Published in GALWAYnow and CORKnow November 2007
So you’re not 21 anymore. You have a mortgage, you’re getting engaged, getting married, having kids or furthering your career. You’re moving on, everything’s changing, except for one thing - your drinking, writes Jo Lavelle.
In your early 20s, going out and getting into the obligatory drunken stupor was not just ok; it was totally acceptable. But now you’re drinking just as much, if not more, it’s having an increasing negative impact on your life and the guilt is setting in. One of the biggest faux pas in Irish society is to tell someone just how much of a fool they made of themselves the night before. It’s not done – you don’t want to cause them any more damage than the hangover’s already doing.
But ignoring it is just what’s adding fuel to an already out of control fire says Joe Treacy, Alcohol Addiction Counsellor with the HSE (Health Service Executive) West, Galway who suggests that the city is now facing an epidemic of female binge drinking – and it’s impacting on our health, our children, our relationships and our careers. “It was a taboo to find a woman in treatment ten to 15 years ago. I remember being in treatment settings with nine men and maybe one woman and usually, she was very well advanced. There was a reluctance to engage women into treatment in the past. It’s a macho thing; like it’s ok for men to go to the pub. But women tend to drink at home, secretly and that prevails all the time. In our last treatment programme here, we had five women and six men – the taboo is gone. You didn’t see that ten years ago. It’s a rarity now for a woman not to drink and they try to drink on a par with their male counterparts. They can do it successfully for a time but because of women’s bodily functions, they are more susceptible to liver damage and that’s what we’re seeing,” states Treacy. He blames the increase in binge-drinking in women on the increased stresses and pressures of today. “The stress of women is incredible. It leaves me breathless when I ask a woman to describe her working day. I’m suddenly realising that she has a day’s work done before she arrives into work. I’m continually amazed with what women are trying to juggle in their lifestyles. Women are working like dogs and they’re wrecked before their time. They’re stressed up to their eyeballs, trying to juggle work and home life.”
One of the main fall-outs of binge drinking is the number of children being taken into care due to their mother’s drinking. “Sadly enough, a lot of the women that are referred here are referred due to childcare issues. Somebody has noticed that a child’s behaviour has changed, a child goes missing, or a teenager is reacting at home and suddenly it comes out that it’s mum’s drinking. Women feel very aggrieved about this - they’re saying, ‘Why point the finger at me? They have a dad as well.’ But women are the main refuge of children, particularly small children - nobody does it better than mum. It’s very, very extreme to remove children and the HSE goes to extraordinary lengths to keep children at home. The fact that it’s happening is a testament to how severe the problem is.
“The amount of children in this health board being taken into care because of parental drinking is dramatically increasing every month and every year. We didn’t see that five years ago; home alone, children wandering the streets, the case of the child wandering around the Eyre Square Centre, deliberately abandoned by his mother who was drinking, children being locked in Isuzu jeeps one race week when guards had to
break in.”
Another major effect that binge drinking is having on women in the city is that their sexual health is being put at serious risk, states Treacy. “We’ve had a large degree of unreported aggravated sexual behaviour directed at women in Galway because
they’re drunk. Many women have said they didn’t report it because they just didn’t want the embarrassment or the hassle that goes with it. We’re now referring women to sexual health clinics because of their drinking; that’s a growing phenomenon. There’s a predatory nature in the city – men in nightclubs are watching girls getting drunk. Spiking of women’s drinks is a phenomena that has attracted much attention. In instances where women said their drinks were spiked in Galway, we found no substances, but found that their concentrates of alcohol would knock a horse out, let alone themselves. We saw 900 people last year and still haven’t got a sample to say the date rape drug was in their drink.”
Treacy also suggests that Galway could be the highest dispenser of the morning after pill in the country. “If there’s a festival or a party, there’s an increase in the number of women requesting the morning after pill, which is their right, but it’s an indicator of the level of recklessness or carelessness. We have an all-year round drinking festival.”
While alcohol-related problems are evidently on the rise, women are still reluctant to seek treatment due to a sense of shame and it usually takes some kind of catalyst for a woman to seek help for an alcohol problem. Treacy says that it can be something from a minor road traffic accident, to presenting at work with a smell of alcohol from the night before or relationship problems. It can be childcare issues, or it can just
be a blood sample which shows high levels of alcohol in the blood. “Women are sometimes totally unaware of the units of alcohol that are acceptable. They are amazed that their limit should be 14 units a week – a unit is a glass of wine or a half of Guinness. If you’re a woman and you go to your GP and say you’re depressed, they’re a hundred times more likely to give you an antidepressant than they would a man. We’re saying that GPs should certainly be listening more. There’s a somewhat
quiet apprehension in engaging a woman and saying, ‘What about your alcohol consumption?’ Because the attitude is, if she presents well and looks well, leave her alone.” Treacy adds that while our cultural attitude to alcohol needs to be
looked at, another major factor in the rise in binge drinking and alcohol-related problems is the huge amount of money being spent on advertising by the drinks industry. “By international standards, Ireland has major problems with alcohol. We
spend €150 million a day on alcohol and the cost continues to rise. The implications are massive from a health perspective, particularly in women as it encroaches on every aspect of their lives.”
…..EXCERPT
Published GALWAYnow, LIMERICKnow and CORKnow Magazines
September 2008
Our bodies have been with us since the beginning of our existence - they’ve gone from the gorgeous childish chub to the little girl leanness to the 15-year-old puppy fat stage. They’ve taken us through our hedonistic twenties, borne kids, given us pleasure, comfort, satisfaction. So why is it that so many women have so little love, so little compassion, for the only body we’ll ever have? Jo Lavelle investigates.
Looking good is important to the majority of us; we want to look good, we want to be attractive, desirable. And while we might allow ourselves to feel nice when we’ve lost a couple of pounds, when we’re wearing a cute dress, and when we’ve been ‘good’ that week, what about the other six days of the week when we just feel like ourselves?
So many women view their bodies as the enemy; something they’re constantly trying to control, contain, repel. We scold our bodies for being rounded, our thighs for having cellulite, our breasts for being too big/too small. When we’re not feeling great about ourselves, we stuff ourselves with ‘bad’ food (for a ‘bad’ body), as if we weren’t feeling bad enough. We punish ourselves with unrealistic goals and punish ourselves when we don’t achieve them.
I’m generalising, but there is not one woman I know who believes, or who will admit, that she is happy with herself, her shape, her body. It’s easy to blame society, or the media, or men for women’s warped view of their bodies, but is it not our own responsibility to take the power back?
Views of what constitutes a good body has undoubtedly changed from the curvaceousness that was cherished in the 50s, to the lean and mean which is now revered over the more meaty among us. Something else that was accepted as the norm in the 60s and 70s were little bellies and cellulite (think a scantily-clad Barbara Windsor jiggling about the place in the Carry On movies). Not much of a chance these days of seeing a woman with such credentials finding her way onto the small screen as a desirable woman in today’s anti-cellulite society. But when the reality is that most women look more like this, why can’t we just accept the things we can’t change and change the things we can?
Let’s face it - being obesely overweight has never been attractive. Flab has never been attractive. And why should it be? It’s unsightly, unhealthy, and it’s covering up your true form. But that’s another issue - just where do you draw the line between curvy and overweight? I’ve asked numerous guys to comment on this issue and they all seem to differ hugely in what they consider to be curvy. One particular guy I asked seemed to balk at the word ‘curvy’, saying it’s just a pretty word for being fat. When I asked him to define fat, I think ‘rolls’ were mentioned, so I’m guessing he had a large lady in mind, and that wasn’t to his taste. Others think that curvy is slim, but not skeletal. But men, like us, like aesthetically pleasing bodies; they don’t have to be tiny, just healthy looking and relatively firm. And while it can be quite a depressing thought, that’s life, who said it was fair?
Where men are concerned, it’s all too easy to look around and see our men dribbling over a picture of a stunning stick thin model, feel inadequate, and instantly want to lose a stone . But the model probably walked onto the shoot looking pale and pasty and about as sexy as a toad - that’s real life. Welcome on stage the make-up artists, lots of tan, lighting, hours of touching up. And then of course there’s the airbrushing, which, believe me, can work wonders. And what have you got? An illusion. Most men worth their salt will know that. And we all like to dream. We women are just as guilty of dreaming; it’s just that we might not be as obvious when checking out a hot guy.
In reality, real men love real women. They just love women, and everything that comes with that. Most men find confident women appealing, especially those who are also confident about their bodies, and all the little imperfections. I remember an ex of mine saying he loved a certain part of my body, because I loved it myself. It was the first time I had any awareness that confidence inspires confidence. Do you ever notice how if you are feeling particularly attractive and loving yourself, or indeed, a particularly part of your body and your partner just can’t keep his hands to himself? - the power of self-love. Or what about those times when you’re feeling particularly unattractive and your repellent attitude is somehow transferred onto your partner?
So many women I know are on a constant battle to lose weight, and out of all of them, I can’t ever recall even one woman saying, ‘I’m happy; I’ve reached my goal, now I can just focus on other, more important things’. Just how long does this self-punishment go on for, till you’re 40, 50, 60?
I recently found an old diary from when I was 14 or 15 and with each entry, there was a little mark at the top of each page with a different weight goal on each entry. As I was documenting my weight, how much I had to loose, how long it would take me to loose it, I would also discuss with myself how great I would feel, how happy I would be, when I reached my goal. But it hadn’t started there either; I remember, at 12 years old, eating nothing but rivita and apples because I desperately wanted to be 7 ½ stone. That was in the 80s; there’s a lot more pressure today.
I’ve never really been overweight by more than say half a stone, but there’s never been a time in my life, since I became aware of my body, that I’ve been completely happy with it, even when I’m at my ideal weight. Like most other women, I feel I could always look better, be thinner, be more toned.
Really, in a perfect world, we would look after ourselves, accept and love the way we are, enjoy life, enjoy our bodies, and just stop obsessing…what will it take for women to make peace with the female form?
Published in GALWAYnow and LIMERICKnow Magazines February 08
Nights on the town too numerous to count, weekends away with the girls, endless phone conversations about boys. Jo Lavelle ponders the joys of being single.
Finding yourself single when all around you are falling in love, getting engaged, getting married, having children, can be pretty daunting. When it seems like everyone around you is moving onto the ‘next’ step, you feel stationary, like you’re moving nowhere. But there’s something about being single that causes you to become more determined to have fun, to prove wrong all the loved-up couples who believe that life is nothing if there’s not two of you to experience it together. And it’s this adrenaline, or pig headedness if you like, that, if channelled in the right way, can result in you having the best time of your life.
A good social life is of paramount importance in a single girl’s life. Throw in a good party girlfriend, a great wardrobe, loads of energy and a willingness to let go a little - and you’re in for one hell of a fun time. You’ll probably need at least one partner in crime - someone who’s more likely to be whiling away weekend mornings huddled under the duvet, only to rise in time to stick on a wash, go for a blow dry and head out on the town again.
There’s something deliciously exciting about being single; it’s that not knowing what’s around the corner. Not knowing who you might bump into and what that might lead to. Options are endless, and the world’s your oyster. Then there are the dates, the dizzying excitement of meeting new people. When you’re single you accept invitations that you would never have considered otherwise, have no problem spending half a day getting ready, squeezing into that little black number. You party till 5am, flirt outrageously (and are rarely admonished for it).
The single girl has a licence to live life to the max - to party hard, have fun, be a bit wild. She has a licence to blow all her wages on a pair of D&Gs if she so wishes, or spend her entire food budget for the week on Prosecco and olives.
A great wardrobe is also one of the by-products of a single life. So much time to focus on yourself - those hours trying on dozens of jeans looking for one that gives you the perfect ass; the self-indulgent splurging on the prettiest dresses, the must-have shoes…all because you deserve it.
Then there’s that absolute independence, the feeling that you could pack up and leave for some exotic destination in the morning, even if you never have any intention of carrying through all the threats.
And while being single may not always be a walk in the park; there’s always going to be times when you’d give anything for a cuddle from a pair of big loving arms, chances are you won’t always be single. So embrace it, enjoy your time on your own. Chances are you’ll look back in 20 years on these days as the best time of your life. Enjoy!
