Reflecting on the reckless abandon of our youths, we never imagined the nights of heavy drinking would evolve into a lifestyle fraught with risks and regrets. Join Meg and Bella as we peel away the layers of Australia's binge drinking culture, sharing raw and honest tales from our past. We take you through the high-risk initiation rites of youth, the pressure to maintain this hazardous habit, and the urgent need for new, healthier traditions of celebration. In this candid conversation, we also discuss the sobering reality of the aftermath and the recommended guidelines for responsible drinking, aiming to spark a dialogue on the necessity of redefining our relationship with alcohol.
As we venture further into our personal experiences, we dissect the complex reasons that fuel our binge drinking habits. From using alcohol as social glue in our formative years to numbing anxiety, Meg and Bella unveil the escalating tolerance that has led us, and many others, to blackouts and daily binge drinking. We examine the societal norms, like pub promotions, that perpetuate dangerous drinking patterns and the challenges we face in breaking free from the normalisation of excessive alcohol consumption. Through our introspective journey, we offer listeners a chance to rethink their own drinking practices as we champion the creation of more mindful and healthy celebratory customs.
Reflecting on the reckless abandon of our youths, we never imagined the nights of heavy drinking would evolve into a lifestyle fraught with risks and regrets. Join Meg and Bella as we peel away the layers of Australia's binge drinking culture, sharing raw and honest tales from our past. We take you through the high-risk initiation rites of youth, the pressure to maintain this hazardous habit, and the urgent need for new, healthier traditions of celebration. In this candid conversation, we also discuss the sobering reality of the aftermath and the recommended guidelines for responsible drinking, aiming to spark a dialogue on the necessity of redefining our relationship with alcohol.
As we venture further into our personal experiences, we dissect the complex reasons that fuel our binge drinking habits. From using alcohol as social glue in our formative years to numbing anxiety, Meg and Bella unveil the escalating tolerance that has led us, and many others, to blackouts and daily binge drinking. We examine the societal norms, like pub promotions, that perpetuate dangerous drinking patterns and the challenges we face in breaking free from the normalisation of excessive alcohol consumption. Through our introspective journey, we offer listeners a chance to rethink their own drinking practices as we champion the creation of more mindful and healthy celebratory customs.
Hey everybody, today we're going to talk about binge drinking, why we do it well, after we're too old to know better the pitfalls, the pressures to do it in Australian culture and how we move into, I guess, a new phase, a healthier way of celebrating. But first off, meg, look, I know that this was the characteristic of my early drinking. That really informed, I guess, my later problematic drinking persona, which you know I'm not too proud about. But is this a drinking style that you can identify with?
Speaker 2:
Oh my gosh, Bella. It's the only drinking style I can identify with.
Speaker 2:
Very sadly. I think from my first drink at 18 I was a binge drinker. I don't really remember more than I can count on one hand the times I didn't binge drink. It was just something I did. I have looked at reasons, but back then I was just like I'd always say, oh, I'm all or nothing and I'd just go for it. Scary, especially sort of looking at things in the lead up to this podcast today. It just scared me what I was doing and amazed that I came through Unscathed, although that's not altogether true. There were definitely injuries along the way.
Speaker 1:
Unscathed is probably the the adjective here or because binge drinking is associated with injuries which we'll get into for sure. Yeah, binge drinking for me was how we got together as teenagers when alcohol was involved, and I guess that's probably the case for most teenagers. I was a little bit loath to even have a look through my photos that were 10 plus years old to look at hospital binge drinking scenarios, because we had iPhones back then. You could take photos of all the shenanigans you got up to in those big wild nights. I can remember one I spoken about this a little bit before, but it was in Hawaii and that started off with just a full intention to hit it. And here I was, this beautiful vacation. It should have been something of a recharge, to reset, to feel healthy. But this one wild night we just got smashed with there with other friends and it was just like.
Speaker 1:
It was like a scene out of the hangover. Where the night was, the full intention was complete abandonment. Drink after drink, bar hopping, bar hopping, you know. Dance floor fights, fly kicking, waking up next to my husband with broken glasses and just going. What the fuck have we done? You know why have we allowed this to happen again. Do you have any memories that you kind of cringe at that involved that style of drinking?
Speaker 2:
Oh yes, going back to 18, which is how old I was, when I had my first drink. We had a local club called Rosie O'Grady's. It was one yeah, I know, put the Irish into the North Shore, but it was one suburb away from where I lived. And talk about encouraging binge drinking Wednesday night and the age range of people there were 18 to 19. I mean, you know it was full of people who just left school.
Speaker 2:
Wednesday night was dollar drinks and yeah, and literally your vodka and orange, you'd go up and get two. I mean, no one in there did not binge drink. And back in those days you know I'm 50, I was 18 then, I kid you not for the the broke ones of us we went around and finished off people's drinks and there was no risk of being dragged back then. It just didn't happen then. But how disgusting. I look back but it was all directed to binge drinking. Thursday nights at the same place was ladies nights. They bought a stripper in and had a moving dance floor. Oh, their memories there.
Speaker 2:
Bella, I hadn't reached blackout point at that time and I remember some dodgy nights. So my memory start really early of the binge drinking and it was messy, it was. There were people hooking up all over the place and we were on the North Shore in Sydney and I don't think our parents had a clue that this was two to three nights a week. We were. This place was putting on things to encourage us. I got kicked out quite a few times. I got banned, Everyone got banned at some point. Then you got let back in. It was what you do. They'd say you're banned and you couldn't come in and they'd remember you. But then you'd borrow your friends ID and if it was a different bounce they'd let you back in.
Speaker 1:
But we're it up because there was. There was a moving dance floor, dollar drinks and a strupper.
Speaker 2:
Oh, I remember and this is I can't even believe this happened I was lying on the moving dance floor with a stripper on top of me stripping, and then all the women around on the moving dance floor. Oh right, it was a shocker. So yeah, I have. I have a lot of memories there, bella.
Speaker 1:
I do are the nineties, but going older I still continued to binge drink.
Speaker 2:
So I have memories of camping with friends, with the kids, and I was hitting it hard. I have memories when it was like we're going out, let's get smashed. We'd say that that could be weekly back at some times in my life. You know this was a big part of my life.
Speaker 1:
I've been stringing. Yeah, and you're not alone, meg, because I think it's it's part of our culture, it's part of the incentive you know that these Rosie had way back in the day to get us in. Yeah, I mean, you brought you having memory flashbacks of at Pandora's in Canberra and the Canberra and listening will remember this. We had, we had the jugs, midori jugs. Wow, because we couldn't. You know, our palate was very unsophisticated. It's all about drinking this green crap and then dancing to Prince. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:
So binge drinking is defined. What I could find is that there were a couple of elements there. So we all know that healthy guidelines are that we really need to drink no more than four standard drinks in any one session, no more than 10 standard drinks per week, and I just want to put a little little word of warning in there. You know there really is no safe level of drinking any, any form of alcohol, but the risks are real when you go beyond this. So binge drinking involves not only drinking more than four standard drinks in any one session, and I have read actually it's three for women.
Speaker 1:
And there's a second element to it, and that is that you is when you go out with the aim of getting drunk. So there's that intention there to hit it and get wasted. You're not just slowly knocking back your four drinks over the course of 10 hours, you are sitting there and really hitting it. And just remember that our standard level of drinks is, you know, it's a heck of a lot smaller than what you think. What did you find out there, meg, when it came to that kind of definition?
Speaker 2:
It was shocking to me to hear that it was just three to four drinks for a woman, because I honestly don't know anyone that stayed within that growing up like that was. It's almost laughable. Like it puts a lot of people in Everywhere in the binge drinking range that probably thought they weren't. But what I sort of thought about was I mean, alcohol is so incredibly socially acceptable, so it was so acceptable to binge drink. There was no one saying you know you should stop. But it reminded me of in London a time. In London I still have the photograph you know old fashioned camera. You got a printed out of the back of the door and it said drink till he's cute and and that's along the lines of you know you go out to get drunk. It was just that's exactly what we were doing drinking till he was cute. You know all that guy doesn't have a few more drinks always gorgeous.
Speaker 2:
That was our lifestyle and, yes, I to think that three to four drinks for a woman and it's defined as a, you know, fast kind of drinking, so within two hours. But I've got a statistic. Well, it's not, it's numbers, numbers. I'm not very good with numbers, but one standard drink, so the BAC is our blood alcohol concentration, and one standard drink is about 0.01 to 0.03% of the alcohol in a person's bloodstream. So that's my drink. So, if you this is what scared me seven to 11 drinks in one hour, and I know that sounds like a lot, but that can equal coma or death. Oh yeah, and that's a statistic that is on Australian websites and that is talking about your blood alcohol concentration, how it rises quickly from drinking, and I can honestly say I could easily have four drinks in one hour. Yeah, towards the end of my alcohol career is very good at that. To think of the times, how close I was to being at that high level. It's not a big jump.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that that statistic is really telling. That is a fantastic Set of data there, because that is the very nature of binge drinking, isn't it fast? It's, the quantities are massive and you are scaling it to put your brain offline and with those, those incredibly high risks there. So the risks are something that you know, we all know about. But here's another thing.
Speaker 1:
I got a stat here, too, and it just tells another shocking truth is that Australians get drunk on average of 27 times a year, almost double the global average, and this was in a 2021 survey by global drug survey, which is a research organization, and Australia has been named the heaviest drinking nation in the world, after Australia spent more of their days drunk in 2020 than any other country. And, of course, we know it wrapped up throughout COVID. So we are a nation of binge drinkers and it comes with all of those risks. Let's just really quickly, if you know, touch on what those risks are. Not only do we have injury, there is domestic violence associated with it, unprotected sex I mean, you could probably name a few too, me, yeah, well in looking at the risks, I looked into blackouts.
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, so I don't know if you've had blackouts in your drinking, but have you?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it wasn't a regular feature of my drinking style. I don't really know why it should have. My memory should have led to blackout phase. A lot of my clients are, though, but yeah, it was. It wasn't something that I really experienced.
Speaker 2:
Right well, when you were saying you know the risks associated and you know unprotected sex, driving cars with blackouts and this is some research I did because I did blackout drink, and it's so. Blackouts are a gap in a person's memory for events that occurred while they were intoxicated. There's blackouts that you remember bits and pieces and then there are total blackouts where memories were never formed. And the scary part of that is and this is things I did was you can still engage in conversation. You can still. Well, you shouldn't drive cars, but people do. During a blackout, you spend money, you know you sexually promise promiscuous and do dangerous things, but you don't remember it the next day. And sometimes the only way you remember it is by having the evidence there of whatever that may be a car upon the curve, amazon delivering things, someone in your bed but these are real risks.
Speaker 2:
And then the blackout occurs when your blood alcohol concentration is Usually not point one, six or higher and you've had your drinks quickly in a short time. Now, that's probably what I used to drink for drinks in the hour. It's not a lot. And then it's when you're the part of your brain responsible for your memory the hippocampus doesn't function properly. I mean, can you imagine what damage that's doing? And I had blackouts more often than not in the last 10 years. Yeah, because I was drinking quickly. Yeah, to get drunk, because I wanted to numb out. I wanted to stop worrying about life and kids and whatever. I wanted to Just numb. And so it became very normal for me to drink like that and reading all this stuff is just so Incredibly scary. Blackouts are a type of amnesia. Yeah, so really. And then Other risks include things that we know like cancer, heart disease, you know, do. What else have you found in this research?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, and the everything that you just said there about blackout blackouts is absolutely Frightening and it should frighten us if this is becoming something that's happening. It's a real red flag Because you are actually acting in a way that you would never, ever act if you're, if alcohol hadn't put your logical part of your brain offline. But losing valuable items, that was me. I was always. I mean, I do that when I'm, when I'm sober, but yeah, I was always losing my wallet, my phone and and jewelry gosh, oh yeah you know, embarrassing yourself.
Speaker 1:
They're sort of the short-term things, but it does lead on to long-term risks problems at work relationships, emotional health problems, depression, anxiety, and look, yeah, you mentioned the effects on your brain, your liver cancer, increased risks of cancer but it does lead on to a real habitual style of drinking, so that I Guess it leads on to something that I'm quite fascinated About, which is make. Why, why do we do it? So we know all of this, but why do we do it and you touched on something that actually made me think Is the nature of been drinking, because binge drinking really is really not quite sustainable. Every single night You're gonna do it sporadically. It probably then has the risk of speeding up, but by the time the next session rolls round, you've kind of forgotten what the pain, the shame, the damage was caused by the last session. So those memories are fade and you kind of think all right, so let's hear we, here we go again, but what do you think? We're doing it as an average Australian in our culture.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, well, you're right with the. You know a week or two passes and you forget it's um. But a lot of people that do binge drink think, well, I don't have a problem because I can have weeks or months off at a time. But that's that's not really true at all and I was one of those people that, as I said, I did binge drink every time I went out, but I didn't go out all the time. Yeah, so back then it was very normalised to me. But having a look, I think in general people like when I was saying it's so socially acceptable people go out to relieve their stress. People might feel anxious and want a few drinks so they feel better. You know these are reasons. But also, once you've had one or two drinks, you resolve to sort of take it easy, goes and you don't really. Someone offers you yeah, I'll have another one, and it can. It can happen without us even realising. But for me personally, there's a lot of reasons.
Speaker 2:
I was a binge drinker and I think, like I said before, I just wanted to numb out and I wanted to numb out quickly. I had nothing major wrong in my life, but I was highly anxious, had anxiety disorders. I worried about people. When I drank, I didn't worry anymore. It actually gave me the relief of not giving a. You know if, for example, when I was in my 20s and my daughter my eldest daughter was five, I would get very anxious when she stayed over at someone's house, so I would drink and it took away that anxiety for me and it literally, in the early days, meant I stopped that constant worry about my kids, my family, anything, and so it wasn't major, like I said, but for me it was really uncomfortable having those anxious feelings. If I could just drink, they went and for me I didn't have an off switch. I always drank quickly and so.
Speaker 2:
And then tolerance builds and you were saying you know, it's not an all all the time thing. By the end of my drinking career at home, I was binge drinking every night, and that's what I think's also scary People especially women of you know middle age drinking at home. You end up, your tolerance builds and I was ending up having a lot more than I started having and that equates to binge drinking every night and I had blackouts because the next day I'd get up and I would have confiscated someone's laptop and forgotten where I'd hidden it and my kids would be like Mum, why don't you remember? And I'd go, I do, I just need to go to the toilet. And then I'd have to go through all the hiding places I was blacking out and that scares the crap out of me. Where's that with that tolerance building? Where's that going to end up?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I can relate to a lot of that. Absolutely, Meg. Yes, definitely. When I entered that flashing redstone, as I've spoken about previously, yes, I would have been binge drinking in accordance with those guidelines on a daily basis. And, yes, losing stuff, Just losing stuff, trying to piece it all together.
Speaker 1:
I think binge drinking happens really young here in Australia, when we are in our teenage years, and really it's because we're not going out to slowly slip wine in a sophisticated way where we've rated our parents cupboards or we've got an older sibling to get a bottle and we sit there and we ram it down as quickly as we can, and that's right. When we're developing our identity and our sense of belonging and our tribe wits, we're in risk taking modes and we're doing stuff that gives us attention to be, to laugh, to be silly, to be fun, and that's what I was doing. So my formation of the way to socialise, to get attention, largely when I was growing up, was to be the one that actually got quite smashed and to do some risk taking activities, going to be like stealing a trolley or oh, got a straight sign, you know, stupid crap, but that's what filled me with that sense of being part of my tribe. So I think and that's when you know, our prefrontal cortex hasn't developed then. But what is developing, because we're so hormonal and full of emotion, is it's imprinting on us that that is the way that we can belong and socialise. So I took that and ran with that all the way through uni, all the way through my legal career and then into the way I socialised with mums.
Speaker 1:
Was that a session was a session when alcohol was involved? I wasn't going to sit there and have to. It was all about the fast binging quantity of drinking. Hit it then to be silly and risk taking, to hit the dance floor, do something stupid, because I thought that was the way that memories were created. So that you know I really think that's a big juicy one for around why we do it. The habit is said early and we just we keep doing it. That's what sitting down drinking means. And you know we've got. We've got Pandoras with their jolly jugs and you're moving dance floor to say to normalise it 100%.
Speaker 2:
I think you're absolutely spot on. I wasn't a teen drinker, so mine definitely started for self medicating, but you are so right in that you've got a period of time. You've got to get the drinks in. We're not allowed to do this. This is you know, and a statistic that I read was and this is the same place you got the ones you mentioned before was that 17% of Australians over the age of 14 are drinking at risky levels, so we've still got a lot of young people doing that, and then I. However, there are changes in young people's drinking, and I found this through DrinkWise in, and I think this might be a 2017 statistic but 18 to 24 year olds are drinking less overall.
Speaker 1:
Yes.
Speaker 2:
And I have noticed that I'm not sure exactly why they use it more as one of their tools for letting off steam right, For letting off steam rather than the only one. I know that my girls don't have a club that gives you dollar drinks. I mean, I know that it's not available like it was for us. Yes, there's more awareness, but for some reason and I'm not speaking for all kids, I just, and maybe my kids, are aware from what I went through. I'm not sure, but there seems to be a drop. But then older families of children 14 and over which was it's me, but obviously I've stopped, but it was my son was 12 and the other girls were older. The parents are rediscovering their identity and freedom and those and they're drinking at the risky levels, returning to pre-parent habits that they had. So it's gone up in sort of that middle age.
Speaker 1:
Interesting facts. Wow, that is really interesting. Meg, and you and I fell into that. Oh well, here's the thing, and I think this is a it's a big. This has a big part to play in it. All is that when you've been been drinking for such a long time and you feel like it's that abandonment of all of your responsibilities, you can be a bit reckless, a bit rebellious, a bit fun. That that's that very quality of trying to be rebellious and abandoning yourself. That's addictive too. So you're kind of chasing that feeling all the time. And then what happens is that you, your ability to cope with life stresses, have just not developed. Those coping skills have been held in abeyance so that when you hit your 30s and your 40s and you do have all the responsibilities and stresses come along your go to method of coping is is going to be alcohol, because you haven't, you haven't developed those proper coping skills when you're growing up throughout your, your teens and your 20s. So it is a bit of a vicious cycle, isn't it?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it is definitely so. Do you have any tips for people on how to not get into this cycle that we did?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you bet, because I think, um, it's really unsustainable to keep binge drinking in your late 30s and your 40s, isn't it? When you've got, it's not pretty.
Speaker 2:
It's not pretty. It's not pretty and some, a lot of people hold it together and you and I still went off to work and I think in people's mind, in my mind, it was like, well, I've got it together, I can keep doing this. But looking back now, I don't know how I kept doing it. I don't physically exhaustion, just mentally, I don't know.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think you get a few warning signs, aren't you? You're that person at the Christmas party, or you're? You know, people are starting to make a few comments because you're supposed to grow out of that behavior. But it's really hard to grow out of that behavior, as we know. Look, I think because it's so normalized it's not treated. Binge drinking isn't really treated as a red flag, it's treated as the norm.
Speaker 1:
So I think part of the way of turning around is that our culture, it needs to really say that it's okay to be uncomfortable with binge drinking. It's okay to see that it's unhealthy, it's not the normal behavior. Even all shouldn't be, even though everyone around is doing it. So it's okay to actually go out and get help to stop binge drinking, because I think we think that you really need to only stop if you're habitual problematic drinker in that sense. But I think binge drinking needs to be up there in the category of seeking to get help. So there really has to be a green light there because, gosh, we're episode of stats today, but the drug and alcohol foundations recent survey was that 80% of problematic drinkers do not believe they have a problem and it takes at least seven years to get help, and I think binge drinking, the normalization of it, is a part of that problem. So one of my tips is it really does, has been drinking, has to be up there as a red flag. That's one tip.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, look, I absolutely agree and I think it is so. 80% of people don't think they've got an issue. And that's binge drinking for you, like we were saying before, because you can go periods of time, but really it's when the danger happens. And one of the big reasons I stopped drinking was because I was worried that after a binge I would be caught drink driving the next day even though I hadn't drunk in the morning. Your blood alcohol is so high I was worried I'd be pulled over taking the kids to school. And so how did I change that? Because obviously there are people, now that I've stopped, so many of my friends just cut down. It's like, oh my gosh, you're normal, I couldn't do that.
Speaker 2:
So the seven year thing sounds pretty accurate to what I went through and that's why our coaching. There's so much more available now, even from when I started looking. But I found getting a community, getting online and listening to I listened to audibles, but now you've got podcasts like this and the SOBA podcast. But getting a coach and doing the coaching we did is a huge part of why I'm successful today and it helped me really look at why I was binge drinking. I think everyone's doing it for different reasons and once I got really into that and found out why it really helped me change my journey and, like you mentioned, finding some new ways to relax, to de-stress, that don't involve alcohol or drugs, that's been.
Speaker 2:
There's a lot more opportunity for things like yoga these days or ice baths, and there are just so many tools and amazingly fun things that you can do and now I get excited to de-stress by doing some of those things and as a drinker I wouldn't have found that thought exciting. So I just want to let people know that might still be in that drinking cycle. It's not going to get better For me. It wasn't going to get better, it was going to get very much worse. I came out of it with some health issues that I've been covering from my drinking, but in the journey I found joy, and I found joy in doing things that self-care things, and I've met people and I have heaps of fun de-stressing and living my life now. So that's my tips Any more from you, bella.
Speaker 1:
Oh well, I think they branch off from things that you've said in a way, because find other things you said to de-stress, but I also think, find other things that ignite that rebellious quality, that sense of wild adventure. If you need to feel completely free and I don't think we ever want to get to point where you're looking for abandonment of self but if you want to do that, find other ways. And then I'd say you know, if you're looking at, you need to look at the core beliefs around why it is you feel you need to Be offline, so to speak. Why do you need to abandon yourself? And so there's a bit of Self-compassion work, a bit of understanding who you are, and self acceptance work. They are really important part of the work we do and it's it's a large part of you know, hitting in mid 40s To really we're accepting who you are.
Speaker 1:
At this point you don't, you are enough, you're not needing alcohol to add to it Gosh. And then you've got the, the tactics of playing the tape forward. You don't want to be a cast member of the hangover and, you know, wake up feeling like crap, wrecking your holiday and visualizing who you want to be in One year, five year, ten years time, and if you're really visualizing what you're gonna watch, your future you is going to be like if you continue with the behavior, and then you compare it to who you could be without it. That's a massive incentive you know, almost honoring and owing some responsibility to change. Finally, get help, reach out, talk to somebody, even it's a 30-minute chat with your eye, just to use us as a soundboard to say this is what I do. Have you got any tips? Yeah, that's really it. What a great episode made. It's such a common drinking style, it's normalized and it's hard to kick.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. It's I don't like to say favorite topic, but it's. It's In the alcohol. You know, realm it is, but of mine, because of all the information that's out there and I just I know what it's like to be in it. You know, you and I have lived this, we know and we also know what's possible. So, yeah, it's been a great topic and I'd love talking to you.
Speaker 1:
Thank you. So have I, meg. We just encourage all of our listeners to Send us some topics, send us some questions. We really are embarking on a bit of a new format this year where we'll take some time to really, you know, talk about some individual questions and concerns around alcohol, as well as keeping up our great interviews. But bring in. Thank you everybody. Thank you, bye you.