Holy God, we offer thanks for the vision of Samuel Shoemaker, priest and co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous; and we pray that we may follow his example to help others find salvation through knowledge and love of Jesus Christ our Savior; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Meeting in Gisborne today, the Anglican General Synod invited Professor Doug Sellman from the National Addiction Centre to speak about binge drinking culture.

He put forward a number of solutions to deal with the issue: raising alcohol prices, raising the purchase age, reducing the accessibility to alcohol, reducing marketing and advertising, increasing drink-driving countermeasures and increasing treatment opportunities for heavy drinkers.

“We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change the way we regulate alcohol in society. It is a national crisis and way of life, and you have a role to address what science tells us what needs to be treated as a Class B drug,” he said.

The Synod today backed Prof Sellman’s proposals, and members also voted to increase their own vigilance of alcohol consumption and to hold each other to account.

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For teenagers, the effects of a drunken night out may linger long after the hangover wears off.

A recent study led by neuroscientist Susan Tapert of the University of California, San Diego compared the brain scans of teens who drink heavily with the scans of teens who don’t.

Tapert’s team found damaged nerve tissue in the brains of the teens who drank. The researchers believe this damage negatively affects attention span in boys, and girls’ ability to comprehend and interpret visual information.

“First of all, the adolescent brain is still undergoing several maturational processes that render it more vulnerable to some of the effects of substances,” Tapert says.

Read or listen to it all.

Round-the-clock drinking and cut-price alcohol are to blame for an ‘appalling’ rise in cancers, experts warned today.

Cases of cancer of the mouth have gone up by half in the past decade, with a 43 per cent rise in liver tumours. There have also been big rises in breast and colorectal cancer.

Many experts are blaming alcohol consumption, which has doubled in the UK since the 1950s and has been fuelled by Labour’s decision to relax licensing laws.

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The numbers are troubling: An estimated 17.6 million adults in the USA are either alcoholics or have alcohol problems, according to the National Institutes of Health. By some estimates, one-third of alcoholics are women.

Yet if you were to ask a woman’s friends and family if she has a drinking problem, they might very well say no.

Read the whole thing.

The early baby boomers may be known as the generation of sex, drugs and rock and roll. But it turns out, they’re hitting the bottle pretty hard as they age, as well. And that portends significant alcohol-related health problems ahead as those mid-lifers become seniors.

A new study finds that among men and women 50 to 64 years old, almost 1 in 4 men and 1 in 10 women is a “binge” drinker — meaning that at some point in the last 30 days, he or she has downed four (for women) or five (for men) servings of alcohol in a single two-hour sitting. Such alcohol abuse — roughly defined as the amount needed to attain a blood-alcohol level of .08 (the level at which most states consider a driver intoxicated) — frequently escapes the notice of physicians, even though it presents an escalating health risk as the drinker ages.

The study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, found that binge drinkers are more likely to use tobacco or illicit drugs than those who do not drink. (It also found that among women, binge drinking was more common among the employed and those using prescription drugs for nonmedical purposes; among men, it was more common among the unmarried and those with higher incomes.)

Binge drinking among this still highly mobile group is associated with an increased risk of traffic accidents and other alcohol-related injuries.

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So on the relative risks to our God-given bodies, Bishop Gladwin is just plain wrong. He could reasonably retort that what we must now call units of alcohol are as damaging to our organs wherever they are consumed.

That may be strictly true and I’m no physician but I’m guessing that an honest doctor would say that a bellyful of first-growth claret and a decent cognac is going to be less harmful than the equivalent in lager, rum-and-cokes and half-a-dozen alcopops as a digestif.

The middle classes have been the alcoholic villains of late, but I simply don’t buy the case against us. Per capita alcohol consumption in Britain has only recently returned to the levels that we were drinking in 1912, and our diets have improved immeasurably since then.

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The Rt Rev John Gladwin, the Bishop of Chelmsford, criticised the double-standards he claims exist in the attitudes of more affluent sections of society towards Britain’s “binge-drinking” culture.

He argued that they could not condemn teenagers’ behaviour if they are getting drunk themselves, and claimed that they are ultimately responsible for the rise in alcoholism.

His comments follow the release of official figures that show one in four adults are putting their health at risk by drinking too much and that 360,000 11 to 15 year-olds get drunk every week.

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When a 15-year-old comes into Wile-e’s bar looking for a cold beer, the bartender, Mike Whaley, is happy to serve it up ”” as long as a parent is there to give permission.

“If they’re 15, 16, 17, it’s fine if they want to sit down and have a few beers,” said Mr. Whaley, who owns the tavern in this small town in southern Wisconsin.

While it might raise some eyebrows in most of America, it is perfectly legal in Wisconsin. Minors can drink alcohol in a bar or restaurant in Wisconsin if they are accompanied by a parent or legal guardian who gives consent. While there is no state law setting a minimum age, bartenders can use their discretion in deciding whom to serve.

When it comes to drinking, it seems, no state keeps pace with Wisconsin. This state, long famous for its breweries, has led the nation in binge drinking in every year since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began its surveys on the problem more than a decade ago. Binge drinking is defined as five drinks in a sitting for a man, four for a woman.

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National Guard and Reserve combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are more likely to develop drinking problems than active-duty U.S. soldiers, a new military study suggests.

The authors speculate that inadequate preparation for the stress of combat and reduced access to support services at home may be to blame.

The study, appearing in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association, is the first to compare Iraq and Afghanistan veterans’ alcohol problems before and after deployment.

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Stonington police have arrested the pastor of an Episcopal church accusing him of hosting a graduation party that resulted in two girls getting sick on alcohol.

The Rev. Mark Robinson of Calvary Episcopal Church was arrested Monday on charges stemming from a party at his home Sunday night.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams today attacked 24-hour drinking as the “tip of the iceberg” in a culture of alcohol abuse in Britain.
Dr Williams said he was “very concerned” by reports that a review ordered into 24-hour drinking by Prime Minister Gordon Brown last year would conclude that the legislation has been largely a success.
“I would be interested to see why anyone should think of it as a success. I think it has had an effect of making less safe and less civil our public space in many, many contexts, including Canterbury,” he said.
He added: “There is a whole culture of alcohol abuse which this country has failed to tackle and the 24-hour thing is just the tip of the iceberg.
“It is not that I am singling it out as the worst bit of the field, it is just that it is one of the more obviously presenting factors.”

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President Bush is talking more openly lately about his old drinking habit, and yesterday he offered perhaps his most pointed assessment yet by saying plainly that the term “addiction” had applied to him.

“Addiction is hard to overcome. As you might remember, I drank too much at one time in my life,” Bush said during a visit to the Jericho Program, a project of Episcopal Community Services of Maryland that helps former prisoners deal with problems such as drug addiction so they can find jobs and reintegrate productively into society.

Bush spoke to reporters after meeting privately with two men who have graduated from Jericho’s program and dealt with drug problems. During that session, which the White House allowed one reporter to attend, Bush spoke frankly about himself.

“I understand addiction, and I understand how a changed heart can help you deal with addiction,” he told the two men. “There’s some kind of commonality.”

He asked Adolphus Mosely and Tom Boyd how they stopped using drugs – and then answered his own question.

“First is to recognize that there is a higher power,” Bush said. “It helped me in my life. It helped me quit drinking.”

“That’s right, there is a higher power,” Mosely said.

“Step One, right?” Bush said, referring to the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Steps program. Actually, it’s the second step.

Read it all.

The video was compelling; I tried to find a way to link to the video and failed. In the meantime, read it all (and if any blog readers can find the direct video link let me know).