Good Friday drink demand symptomatic of never knowing when to stop

Date Published: {J}

There is only one day of the year when Ireland is asked to abstain from alcohol – but the drive for drink on Good Friday would lead you to believe that a drought is a distinct possibility.

The Holy Thursday queues at the drink counter have an air of desperate quest for bread you’d have seen in Moscow at the height of the old Soviet Union.

Now, because there’s a rugby match in Limerick, the Mayor – urged on by the publicans – wants to see the pubs open so that supporters can toast their success or drown their sorrows. So is it any wonder that the world sees us as a nation of Riverdancing drunkards?

We don’t need the pubs open on Good Friday no more than we need them open on Christmas Day – but we do need reform of the licensing laws if we’re to prevent another growing phenomenon from taking even greater root.

Pubs should be closed on Good Friday, but off licences might as well stay open; not so they can sell more drink, but simply so that the orgy of alcohol can start a little later in the day.

Of course that also depends on an increased level of responsible behaviour on the part of a substantial number of off licences and drink sellers – and that’s not a given by a long shot.

The current trend is to stock up the night before, but this – according to those who deal with the effects of alcohol and addiction – means there’s an even earlier start to drinking the next day. At least if they were waiting for the off licences to open, it might reduce the impact on A&E before tea-time.

The last week in Galway was proof positive of this; there were students who were completely out of it well before lunchtime. We had them down our road, laden down with cans and bottles, walking out in front of traffic, utterly oblivious to anything going on around them – by midday.

 It’s not the College’s fault because these students are apparently adults. But you’d love to send pictures home to mammy and daddy who are presumably funding this extravagance, so that they could see where their hard-earned cash is going.

These students were presumably leading from the front again yesterday as they ‘drowned’ themselves and the shamrock to a depth of several feet. But they weren’t the only ones – as the flowing urine and broken bottles on the streets can testify.

And it is not just anecdotal evidence that suggests part of the problem is caused by stacking up on drink the night before.

The numbers presenting themselves for treatment at addiction centres now is higher than it was during the boom years – and the age profile is getting younger.

Nobody is suggesting that the only factor behind this is drink, but it is a major player – and while the pubs operate with a fair degree of responsibility, the same cannot be said of the off licences.

Supermarkets provide easier access for younger drinkers and the price of takeaways has never been cheaper. If you’re underage and can’t buy it yourself, there’s plenty who will do it for you.

Of course drugs play a large part too in the whole equation; prescription drugs like Valium are freely available on the black market, imported through Northern Ireland and then sold through the third-level network.

The head shops are the newest phenomenon, always staying one step ahead of the law because every time some of the product is banned, it re-emerges under a new name.

Reports suggest that well over a dozen people a month – mainly aged between 18 and 21 – are presenting themselves for psychiatric treatment in Galway alone as a result of their purchases from Head Shops.

There may well be more but because the west doesn’t have a HSE-designated addiction treatment centre, space is at a premium – and unless you have health insurance, you will face a six to nine month delay for help.

All of this is a long way from whether or not Munster fans should be able to have a few pints on Good Friday, but it’s symptomatic of our unhealthy relationship with alcohol and our apparent inability to celebrate any occasion without trying to drown ourselves in drink.I love my few pints every bit as much as the next man, so this isn’t about prohibition – it’s about responsible drinking and the removal of illegal substances,or those on the borderline, from the market.

We have a crisis that is getting worse and growing in all sorts of new directions, and we have no Government determination or HSE drive to tackle it.

So open the off licences on Good Friday because we won’t stop people drinking to excess anyway and we might actually stop them stacking up.

But more importantly, put the sort of resources into tackling addiction that we do tackling any other disease. And stop trying to push a massive problem under the carpet.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.