AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION

[Music] how many people will suffer before we learn to control our number one drug habit it kills thousands it ruins marriages it's a major health problem it's the cause of 80% of all murders it destroys reality it turns pleasure into pain it is the irresponsible use of [Music] alcohol alcohol is a part of everything we do today not just an American problem but all around the world Dr Peter Bourne Vice chairman of the president's committee on alcohol and drug abuse in Washington describes the problems yes alcoholism is a very major problem in the United States right now and and getting larger we estimate that there are as many as 9 million alcoholics in the country uh in addition there are several million other people that we considered to be heavy social drinkers who may be heading into alcoholism we also feel that for every alcoholic there are four or five other people whose lives that person touches so that we have maybe 40 or 50 million people in the country who in some way are involved with the problem of alcoholism recent studies also suggest that half of the 50,000 fatal automobile accidents in the country each year involve alcohol being in the body of one or both of the drivers half of the people serving time for felony convictions in California turns out have a history of problem drinking and also in a recent study of homicides throughout the country it's been found that more than half of the people involved either the victim or the perpetrator of the homicide uh had a significant level of alcohol in his body at the time the event occurred and May in fact also have been drunk uh when the death occurred and the type of crime that that tends to occur as a result of alcohol does tend to be the violent crime I did a study of 30 cases uh non-select cases that is all kinds of crime you know and less than half of them were alcohol related whereas 80% of the murders were alcohol related violent crimes the subject of so much talk lately linked strongly with alcohol uh I looked up the last 20 murders that I have been uh involved in that is the courts have asked me to see the accused and in in uh 16 of them 80% the accused was actually drunk at the time the alleged murder occurred well in Canada we would have approximately 600,000 people who drank hazardous amounts of alcoholic beverages uh H by hazardous amounts we mean amounts that if people continue to consume at that level that they run a very high risk in time of developing social mental physical and economic problems associated with they're drinking about 40% that number of people would be people who are alcoholics people who have clearly developed alcohol related problems so that in terms of the number of people who are personally Afflicted the number would be fairly high and of course alcoholics are typically employed they also have families so that the number of people who are indirectly but nonetheless very intimately affected by alcoholism numbers many times one of the most visible effects of this can be seen in the number of automobile accidents that occur as a result of drinking and driving approximately half of fatal automobile accidents do involve the use of alcoholic beverages by at least one of the drivers in that Collision so in that kind of area I think it certainly is alarming the other the other place too is that many of the consequences of alcoholism tend to be quite chronic and tend to be long-term rather than acute but one of the things that happens is that it results in sizable health care costs and as we find ourselves in a situation where government now is finding it harder and harder to meet this level of Health Care cost the sizable contribution in these health care costs that relate to alcohol uh that stem from alcohol rated problems is becoming a tremendous burden on the whole society along with being a major problem alcohol is costing hundreds of millions of dollars all through North America Scott henders an occupational alcoholism consultant talks about the costs Recent research throughout North America now has has indicated that there's a distinct parallel between the deteriorating work performance on the job and alcoholism other words 60% of the poor work performance possibly is uh caused from alcoholism this means of course that if management people if Union people and if supervisors can form a team to to instruct certain people in the organization to observe poor work performance then there's a better than 50 5050 chance that when they come across an employee who who is suffering in from poor work performance that that person is alcoholic industry leaders tell us that poor performance is just a part of the cost it takes a big investment in years and dollars to train people for special jobs so when a key employee develops a drinking problem the thousands of dollars invested in him can be lost how has the alcohol problem been allowed to grow to these cautions perhaps the answer to that lies in the liberalization of the laws concerning alcohol a process that seemed to take place all over the Western World during the last 15 or 20 years during this period uh many changes were made including lowering the drinking age more and different kinds of alcoholic beverages were allowed to be served in more and different kinds of places all with the aim I believe of trying to take away the forbidden fruit aspect of drinking with the ultimate aim of trying to reduce some of the problems that we have in our society with alcohol in trying to come to terms with the alcohol problem it's important to see why people use it and according to Morris leeki a guidance counselor with the Regina Board of Education face certain realities the basic problem is is people not not alcohol not drugs it's people learning to live together learning to live with themselves most people are pleasure seekers ERS and we each in our lives search for more ease than disease and alcohol drugs give us pressure consequently Society uses that as a result in education we have to keep that reality in mind and it helps too to know how this drug affects people alcohol is an an aesthetic very much uh like ether and uh the larger the amount you have in your system uh the more of your brain cells are out of function and you know first of all you become less tactful you you're not as polite you you don't observe the niceties you might tell a story in company that you wouldn't otherwise tell that story uh in and as the anesthetic effect on your brain becomes more pronounced you that intellectual control that we all exercise over our forbidden impulses is lost so that we can insult people we can attack people we can become angry with people we can do all sorts of things which we would never do uh if we hadn't taken alcohol it must be remembered here that the situation we're faced with is not so much alcohol use as it is alcohol misuse problems with alcohol usually begin when a person feels less than his best when his needs are frustrated or he hasn't reached the high goal he's set for himself even the people who successfully achieve turn to alcohol as a way of Rel relieving the stress that they're subjected to it it not only uh sometimes works effectively for them initially in doing that but we have Incorporated that as a value identified and linked with success in our society the successful businessman uh is perceived as having a martini or a highball at the end of the day almost as a mark of his success uh we take it for granted that businessmen will drink over lunch uh and we just see uh that this not only is an accepted part of the lifestyle but is accepted as a way of dealing with the pressures and stresses and frustrations that successful people are expected to be exposed to people drink for the same reason many young people take drugs drugs don't have in them any magic there is nothing in a drug that can make people do what they cannot actually do young people going to a dance drink sometimes feel they have to have a drink but in talking to young people you simply ask a question is there a dancing lesson in the bottom of a beer bottle and they have to admit that there really isn't that actually they had that skill before they had the drink the thing is that people need to have as many UPS as they have Downs If all we're giving them is Downs they may have to look for those good feelings in a bottle if my parents my friends have sort of taught me that uh I'm a no good rotten kid I will tend to act like that if people have never loved me I will tend to feel that I'm not lovable now when this happens I begin to wear a mask uh with an adolescent it might be the tough guy mask that uh I wear a big leather jacket and I drive a big motorcycle but it's just a mask it's so that you don't really see how weak and afraid I am or it can be the the nice guy mask that I smile at everyone um until I can get you in a back alley and then watch out uh there are as many masks as Halloween masks but what is really critical is that a person has to wear a mask because behind the mask I'm a very lonesome person when people drink to compensate for any lack they feel inside themselves this is called drinking to cope or solution drinking and it seems as though our present lifestyle has done a lot to stimulate this practice we feel that breakdown in the traditional family migration of people from more stable rural areas into the urban situation where life is difficult and frustrating and often very depressing that when people start using alcohol as a way of relieving stress in their lives they ought to put the brakes on or there could be even bigger problems ahead what separates the social Drinker from the person who has a drinking problem once a person is no longer able to drink without causing problems to himself and others there's usually a lot of fence mending to be done Dr Saul Cohen director of Rehabilitation work tells what they do our uh General philosophy in the in Rehabilitation is to provide a comprehensive program for the person who has an alcohol problem who's reaching out for help uh in this way we have to develop a community response to that person's problem we have to call upon all available agencies in each small community usually this is somebody who is a representative or a member of Alcoholics Anonymous the old connotation of the old idea of what an alcoholic look like is you know the thing that comes to mind with the average person in our society is that you know the skid roll bum the Der that type of person um we're looking now at uh at the fact that only 5% % of people are the skrum alcoholic and the other uh 95% or 19 out of 20 alcoholics are are people like you and I and the rest of us we try and and uh and bring about some understanding and learning about what alcoholism is what the difference is between a social Drinker and a heavy drinker and an alcoholic Drinker we discuss the drug alcohol for instance you know um we we conduct learning or attempt to conduct learning in the area of of affective learning so it's not just one person left by himself or herself to cope with the problem true this is often a slow process one that involves physical fitness and Life Style programs and a Getting to Know Yourself period at a place like the Calder rehabilitation center now when the client comes into the cder center he under goes a 4-we intensive course usually along with his wife that involves counseling it involves films it involves talks it involve the counseling may be on a onetoone basis or it may be in sort of a group uh as a sort of a form of group therapy now at the hospital level a person with an alcohol problem may not be that ill that he has to be admitted to hospital for a liver or a coexistent problem or pneumonia or The Taking of multiple pills adding to his alcohol problem he may not require a hospital bed indeed we're finding that over 95% of the people who do come in looking for help for their alcohol problem can be helped in a detox program where really nonprofessional help will be all that's necessary so in the detox house we have recovered alcoholics and we have other people who are interested in alcoholism who will keep an eye on this person for 4 to 7 days assess his problems his various economic physical mental problems he may have generally and at the end of that time they provide direction for him this particular unit is again a stepping stone house for an individual who is dislocated from his family he can move into this from 1 to 6 months to a year on one thing all the experts agree Rehabilitation is something that needs to be done for those who already have the problem but our one big hope lies not in treatment but in trying to head this problem off at the pass we aren't going to solve the problem of alcoholism just as we've never solved any other health or social problems by treating it away um effective means of of intervening with these kinds of problems have to do what is called prevention or primary prevention it was in this belief that the government of Saskatchewan decided to try and do something about alcohol abuse and aware the world's first alcohol education program was born the people of Saskatchewan were literally surrounded by an advertising campaign aimed at making them aware this program attacked the problem from several areas of concern we looked at alcohol as a drug uh one of the things that surprisingly few people knew uh was that alcohol is a drug so we created messages which specifically uh were aimed at that we also looked at the area of drinking and driving many campaigns have been tried to attack which attack this problem very few have had any measurable results and we've also looked at alcohol in the workplace uh alcohol as it relates to younger drinkers we've looked at what we have uh termed negative patterns these are patterns of drinking which when taken to an extreme can become very dangerous for the person the person can become addicted and get into serious problems and so we've tried to alert people before this happens we've attacked several of these major areas and at the same time as attacking these we have been doing evaluation studies to try to monitor the success of our campaign but the media campaign of advertising is just one part of the aware program in their desire to work with people on a community level and assess some of the local needs aware in cooperation with the alcoholism Commission for Saskatchewan brought together people from all over the province to study the problem along with an awareness program to encourage self-restraint among the people some experts favor social control measures as well two kinds of things would be most effective first the establishment of a policy with that that treats the pricing of alcoholic beverages as a public health matter uh one that ties the cost of alcoholic beverages to the standard of living so that as the general standard of living goes up as inflation goes up the price of alcoholic beverages would also go up when the legal drinking age was reduced from 21 to 19 or 18 it's clearly resulted in higher rates of alcohol related collisions among young people um in in in some places many dozens of people would not have died if the um drinking age had not been lowered from say 21 to 18 we feel that the aware program has created a a receptive climate to this kind of legislative or structural change in the way we approach liquor policies and we feel that it not only can change attitudes but it can set the scene for other kinds of of activities and changes which can have a positive impact on people's drinking Behavior as for other social controls most people close to the problem created by alcohol are all for we taking a tougher stand with the drinking driver I think that we need to get a lot tougher with our laws I think we need to say you can drink or you can drive but you can't do both at the same time and if you do we're going to make it very tough on you I think we need to educate people more about the dangers of drinking and driving in Scandinavia they have very strict laws they put people in jail so people just don't drink and drive and it has enormously reduced their casualty rate I think also one of the things that's being looked at in a number of communities is for the community to provide free taxi service after a certain hour at night so anybody who is drunk who has misjudged or drunk too much can get home free uh with somebody else driving every government perhaps all over the world is schizophrenic about alcohol it's against the law to drive under the influence of alcohol yet every bar and every Beer Parlor has a parking lot that that's just craziness I think it might be a bad idea if we put a breathalyzer at the exit of every bar and liquor store parking lot and test them and I suppose it's dramatic but my chance of being murdered are very very small my chance of being killed on the Highway by a drunken driver is very very high and I'm just as dead being killed in an automobile accident As I Am by murder alcohol does more than a affect the superficial things in our way of life it gets inside us affecting the way we think and behave perhaps as some of the experts suggest social controls are not the only answer perhaps we have to look for the solution inside ourselves one strong advocate of alternatives to alcohol is Rabbi Steinberg my Essential position is that it's possible to achieve naturally that is without any kind of external agent any kind of a condition that can be produced by an external agent such as alcohol and that if people can be taught or exposed or trained to use methods techniques activities whatever they happen to be to give them the same kind of satisfactions and fill the same kinds of needs that alcohol does then I think we're taking really a very positive step in the right direction there are of course a number of different kinds of techniques for reducing stress and ention uh the more common ones of course uh you can ruce it by simply going out and jogging that's one way of getting rid of tension or taking up a martial art such as Judo or karate or or kung fu for people that are not athletically interested and are more sedentary uh in their reception then we can go into uh different kinds of stress reducing techniques involving concentration approaches uh generally speaking when people are approached with a stress reducing technique and they actually experience that they feel much better that the tensions have been reduced then they say gee you know it might be worthwhile pursuing of course building the best kind of preventative work possible is building the right kind of environment for children to grow up in I think of beginning as early as premarital and prenatal classes where you're helping to teach parents how to parent so that that when their children are growing up you are fostering a healthy family structure so one of the things that we have learned from a number of studies is that a good healthy positive family environment goes a long ways to alleviating drug abuse problems seeing alcohol problems through Rabbi Steinberg's eyes maybe what we ought to be looking at is a whole new alternative lifestyle and there's more we can do to prevent people from drinking as an escape mechanism too I think also we need to provide uh for those people who have a variety of emotional problems adequate services so they can turn somewhere else other than to alcohol as a way of relieving their emotional anguish or or psychic discomfort a lot of people who have chronic depression don't know where to go or there is no place for them to go and to go to the local bar and to turn to alcohol looks to them to be a solution to their problems when really isn't and if we uh were better able to provide more Comprehensive Mental Health Services I think this would help enormously in this area Scott henders says he personally would welcome help from police people trained in the social field and ministers and social workers who were trained to deal with alcoholism in the family there's no way that we can completely solve this problem as a as an agency of the government but when you harness you know when you look at the possibility of harnessing the whole Community it has tremendous potential training police people in the social field uh training ministers and social workers to deal with the alcoholism in the family so far Humanity has proven that it doesn't get along without or can't get along without so the next best thing to strive for is responsible use uh and just because uh it can be abused it doesn't necessarily prove that it's bad mhm you see eating is six times more food than you need isn't doing you any good either MH but that doesn't make food a bad thing which should be abolished the people that are responsible are not the governments and not the experts they are the people that live right next door they are you whoever and as long as I know that there's a core of people working in the same goal that's pretty good backup I think we are maturing as a society and if we can start trusting each other we we'll get there [Music] w [Music]