'Chasing this rush, intensified when cut with youthful emotions and surging hormones, is surely the main reason teenagers drink, be they female or male.' Image credit: How to have sex.
Remember those first moments of alcohol-fuelled exhilaration when you were young? The energy rising lightly in your solar plexus and making your cheeks ache from smiling; and how time would drop away, so that there was only now, tonight, this? And what a thrill it all was? I still remember, just about. And I did so this week as I read various handwringing responses to the question of why British teenage girls are allegedly getting bladdered so often.
A new report suggests that the drinking habits of our young women outmatch those of boys here, as well as beating most teenagers in the rest of Europe. More than a third of young women in the UK reported being drunk at least twice by the age of 15, a figure only bested by the stats of young Danes, Hungarians, and Italians. In reality, teenage drinking is markedly down compared to former levels: in 2002, for instance, a staggering 41% of Scottish teenagers of both sexes apparently drank weekly. But in these health-conscious times, even moderate amounts of teen drinking are viewed as too much. A similarly disapproving conclusion was drawn by the World Health Organisation last April, though in that case, impressively, both boys and girls in the UK came out Top of the Alcopops rather than 4th.
Worried about supposed adverse effects on brain development, and trying to explain the appeal of drinking to young women in particular, commentators tend to approach the subject of teenage kicks as if observing puzzling behavioural manifestations in an alien species. Some suggest that girls are simply copying their mothers, since British women hold the dubious honour of being Europe’s biggest female binge-drinkers. Others blame intensified feelings of social anxiety post-lockdown, targeted advertising from the drinks industry towards females, and that old fallback, middle-class parents for introducing youngsters to wine too early.
Meanwhile, no one mentions the joyfully emboldened swagger of being newly out on the lash; how feelings of effervescence intermittently course through your body as you dance, flirt, smoke, or double over in hysterical mirth at someone’s stupid joke, or your own; how, in short, you feel like a sexy superhero — until you don’t. To help me remember, I still have photographs from my first ever night on the piss at a friend’s house in Edinburgh, our parents having their own party downstairs. Groups of us loll about on the floor with our mouths in perpetual motion, talking endlessly, babyfaces hectically flushed, eyes sparkling and slightly wild. Sometimes I suspect my adult drinking patterns have been chasing that sort of fabulous high ever since.
In short, few seem to remember how much fun it can be to be a drunk teenage girl (or just a drunk teenager, full stop). Unlike the discourse around male drinking, there is little mythologising of female drinking culture to leaven the relentless doom mongering. We don’t have our own Lucky Jim, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, or Bertie Wooster. At a push, we have Dorothy Parker for our finer alcoholic moments and Jean Rhys for all the others.
Film and television do slightly better, with Sex and the City leading the way in glamourising cocktail consumption for a generation. But when you are a youngster constrained by licensing laws, it is all fairly irrelevant anyway: you can only dream of having wry discussions about men’s sexual prowess over several cosmopolitans in some iconic Manhattan nightspot. Along with millions of others before you under strict conditions of prohibition, the best you can do is gulp it down unadorned in a bedroom or at some wintry bus stop, discreetly and fast, and wait for those exciting sensations of warmth to start radiating outward from your core.
Chasing this rush, intensified when cut with youthful emotions and surging hormones, is surely the main reason teenagers drink, be they female or male. Impersonal accounts of possible causes — rising anxiety, say, or the influence of social media — miss out this crucial part of the explanation. And I’m not sure we should expect or even want anything different. William James wrote of alcohol’s power to “stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature”, arguing that while “sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no, drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes”. And who should be saying yes to life more than mystically minded, big-hearted, uproarious teenagers? There is nothing more developmentally appropriate. In a society where so many of them seem isolated in dark rooms, either metaphorically or literally, the odd outbreak of intensely sociable drunkenness seems like a small worry to have overall.
Of course, it would be remiss to tell a one-sided story about the joys of drink without paying due deference to the pitfalls. Here is James again, coming over all puritanical to offset his enthusiasm only moments before: “it is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us only in the fleeting earlier phases of what in its totality is so degrading a poisoning.” Though in retrospect the average hangovers of a teenager look fine when compared to their senior versions, and certainly not “poisoning”: put up with a nasty head for a few hours until you can face the trip into the outside world for painkillers, a pint of some lurid coloured fizzy liquid and a fry up, and your virginal liver will do the rest.
Inebriation makes you vulnerable in other ways, though — and perhaps especially so in the case of girls. The disinhibition it brings, and the subjective dislocation from time and space, spell trouble in the wrong company. Alongside the report about teenage drinking, this week there has also been a lot of discussion of Pakistani grooming gangs on X; and the two make for uncomfortable juxtaposition. Extracts circulated from court transcripts underline that alcohol and drugs were the main means used by child rapists to subdue their underage working-class victims. And yet social workers and police repeatedly read the drunkenness of these young girls as a sign of maturity, in a way which somehow made the girls more culpable than the psychopathic men abusing them.
One social worker accused the terrified mother of an exploited 14-year-old engaged in “repeated incidents of severe intoxication” of not being able to accept that her daughter was “growing up”. A 12-year-old was arrested for being “drunk and disorderly” in a derelict house while the accompanying adult males were left unadmonished. In other words, an adultification bias was thriving; and when it comes to persistent stereotypes of fresh-faced young innocence and the “right” sort of victim, it seems that years of feminism have failed to touch the sides.
So much celebratory alcohol use is transitional, taking us from the end of one thing to the beginning of another thing: from day to evening, for instance, or from working day to weekend. In taking the drink that indicates the changeover, you are not simply marking a shift in attitude as creating one out of nothing, wrestling it into being with your intention that things will be brighter and better now. Much teenage drinking is transitional like this too: by necking the stuff, typically you indicate an intention to leave something childish behind and become your own more adventurous person for a night, whatever that means. Of course that doesn’t mean you succeed, as thousands of undignified exits from teen parties can attest. Still, the pleasure is in the attempt, and it is an agenda apparently ferociously pursued by middle- and upper-class teenagers in particular, with few lasting consequences except for the very unlucky.
One of the many hideous features of the grooming gang scandal was that young girls’ natural and age-appropriate desire for a few cathartic, drink-fuelled escapades was used against them so heinously, twice over: first by their abusers, and then by the authorities who failed to recognise what was going on. We need to try harder to see the drunkenness of the teenager for what it nearly always is: something essentially childish and innocent; a kind of riotous, joyful inebriation that cannot be replicated later as a fully fledged adult, no matter how hard you might try. The ideal world is not one where such a thing never occurs, but one where teenagers are never violated or otherwise penalised for now and again succumbing. Thanks to malevolent actors, we don’t live in that ideal world and never will; but along with my teenage liver, I mourn it.
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SubscribeThis, along with the whole “no fly zone” discussion is a sign that emotions are gaining the upper hand. Keeping emotions in check in a stressful situation is tough, but cool heads must prevail. Ursula von der Leyen has shown us once again just how unsuited she is to the position she holds.
Ukraine won’t be joining the EU any time soon – but sending out the signal that an unconscionable military attack would change the equation in any way when it comes to the accession process is utterly short-sighted and daft. The EU is a rules-based order. Suddenly throwing some of the most important rules out of the window because our emotions are ablaze and we’re high on the unity is just going to undermine the entire edifice.
The EU will not be in any condition to enlarge further until it has gone through fundamental reform and the Ukraine is nowhere near fulfilling the criteria for accession. Those are the facts. Let’s all just try and stay rational here.
I like your comment about the EU requiring fundamental reform. A monetary union of budgetary independent countries is what has started bringing the instability to the EU. This and complete freedom of movement. How are they going to address this?
It’s possible that the Eastern European EU members supporting this request see Ukraine as a potential ally in their confrontationa with the ‘progressives’ in Brussels.
Yes, Margaret, that crossed my mind too. Another possibility is that admitting Ukraine would shore up a kind of eastern bulwark against the Franco-German bulldozer.
Those are both very good reasons to admit Ukraine
That could be very well the reason indeed (ironically Russia would be too) .
Beyond the economic / corruption argument, the EU first needs to make sense of its military / security policy. Europe does need to fundamentally rethink its security, but whether the EU is the right forum for that is doubtful. Many of the EU’s members are neutral and unlikely to be keen for a military role. Remember also that it was the military provisions in the draft EU-Ukraine Treaty that were one of the reasons for the then legitimately elected government of the Ukraine in 2014 to reject the treaty – which then prompted the US coup.
Well done for mentioning that…there is a lot of inaccurate talk about Putin starting this war because of NATO expansionism when it was specifically EU expansionism in 2014 that proved the trigger for the revolution that year.
Putin feared EU membership as a precursor to Nato membership, but he also feared/dislike it in and for itself.
The idea that somehow NATO is expansionist and this is a bad thing, but that the EU’s expansionism is always and everywhere good, seems to have become an unchallenged version of the history around the current war. IN 2014 it was definitely the EU expanding that was the catalyst for the revolution.
Again..a sovereign European country can of its own free will, join the EU. I’m a Brit so I have no say so and wish them well and prosperity in years ahead.
The EU expanded in 2004, 2007 and 2013. There was no expansion in 2014.
Ukraine was one of the six ex Soviet countries targeted in 2004 as the next circle of some form of accession light, confirmed by Prodi in 2007. The EU told Ukraine they could not participate in two trade agreements, and Yanukovich dithered, then decided to stay in the EEU one, largely because it offered Russia’s cut price gas.
Yes, quite why so many people take Putin’s grotesque rationalisations for this unprovoked invasion on face value, any more than they would Hitler’s, is beyond me. The EU, whatever it’s many faults, a pacific organisation, opening a branch office in Kiev?! Naive isn’t a strong enough word.
Putin is of the view that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. So, not the Holocaust, the Gulag, the Holodomor, Mao’s killing of millions, not the Khmer Rouge or even the First and Second World Wars. He admires Peter the Great, who was an appalling tyrant, who among many other things had his his own son ‘knouted’ to death, killed tens of thousands of labourers in the building of St Petersburg, had thousands of rebels tortured to death, and of course conquered huge territories especially from Poland-Lithuania and Sweden, which might well otherwise have developed in a more western and liberal direction. Instead they became yet another region of the brutal autocracy Russia – or rather Muscovy – has always been. That seems to be the rather greater historical tragedy.
You can factor in the recent efforts by the US to destabilise other former Soviet states
If the Ukranian people had not liked the results of the 2014 revolution then they were at complete liberty to reverse it at the last elections. They did not and voted overwhelmingly in favour of the changes made. There was no CIA coup!
Stepping back a bit from the war, the EU does not need another economic basket case like Greece.
Would Ukraine be expected to adopt the euro? I assume so. They lose then all control of monetary policy and become another economic vassal of Germany.
Better to consider something like EFTA, if there is a need to make a statement that Ukraine is European.
Emotions are high with lots of dangerous requests from Zelensky, thankfully Boris is more circumspect than VDL; I am sure Turkey felt their nose put out of joint with her comments.
The world would be a better place without Putin but we in the west seemed to have lost something in our diplomacy over the last 2o years with embarrassing not exactly successful sorties into other countries and a shift in our strategic thinking and tactical execution;
Many lament the lack of real strategic thinking in the West since the end of the Cold War.There has been a failure to think carefully about the conjunction of global interests or to projectourselves realistically into the future. While the West called all the shots in the 1990s that did not seem to matter. But now it does, not only because the West no longer calls all the shots, butalso because the future is visibly upon us. One of the most momentous steps in the last 20 years,undertaken with much strategic talking and little genuine strategic thinking, was the enlargement of NATO after 1994. The United Kingdom opposed the idea in the early 1990s, until the Clinton administration pressed for it in the run-up to the 1994 NATO Summit and the US Congressional elections. The UK discovered merits in the idea that had not previously been evident–or perhaps British policy-makers merely felt they had to recognize the reality of a pax Americana and the US electoral cycle. Realpolitik thinking, perhaps, but not strategic in the proper sense of the term. Many argued against NATO enlargement at the time, precisely on the grounds that this would fundamentally change the political balance in Europe in ways that would be difficult to control. ref https://www.jstor.org/stable/25144993?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=NATO%20expansion%20a%20policy%20error%20of%20historic%20importance&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DNATO%2Bexpansion%2Ba%2Bpolicy%2Berror%2Bof%2Bhistoric%2Bimportance%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A5e8099b750727ce7f9985b037580b3b8
And so he should. Britain has military assets. It’s alright to speak loudly and wildly when you are unarmed (as VDL is) Quite another when you are are armed and armed indeed with nukes as Boris and Macron are.
So it joins Turkey then? So the EU can fantasise about a power bloc whose bounds grow wider still and wider…but without every having to actually let them in?
I see Nigel Farage has repeated his assertion from years ago that the possibility of Ukraine joining the EU is what is really antagonising Putin. He seems to fear that Putin thinks this would lead to moral degradation in terms of the traditions of the Slavic Christian tradition.
I think this is more about preserving his own power than defending ideals. He probably fears a prosperous and democratic Ukraine at Russia’s doorstep because it would plant ideas about a better life in the imaginations of ordinary Russians.
The idea that a former KGB officer is some sort of supreme guardian of the Christian tradition, is one of many ludicrous claims made on behalf of this tyrant.
Again, there is more than one ‘Christian tradition’. As far as I can see, Putin fits right in with one particular strain of armed Christianity that first developed in Rome in the 4th C. (the inspiration for all European military tyrannies ever since). ‘Chivalry’ is the sanitised name for it.
Highly recommend this for real detailed insight – https://youtu.be/Ys2zTL-b3eE (Russia, Ukraine and the West history talk) with Dr Jordan Peterson and Frederick Kagan.
As the article the article hints, without the rose tinted specs, Zelensky and those that put him there, and who presumably continue to exercise huge influence, are not the icons of democracy and freedom our press and politicians would have us believe.
Having said that, the elites in Europe an the US appear to be little different.
You cant compare Ukraine’s governance problems with anything Orban has done. Romania and Bulgaria both acceded under the wire, without complying with the necessary standards, and that has not worked well, despite Romania being the first CEE country to sign an association agreement in 2004. . I am sure the poorest country in Europe would love to get its hands on the billions a year it would need, but until the judiciary, the oligarchs controlling and stealing Ukraine’s resources, and other state actors can be reformed, nothing will improve in Ukraine.
Nearly all on here are Brits. We left the EU so now it’s really none of our business.
I voted Leave and would do so again on any day of the week and twice on a Sunday. But the EU is still our business as is Europe more widely. There are a lot of European fields which are “forever” British just to underline that Europe is our business.
But NATO shares the continent with EU, and there are numerous members of both, so things done by the EU, and maybe even statements made by VDL without British foreknowledge, may involve us in war.
Love football, Hate FIFA… both are possible.
If Putin carves off the eastern regions and Crimea as I’m expecting, why shouldn’t the rest of Ukraine be free to join whichever alliances it chooses seeing as it will no longer border Russia? Putin has his buffer and the Ukrainians can look westward for their needs
#brickingit
Best solution would have been a “Commonwealth of Ruthenia” (name immaterial) – a sort of EU for the three orthodox Eastern Slav countries, because it is that particular combination of culture, race and history which unites them. Putin has now made that impossible for a century.
Can someone explain what Ukraine gets by joining the EU? It’s not military, is it automatic funding/relief for disasters etc..?
They’ll join if they want to. Ok this is extraordinary but the principle counts. A sovereign country wants to join. Their choice.
Well, 27 countries have to agree, and the process is long and formidable, as UvdL would not know.
Ans so too should Zelensky. However, at least he has the excuse of desperation.
Ok, apply.
“The Hungarian government’s willingness to drop legitimate concerns over the mistreatment of its minority community in Ukraine is one of the most remarkable signs yet of the EU’s newfound unity over the Russian invasion.”
Hungary is applying perspective and proportionality, William. It’s not really that remarkable in these circumstances, except to you.