02.24.07
Breda O’Brien on giving up the drink
Just home from John and Diana’s. They’re off the booze for Lent. Three days in and John says he’s getting tetchy but with that Ireland win today, it should help.
I like Breda O’Brien’s observation today on abstinence vs cutting down
“Two of Ireland’s best-respected Catholic bishops, Bishop Eamonn Walsh and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, recently stood under the statue of Fr Mathew on O’Connell Street to launch a pastoral letter on alcohol. Dr Walsh referred to our pattern of alcohol consumption as a national tragedy.
The hard-hitting pastoral letter urged us not to leave action to someone else, but to take action ourselves. Yet the bishops may have been standing under the wrong statue for the message that they want to promote, which is about moderation and the responsible use of alcohol. Theobald Mathew, always a dramatic character, decided against moderation as a tactic, because he believed it was too difficult a goal for the Irish. He decided, instead, to concentrate on a pledge of total abstinence.
Was Fr Mathew right that the Irish “don’t do moderation”, because it allows us too much wiggle room as to what moderation actually is? The bishops make a very simple suggestion, which is to reduce alcohol intake by a third. So the guy downing 15 pints can still, in theory, down 10. The stressed working woman can still have two-thirds of that indispensable glass of wine every evening. Nothing too threatening there, is there?
Yet as the canny Fr Mathew knew, it is easier to give up the drink entirely than to moderate our drinking. In fact, most of us give up drinking five days out of seven. Swearing off the jar completely for weeks or months, for the sake of our waistlines or budget or even Lent is socially acceptable. The alternative, just cutting down, makes everyone uncomfortable, like being with a dieter at a birthday party, because it questions the blithe assumption that getting drunk is just what Irish people do to relax.”
c fitzsimons said,
July 5, 2008 at 7:18 pm
its easier to give it up for good than have to give it up from Sunday tro Friday every week