When Damien McClean talks about college life - about the happy years he spent as a mathematics student at Trinity College Dublin - his words may fail to register with former students of an older hue.
Visits to the pub were comparatively infrequent, getting together over steaming cups of coffee were just as common. And if other generations of late teens/early 20s fully embraced a drink-to-get-drunk culture, it was one that was utterly alien to McClean and to many of his peers.
The 25-year-old welfare officer at the Union of Students of Ireland says years of "messaging" about the destructive nature of heavy alcohol consumption has hit home and he believes he and his friends have been lucky to grow up in an era where personal choice is paramount in Ireland - and that includes attitudes towards drinking too.
"If you go out for a night and decide you won't drink, or you'll just have one or two, people don't put pressure on you to drink or to drink more. It just isn't seen as cool to do that, and a lot of it is down to the way we see personal choice. That's been reflected in Ireland when you look at the decisive results of the referendums on same-sex marriage and abortion."
McClean says more frequent conversations on mental health have resulted in a new generation feeling differently about alcohol than even those 10 years their senior might have experienced.
"The problems that alcohol can cause aren't swept under the carpet for this generation," he says. "They're out in the open. People can talk about their mental health in a way that might not have been possible before and if you see someone in your company who chooses not to drink, you accept their position because there might be a reason why they're not drinking."
While it's true that Ireland's average per capital alcohol consumption figure is down from a 2001 high of 14.3 litres, the numbers have been steadily creeping up again. It now stands at 11.15. And young people are among those helping to push up the figures, according to Alcohol Action Ireland's Head of Advocacy, Eunan McKinney. "We're still an outlier when it comes to binge drinking," he says. "We're the number one in Europe. And it's not surprising when you consider that 90,000 people under the age of 18 have experienced drunkenness. Three quarters of 16 to 17-year-olds are drinking significantly, and that's before they even reach the legal age.
Source: John Meagher, Independent.ie, 22/11/18
Safer Student Nights
eBulletin
Poll
