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Is Britain a nation of addicts?
A new report labels Britain 'the addicted man of Europe'. So is there something in our national psyche that makes us prone to excess?
Othello, act 2, scene 3. As part of his evil plan, Iago, you will remember, is trying to get Cassio drunk, singing a song to get him rowdy. "I learned it in England," he says, "where, indeed, they are most potent in potting: your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander – Drink, ho! – are nothing to your English." Ever the entertainer, Shakespeare knew that you could always get a cheer from a crowd in this country by complimenting them on their drinking.
But why is it a compliment? The crippling intensity of one's hangover the morning after, the unwiseness of one's antics the night before, what makes these things that Britons boast about? The Centre for Social Justice, founded by Iain Duncan Smith, has just released a report that argues for it to be a matter of shame. "Britain is the addicted man of Europe," the authors say. "Growing sections of society are dependent upon mind-altering substances."
The report itself is a muddled, shrill and selective document, determined to bring together issues such as binge drinking, heroin addiction, legal highs, cannabis smoking and alcoholism, which have different levels of seriousness, patterns of use and potential for harm. Yet at the heart of it lies a truth: Britain is a nation addicted, not necessarily to drugs or alcohol per se, but to excess itself.
Here the facts are not in question. Although rates of drug use are broadly stable or falling, rates of opiate addiction are high in European terms, and in its penchant for party drugs Britain leads the world. Last year's World Drugs report, which ranked countries on the prevalence of different drugs, put the Isle of Man and Scotland at numbers one and two for cocaine use, with England fourth and Wales sixth. All four figured in the top 10 for ecstasy use as well. Britain also appears to be a hub for the development of new synthetic drugs, often known as "legal highs", because our laws take a while to ban them.
Yet the harms these do are insignificant compared with alcohol. In western Europe, the report claims, British men have the second-highest rate of alcohol dependence. (Although, by eastern European standards, we look almost teetotal.) Among British women, however, alcohol dependence is the highest in the continent.
Still worse than mere dependance, however, is a culture that depends on bingeing. "Bingeing is worse, because it's the peak alcohol that maximises toxicity," says Professor David Nutt, author of Drugs Without the Hot Air and former chair of the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. "And the binge tradition is something that Britain has pioneered." According to Nutt, since the early 1970s, when the figures began to be collected, deaths from alcohol-related liver disease in the UK have quadrupled. At the same time, deaths from heart disease – for instance – have halved.
In part this reflects an increase in alcohol consumption (which has not quite doubled, even while its real price has fallen to about a third of what it was). But it is the pattern of consumption – the focus on excess – that is doing the most damage. Today, in Britain, men under 60 are more often killed by their own drinking than by anything else – and yet people almost seem to be refusing to notice. Amy Winehouse will be famous for ever as the brilliant musician who – once again – was killed by a drug overdose. But she wasn't. She died of acute alcohol poisoning. In Britain, three more young people join her every week.
Cigarettes make an interesting comparison. Tobacco isn't a drug of excess – it barely alters the mind at all – and here, although many Britons smoke, the rate is low by European standards, and is falling steadily. (Even so, around 114,000 people die every year from smoking in the UK, compared with 1,496 last year from illegal drug poisoning, and 52 from legal highs, which was sufficient to cause a panic.) Look, instead, at football hooliganism or teenage pregnancy – other often harmful behaviours – and once again this country has led the way.
So what makes Britons rejoice in getting wasted, despite the harm? "I think that there's a certain rigidity in the British and their class system," says Mike Power, author of Drugs 2.0, "and there can be a kind of escape from that through bingeing. The Britain that I grew up in, lads didn't dance. They certainly didn't hug each other. I remember the first time I saw a dancefloor explode on ecstasy, I just didn't feel like I was in Britain at all."
Other explosions, controlled or otherwise, take place every evening in the country's pubs – those friendly drinking dens for which Britain is famous, and where the emphasis is always social. Intoxicate yourself alone, and you appear pathetic, as though it's the condition of being you that needs escaping from. Do it in a group, however, and it's the public condition – having to maintain dignity and self-control and not say the wrong thing – that you are throwing off. "There is something we're trying to escape," Power says. "I think it's just the pain of being British."
This ritual is not only enjoyed, remember; it's enforced. It's not just that drinking, especially, is celebrated; not drinking is resented too. Going to the pub with a friend and having an orange juice while they work through several beers is to let them take on the risk of making a fool of themselves on their own, while you – it is implied – can play spectator. In Britain, the sin is similar to visiting a nudist beach with your clothes on. It's what makes Iago Shakespeare's greatest villain. In that scene, you may remember, he isn't drunk at all.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/02/is-britain-nation-of-addicts