Everyday Drugs: Why We Use Pills and Alcohol More and More Frequently
Now a nice glass of red wine!
Was a stressful day today. As so often, but now is closing time, so off to the couch and a nice glass of red wine. Oh, everybody?
Oh, a second one. The wine tastes really good. And this slightly intoxicated feeling in the head is also quite pleasant, which lays over the gray day this pleasantly warm filter. Another glass? D rather not. Okay, maybe half more. After all, you are not an alcoholic. Only connoisseur.
For a while you could see the posters of the campaign "Alcohol - know your limit" at every subway station. They showed mostly teenagers at parties that still happily flirted and celebrated with each other in the one picture, while in a second picture - after they had exceeded their limit - they either fell asleep drunkenly in an unfavorable pose or were immediately picked up by the ambulance.
Well, maybe the campaign was even successful, because the number of adolescent alcohol consumers has halved over the past 15 years, even young adults under 25 drink less and less, as does the German average.
Especially educated women are prone to risky consumption
There is, however, one group of people who, contrary to this trend, quite often resort to glass: adult, educated women.
According to a study by the Robert Koch Institute, it is above all academics from the age of 45 who tend to regularly risky consumption. A poster campaign aimed at adult, educated women, however, would not be so much figurative. For party is not here more likely.
It's not about party ...
"We see especially in women who are successful in the profession and then take over the classic, caring role in the family at home, that they simply want to relax quickly In turbo time And there supposedly help two glass of red wine quite wonderful," says Kerstin Jüngling , Managing Director of the Berlin Department for Addiction Prevention.
These women would never consider themselves addicted to addiction. And you could be wrong: "Of course it is a risky consumption, if you do it regularly, but it is hardly talked about, because you will not notice the next day, and because it goes well for years, until you realize that you can not live without it. "
Women over 45 use glass more often than others
Many physicians have abandoned the old belief that low-dose alcohol is healthier than no alcohol. Alcohol is a cell poison, there is at best "low-risk" consumption, and how it looks is defined differently in each country.
In Germany, the limits are particularly strict, they allow women a maximum of a small glass of beer or half a glass of wine a day, everything about it is considered "risky". Sweet nights spent chatting with your best friend, or a night of dancing with several gin and tonics, in the jargon "binge drinking", are of course not intended.
This sounds strange in a society where alcohol is part of everything: at every reception, every pub visit, every better meal. And then the wine, which you then just drink in the evening so to come down - is it not important anyway?
Or perhaps it makes a difference whether one occasionally deliberately rushes into a happy intoxication, fully aware that this is unhealthy and unreasonable? Or whether one drinks more often to cope with a shitty day, with pressure, stress, inner emptiness?
The question is: Has alcohol got a function in my everyday life?
"You have to ask yourself honestly: Did the alcohol get a functionality for me in everyday life?" Says search expert Kerstin Jüngling. "For example, do I have the feeling that I can not fall asleep without two large beers in the evening?" Anyone who says yes here already has a problem. Not just a potentially harmful one.
The American author Kristi Coulter described it in her article "The Drunken Woman" as follows: "I recognize that alcohol is the oil in our engines, what makes us purr, if we actually want to give completely different sounds."
Alcohol is oil in our engines; that which makes us purr, when we want to give completely different sounds
Even medicines are thrown in more and more often
Terrible, this hour between three and four o'clock in the morning, when the thoughts go roller coaster. And tomorrow you have to be fit again! Good that the doctor has prescribed this sleeping drug. Of course you should not take too long. But what is the alternative? Tomorrow tired and not capable at all, even though there is so much to do now?
Up to 1.9 million people in Germany are dependent on drugs, according to the German main office for addiction issues.Particularly women are at risk - paradoxically, precisely because they pay more attention to their health and go to the doctor more often than men, even and especially with mental health problems. And there they get, for example, often on private prescription, sleep and sedative. Or antidepressants.
In menopause, antidepressants are prescribed
Increasingly, even in cases where it might not have to be: "We make the observation that antidepressants are apparently the new drug in menopause," says Kerstin young man. "The women suffer from the typical mood swings, but reject hormones because of the increased cancer risk, and then they go to their gynecologist and say: I have to finish the last presentations, but I'm in such a bad mood, I'm sleeping bad, please give Tell me something and the doctor says: Okay, if you really have to work, I'll write something down. "
No, that does not have to make you dependent. It probably even helps many. But not only Kerstin Jüngling wonders why it has become so normal to help out with a substance in order to cope with everyday life instead of thinking about how everyday life could be made more manageable. "We need a societal discussion on how to go higher, faster, farther down to a certain point, we are not machines, everyone needs regeneration, joy, inspiration to make a difference," says the addiction prevention expert. "But what many get is just pressure."
"We are not machines, everyone needs regeneration, but many only get pressure."
The trivialization of legal drugs of everyday life - do it all, it's normal, hey, I'll open up a Barolo - leads in the best case only: That we do not even wonder if what we do here, still another deliberately chosen enjoyment, maybe even excess. Or just the only socially accepted way to pack your own life in cotton wool, because otherwise it would be hard to bear.
