A primary ingredient in the exchange of hospitality, it also had a primary psychosocial context, men in the pub.
19 I’m not sure what priorities people have, probably having satellite or cable TV, these are big things for most folk. Most men are regulars in the local pub. (Company manager)
30 I wish I could get out more, that would make a difference. It’s alright for his Dad, he’s out all the time, down the pub or at his pals. It’s not fair. His mum is too soft with him, he still lives at home and the only thing that matters to him is the pub and his pals. (Single parent, 23)
But not only in the pub. For men it would seem that the role of alcohol as a de rigeur emblem/token of generosity in exchange relations has constructed a pattern of sociability in which an attempt to limit one’s intake would likely give offence. This ‘sewing in’ of excessive alcohol intake into the basic patchwork of social life is very bad news for health. It means that in many cases decisions about drink rates are all but removed from individual control: they are situationally determined, as binding as a religious ritual.
4 Mums are in charge of the food in houses and dads are in charge of the drink. It’s all part of the hospitality. I’d go to friends and you would get a huge measure of whiskey as soon as you got there, then you would go to the pub for the night. Once that shut you would go on to the social club and then back home for another couple of those large whiskies. Mum would make something like cheese on toast or chips for the supper and then we would have a night-cap. Next morning, it would be up for a fried breakfast or bacon rolls, something like that. You couldn’t refuse any of it. The charge would be “You think you’re too good to have a drink with us….” (Social worker)
41 Families are all built around the women….The men work, if they work, and go to the pub. That’s it.
Health important? I think not. There is a vast discrepancy between the rich and poor, being educated and uneducated. I’ve done 8 funerals in the last three weeks, half of them – 4 – are men who died from liver problems or cirrhosis – all drink related. That really shocked me. It’s a real pub culture for the men. That’s what they do. (Minister of religion)
While a funeral must qualify as a significant demonstration event for the effects of drinking, the educational impact was rarely long-term. Two male observers both thought that, as with smoking, this was because most people rarely considered their health in the same frame of reference as their drinking; the drinking was an important part of making short-term existence tolerable, while health was not a problem until it became a problem, at some unspecifiable moment in the future.
19 For most folk, though, health isn’t something which is on your mind a lot. People probably think about it more when they have been to a funeral and they are putting money in the collection for cancer research or heart and stroke research, but the next thing, they’ll be down the pub knocking back the pints at the wake. (Company manager)
This second observer captures the paradox that people can identify themselves with a death but can’t put themselves and their present behaviour into the behavioural trajectory which caused the death: they ‘don’t own their problems’.
13 I think health is something which people imagine is for the long term, if they think about it at all. They have to live just now, have a great time, you live for the day, survive the week. There are a lot of families and individuals living on the edge. I think there is a sense of “Well, if I live till I’m 40 and have cirrhosis, I’ll deal with it then”. There is no concept of prevention or of living for the future. There is a conflict of agendas, professionals have this great awareness of the damage that is being done by the way people are living now, but they have no co-operation from the punters. They don’t own their problems. We have tried to adapt the message, to take account of their way of life e.g. suggesting healthy cheap options, but it doesn’t get taken on board. I don’t know how they are meant to find out about health, since they are all so unhealthy. They just see what is going on around them. When something goes wrong, there is a collective guilt, it starts with families and moves into the community where people live. They realize then, that it is too little, too late. But they want to make amends however they can and sometimes that boils over into collective anger at GPs or hospital doctors. When I worked in the Alcohol Project, you saw people rallying round someone who was on their way out. Everyone feels guilty because they know that ten years on, it could be them. On the surface, there is this façade of being able to handle it, but underneath there is a huge amount of individual suffering. I see it in the young men we work with. (Youth worker)
One worrying aspect of the fact that male patterns of drinking were situationally-determined, and thus so highly socially constructed as to be inaccessible to any form of individual control, is that aggressive confrontations and explicit violence were thickly woven into the pattern – even within the family. With chronically unemployed men, drinking and fighting [83] were part of the inheritance – ‘belting your dad’ was seen as a rite de passage. [84]
4 [My teenage friends’] dads rarely worked. Sometimes they had older brothers who didn’t work either. They fought with each other in the family, they would talk about how they had belted their dads. That was part of the initiation into adulthood, being able to fight with your dad. Their dads sat about the house, or went fishing, that kind of thing.
The physical violence is something that deeply concerns me. The way that these things are passed down in families, that and drinking habits. It’s given as useful information: ‘How to stand up for yourself, son’. That’s the kind of thing that I find really worrying. (Social worker)
Compared with the male pattern, just going for a drink because one likes the pub atmosphere seems quite positive. This is an option which is available to women.
26 I’ve smoked since I was 14 or 15. Now I am only a social smoker, I only smoke at night. I’ve tried drugs, hash mostly and I once bought a £10 bag of speed, but it did nothing for me. I’d rather spend the money on booze. I drink in the house if someone comes round but I would never do it on my own. I like the atmosphere of being down the pub. (Single parent, 27)
However, long-term drinking could reduce women too to being unable to discharge their responsibilities as parents and lead the agents of the state to redistribute some of their parenting functions. Experience prompted one commentator to be pessimistic about the future of a young mother from such a background.
20 It is very likely that she will end up being in exactly the same situation as her mother. She has other children in care from neglect, and an older daughter who has her children in care. The mother has alcohol problems and she prostitutes herself. The mum insisted that the baby shouldn’t be immunized. ‘My mum doesn’t believe in it’. (Education service)
We have already been told that people who are out of work find it easier to do their drinking, perhaps with similarly placed others, in less expensive settings than the pub. But here people may be pushed just as unavoidably into excessive consumption by the need for the narcotic effect, to dull the pain of being passed over by life.
24 There are a lot of problems from excessive drinking. One night [X-] went by with a carrier bag full of cans. Later I came back and found him lying unconscious on the grass out the front. There was a boy on a bike who knew him, so he showed us which was his house. I knocked on the door and his brother-in-law answered. He’d obviously had a bit to drink too, but he was able to come along and we got him back to the house. He’s a brilliant worker, but he’d been out of work for three years and had just become so fed up with things, that he’d stopped trying, I suppose. (Voluntary community worker)
We have seen above that one task that can fall to the police in a distributed parenting community is to take drunk children home. Long before they are old enough to be admitted to pubs, some young people are determined to emulate adult behaviour.
19 Young folk will be just the same, since they can easily get their hands on cheap booze. You see all the broken bottles and tins of lager lying about in the streets, there are plenty of young people drinking around here. I expect it’s whatever they can get their hands on: Merrydown, 20/20, whatever gets you the most pissed for the least money. (company manager)
Sometimes this kind of early start can have the fortunate outcome of providing a powerful piece of negative conditioning.
31 I don’t drink much at all. I must have been about 13 when I had my first booze, in the streets with my pals and my pal had a big sister that would buy it. I’ve only been really drunk once and that put me right off it. (Single parent, 17)
Alcohol’s property of disinhibiting the inhibitions has the result that alcohol-fuelled social events can throw into relief one or another social fact. The observer of the disco where the pregnant 14 year old was physically attacked by her friends pointed out how low self-esteem and drink interacted to produce such behaviour.
40 They’d all been drinking, of course. Earlier on the girls were pissed and some of them were stripping off on the dance floor – they just don’t care. They think nothing of themselves – they see it as a big joke, they are not embarrassed or ashamed of their behaviour. Drink is a part of life and a big contribution to behaviour. (Social worker)
A similar lack of concern for the consequences, whether for their health or for their educational progress, was observed with very young mothers’ use of drugs.
20 They don’t really think about health. The evidence is everywhere. They ignore any concern that we might show over their drug use. Two of ours missed their exams because of post drug hangovers, being sick in the toilets, obviously quite unwell from it. It doesn’t seem to worry them. (Education service) As with education, serious use of drugs becomes an impediment to getting on through finding a job [85].
7 Drugs are a problem for a few. You know that they can’t be actively seeking work when they come in stoned, all their time is spent trying to support their habit. If we can help by organising their money for them then maybe we can do something about the crime rate, stop theft I mean. A lot of the girls we see are ex-offenders, they’ve done a string of crime to get stuff to sell. (Employment service)
For those who had turned their face against drug use after observing the practice from close quarters, a principal motive could be a kind of ‘reverse peer group’ effect [86] they found themselves unable to identify with users.
23 I’ve had one draw of cannabis, that’s all the drugs I’ve ever had. I could get them easily if I wanted to, but there’s no point, I don’t need them, it’s a bit like smoking, what do they do for you anyway? I know a couple of people who have taken Ecstasy, I just think that is so stupid. There’s a lot of pressure to try things, but it doesn’t interest me at all. (school pupil, 16)
28 Being healthy is the opposite of being ill, you have it but you don’t really think about it unless it’s a problem. I try to look after myself, I used to smoke, from when I was about 13, but I don’t now. I suppose I just have different friends now and I’ve never used drugs, I could get them if I wanted to, but I don’t want to mix with druggies. (single parent, 19)
35 Not interested in drugs. I’ve seen what they do, both my brother and sister have been in the drug scene, I don’t want to be part of that. I’d rather spend my money on fags. There aren’t any people on this landing that are involved with drugs, but I know there are in the flats. We are lucky, this is a good landing.
It would appear that cannabis is increasingly not regarded as ‘really’ a drug.
33 Mum and dad would go daft [if she took drugs]. [Sister] and [sister] and Mum smoke hash sometimes but that doesn’t really count. (Married parent, 19)
32 I don’t use drugs, well cannabis sometimes, but that’s not really a drug. I know plenty of folk who are using the real things. (Single parent, 20)
