An escalating number of teens seeking rehab service
Sunday April 23 2006
IRELAND is producing a lost generation of teenage alcoholics. Now scores of young people - some just 15 - are trying to reclaim their lives by entering rehab.
And disturbing new statistics also show that heroin, the drug that brought desolation to working class communities throughout the Seventies and Eighties is once again becoming the primary drug of choice for a growing number of teens.
New figures released by the Aislinn Centre - the country's leading centre specialising in the treatment of young people with drink and drug problems show that last year 59 under-18s were admitted to the residential addiction treatment centre.
Another 56 clients who signed up for rehabilitation were aged between 18 and 21 years.
The deeply disturbing findings come as Education Minister Mary Hanafin spoke of her personal sadness at seeing teenage girls in her wealthy Dun Laoghaire constituency "unable to stand" after drinking to excess.
At last week's conference of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) in Killarney doctors demanded a 50 per cent increase in excise duty on alcohol, claiming the measure would ease pressure on A&E departments. They also want a ban on alcohol companies sponsoring concerts attended by minors.
"There is a big problem with young males committing suicide which is definitely linked to alcohol - and the amount of young girls with sexual transmitted infections is again linked with alcohol," former IMO President Dr Joe Barry said.
Teenagers are entering the ?185-a-day Aislinn Centre for a six-week residential course although co-director Sr Veronica Mangan says that no one is turned away because of money. The major health insurers VHI, Bupa and Vivas now cover children seeking addiction intervention for drink and drugs.
Meanwhile, Gerry Cooney treatment co-ordinator at the Rutland Centre said that their own findings suggested that younger and younger teens are developing problems.
He said the GAA should take a long hard look at itself in relation to the sponsorship by Guinness of the All-Ireland hurling series which links the national game with drink.
"We are getting more and more calls from parents and sometimes from the teenagers themselves about progressive, excessive, binge drinking," he said.
Mr Cooney described the phenomenon as worrying and that it needed to be acknowledged nationally.
"All the comparisons put us at the top of any European league tables for alcohol consumption and young women in particular seem to be drinking as much as their male peers. What is most worrying is that it drinking for effect. There is nothing sociable about it. It is drinking vast amounts in a very short space of time. It is treating drink as a drug in the purest sense. The purpose is to get high," he added.
His criticism of the drinks industry and the willingness of sports bodies to accept sponsorship that links alcohol with the glamour of sport comes on the day Leinster and Munster will battle it out in the Heineken Cup Semi-Final.
"On the one hand we are saying how awful alcohol abuse is in relation to our young people while on the other hand we are taking the shilling from the drinks industry. I think someone needs to take a stand. It's not just the GAA; we are preparing for today's big rugby game sponsored by Heineken, then it's the Guinness hurling, then the Budweiser Irish Derby," he added. Rolande Anderson, director of the Irish College of General Practitioners' (ICGP) Alcohol Project said that alcohol was now such a national problem causing so many difficulties for young people.
Mr Anderson, who is also a member of the Irish Association of Alcohol and Addiction Counsellors, said that many young teenagers and their parents are seeking intervention for alcohol abuse.
"The reality is that youngsters are drinking at much younger ages. You can have someone who is alcohol dependent at 17."
He said that some individuals can become addicted to alcohol very quickly - in less than six months.
"When someone starts drinking at the age of 13, 14, or 15 it is becoming commonplace that they would need treatment even before they become adults. I'm afraid there is nothing unusual about it these days. The one good thing is that people can get treatment early from places like the Aislinn Centre," he added.
The statistics of young people undergoing rehab at the Aislinn Centre will deeply worry parents. Last year 115 young people aged between 15 and 21 enrolled for the six-week residential programme: 93 male and 22 female.
Of those, 59 were under the age of 18 years while 56 were aged between 18 and 21.
The vast majority were "polydrug abusers" using alcohol in conjunction with other drugs. When asked what was there "drug of choice" 52 said cannabis, 44 alcohol, 11 heroin and 5 cocaine. Sr Veronica said the most dramatic increase was in the numbers using heroin.
"We believe that it quite significant. The fact is that while someone might say that cannabis was their drug of choice the vast majority would also be abusing alcohol," she says.
Mr Anderson of the ICGP stressed, "It is not just a posh school thing. It is right across the board. There has been an improvement in the availability of services but there is no doubt that well-to-do parents have recourse to treatment centres. For young people there is a worrying absence of public services."
The ICGP is finalising the results of a major research programme involving some 4,000 patients in the east of the country which will examine the efficacy of having addiction counsellors available as part of primary care in the community.
