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ALCOHOLISM AMONG THE IRISH.
Term Paper ID:28423
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Essay Subject:
Examines the subject from a cultural/ethnic viewpoint. Causes. Treatment of subject in professional literature & popular culture.... More...
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10 Pages / 2250 Words
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Paper Abstract:
Examines the subject from a cultural/ethnic viewpoint. Causes. Treatment of subject in professional literature & popular culture.
Paper Introduction:
This research will examine alcoholism among the Irish from a cultural/ethnic viewpoint, discussing ways in which the subject is treated in the professional literature and popular culture.
The stereotype of hard-drinking Irishmen is something of a commonplace of Anglo-American culture. But stereotypes may derive as much from kernels of truth as attribution, and the association in popular imagination of Irish culture and the culture of alcohol has been located not only in ethnic consciousness but also in history. Included in a popular history of Ireland is an account of the economic stranglehold that England exercised over Ireland in the 17th century, when direct trade between Ireland and the American colonies was restricted to exports of horses, servants, and "victuals" and to imports of all goods from the colonies except:
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He had, at some point, ripped apart, plowed through as alcoholics tend to do, the great, deep, tightly woven fabric of affection that was some part of the emotional life, the life of love, of everyone in the room. That is, the "demon drink" remains every bit asunacknowledged in modern Irish culture as it was in the past, but fordifferent reasons. This argues that there is aProtestant provenance for Irish Catholic alcoholism. . This social pattern is portrayed as a fundamental fact of IrishAmerican culture in New York. These wereself-reports, since the mothers were interviewed to elicit informationabout their drinking and smoking habits. After saving his money and sending it to Eva, she doesnot return, and Billy learns from Dennis that she has died. But from constant reiteration through the centuries these English jokes proved rather wearing on Ireland's health (MacManus 485). In a study of adolescent children from ethnic Irish and ethnicItalian working class families in greater Boston, over 11% reported havingat least one parent in an alcoholism treatment program. Kevin, Lester, Barry M., Greene, Sheila M., Wieczorek-Deering, Dorith, and O'Mahony, Paul. The mere experience of stress bychildren on account of their parents' alcohol use turned out not to be asstrong a predictor of asocial adolescent behavior or substance abuse. Therefore,attempts by official agencies to regulate or discourage drinking amounts tocultural deprivation and suppression. The truncated psychologicaldevelopment of Billy drives the text of the novel, and there is narrativeirony in the fact that the proximate cause of his drinking was an emotionallie. B., & Wolfe, H. The judgment of alcohol as unacknowledged demon is reinforced by Irish-American commentators who note that patterns of drinking and familyviolence among the Irish in Ireland were often duplicated by Irishimmigrants who arrived in the US starting in the middle of the 19thcentury: "In spite of the damage it has done to Irish families, the mysticjoys of alcohol continue to be celebrated in literature and it remains verymuch part of the Irish literary tradition" (Godfrey 62). Angela's Ashes: A Memoir. Included in a popular history ofIreland is an account of the economic stranglehold that England exercisedover Ireland in the 17th century, when direct trade between Ireland and theAmerican colonies was restricted to exports of horses, servants, and"victuals" and to imports of all goods from the colonies except: sugar, tobacco, indigo, cotton, wool, molasses, ginger, pitch, turpentine, tar, rice, and nine or ten other specified items--which, stripped of [the law's] facetious verbiage, just means that [Ireland] was permitted to import West Indian rum--thus aiding the planters and rum makers of the West Indies, at the expense of Irish farmers, distillers, and constitutions. This observation is consistent with McDermott's Charming Billy,which is set in the Bronx between 1946 and 1975, when the American cultureas a whole was on the brink of transforming consciousness of alcoholism.But McDermott's novel also appears to challenge the integrity of selectivememory about destructive drunkenness. Theconclusion (Nugent, et al. In Alice McDermott'sCharming Billy the title character's good and trusting nature and hiddendespair lasts literally for years driving Billy into the alcoholism thatkills him. You banished him from your house until he could show up sober. A persistent theme ofthat culture revolves around the nexus of economic hopelessness and alcoholconsumption. Though he marries Maeve, the union is not really asuccess, and gradually he descends into years of alcoholism. On that view, alcoholism in Irish cultureis held to be a consequence of non-Irish behavior, and MacManus appears tobe taking umbrage at the jokes about Irish drinking that the English makeat Irish expense, when it was the English who caused the problem in thefirst place. This research will examine alcoholism among the Irish from acultural/ethnic viewpoint, discussing ways in which the subject is treatedin the professional literature and popular culture. In England, 91.3% to 96.5% boysadmitted trying alcohol, while in Northern Ireland the figures were 91.5%to 97.1%. The UK study does not speculate on the reasons for which the figuresof alcohol use by girls in Northern Ireland should be so much lower thanfor those in other groups. The novel notes the "irony" that everybody atBilly's wake, who knew that alcohol had killed him, had drink in hand,remembering Billy's flawed life experience. Among the boys in England and NorthernIreland, there was far more equivalence. Or you advanced him whatever you could afford so he could travel to Ireland to take the pledge. 1921; Old Greenwich, Conn.: The Devin-Adair Company, 198 .McCourt, Frank. However, Miller and Plant do note thesocial factor of the likelihood of greater parental supervision overadolescent girls than over boys of the same age. You saw the bloodied scraps of flesh he coughed up into his drinks (McDermott 4-6) It is clear that there is a difference between seeing andacknowledging the truth of what is seen. McDermott's accountof Billy's biography hinges on a failed love. Some empirical studies have attempted to track the influence ofalcohol on socially negative behaviors. Charming Billy. considerably higher than the estimated number of COAs[children of alcoholics] in the population . Writing in 1995,Godfrey anticipates the 1998 Charming Billy in essay form, arguing that theethnic memory of the role alcohol played in pre- and post-World War IIgenerations of Irish Americans has become muddled. "Drinking, Smoking, and Illicit Drug Use Among 15 and 16 Year Olds in the United Kingdom." British Medical Journal 17 August 1996: 394-8.Nugent, J. In the past, he says,Irish immigrant families were simply in denial about anything negative athome, since alcoholism was considered "moral weakness," not a disease,therefore shameful rather than treatable, and therefore a great crippler offamily life. This was particularly the case with substanceabuse by adolescents (drugs, not alcohol). Even Billy's widow, Maeve,drinks a martini instead of iced tea at the wake when given a choice.Although Billy's friends and family might urge him to quit drinking, itseems unlikely they would perceive that they, too, define their everydayexperience with reference to alcohol. The novel opens with Billy's death from drink; he has beenphysically transfigured into a corpse that is bloated and has skin sodiscolored that his best friend Dennis initially fails to identify him forthe police. at 12.5%" (Orenstein,Davis, and Wolfe 5 ). Today, in Godfrey's view,Irish Americans who have been largely integrated with the economic andsocial mainstream, have romanticized their past and see "no connectionbetween their own struggle and that of African-Americans and Latinos"against drugs and alcohol and the cycle of "poverty, frustration, andfailure" (Godfrey 62). Students were askedwhether they wished that their parents would drink less, whether theirparents' drinking had caused them problems, and whether they had beenfrightened or angry because of their parents' drinking. Or you drove him to AA, waited outside the church till the meeting was over, and drove him home again. The Story of the Irish Race. "The Way We Really Were." Commonwealth 24 February 1995: 62.MacManus, Seumas. Thus the stereotype contains astriking coincidence with historical (or at least family) truth, ifMacManus's analysis is taken as any guide. O'Brien, Johnson and my father all fell down in the course of the afternoon, and Perry and I had to support them to the car. Most striking about this study, however, was that adolescents'behavioral problems in school were found to be more likely in familieswhere one or both parents were in formal treatment programs than in"nontreatment" families. Meanwhile, however, since1969 the suicide rate in Ireland has steadily risen, particularly amongmen, with alcohol consumption counted as one of the principal socialfactors associated with suicide (Swanwich and Clare). The stereotype of hard-drinking Irishmen is something of a commonplaceof Anglo-American culture. A 1996 study of alcohol, tobacco, and controlled substances amongadolescents in the United Kingdom, which included a sample from NorthernIreland, as well as from England, Scotland, and Wales, found thatadolescent girls from Northern Ireland were the least users and/or abusersof alcohol, compared to all of their peers, including boys in NorthernIreland. For just as Billy's memory of Eva is"after all, yet another sweet romance to preserve" (McDermott 23), so isthe memory of Billy, which in its selectiveness has the effect ofromanticizing alcoholic behavior. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998.Miller, Patrick M., and Plant, Martin. An American commentator quotes thedisdain with which an Irish Times columnist viewed an Irish governmentcrackdown on "drink-driving," noting the columnist's declaration thatdrinking is "a victimless activity" as well as his analysis of thedeployment of 3 , police and the arrest of 45 people as "the equivalentof one garda [cop] working for five years and managing three arrests"(Cockburn, citing Kevin Myers 753). On the other hand, Swanwich and Clare report thatconsumer spending on alcohol may not be as reliable in index of alcoholabuse as admission rates into treatment centers. In this regard, Nugent, Lester, et al.(passim), describe a study of first-time mothers in Ireland in which morethan 1 % revealed themselves to be heavy drinkers. "Parental Substance Abuse Treatment and Adolescent Problems." Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education 38 (1993): 5 -61.Swanwick, Gregory R.J., and Clare, A.W. Later, having determined to quit drinking, Billy learns the truth,which has the effect of intensifying his drinking patterns so much that heis dead within eight years. New York: Scribner, 1996.McDermott, Alice. If you loved him, you took his car keys away, took his incoherent phone calls after midnight. But the novelmakes clear in the opening pages that alcoholism developed a life of itsown in Billy: Billy had drunk himself to death. As the novel unfolds, it becomesclear that the people close to Billy have selective memories of him--remembering his good nature nostalgically but not the messy consequences ofhis binge drinking. And if you loved him, we all knew, you pleaded with him at some point. Everyone loved him. . 1813f) was that maternal alcohol use mayadversely affect the quality of children's voice and respiration patterns.In other words, the physical effects of maternal use of alcohol wereobservable in the mothers' children. He explains that writers as a group in Britain, includingIreland, were by and large "done in" by alcohol. Finally, Cockburn concludes, alcohol is a demon, chiefly because ittruncates artistic development and because it was an almost universallyunacknowledged demon. People were always falling down. Those who reported ever being intoxicated were at the rate of73.2% to 79.8% in England and 75. . The figure of the genial drunk is a fixture of not only nonfictionmemoir but also modern fiction about Irish Americans. But stereotypes may derive as much from kernelsof truth as attribution, and the association in popular imagination ofIrish culture and the culture of alcohol has been located not only inethnic consciousness but also in history. . Of those whoresponded to the distress questions, "26.7% reported distress on at leastone item . It could besaid that the death of Eva--which is a lie; she actually just took Billy'smoney and married a man in Ireland--"caused" Billy's grief. Overall, 94% of all adolescents surveyed for the study reportedhaving tried alcohol. % to 81.8% in Northern Ireland (Millerand Plant 397, et passim). The columnist complained that thisattempt on the part of the Irish government to duplicate the policies ofthe British government had turned into a fiasco. They foundthat the newborns whose mothers had consumed the most alcohol had cryingpatterns that suggested defective use of the voice and pitch. But while 91.6% to 96.6% of English girls reportedhaving at least tried alcohol, 81.3% to 88.7% of Northern-Irish girlsreported having done so. . In the popular memoir Angela's Ashes, McCourt describesgrowing up in 193 s and 194 s in an Irish family defined by bleakstereotype: grinding poverty, the "shiftless loquacious alcoholic father,"who repeatedly and programmatically "does the bad thing and comes home withthe smell of whiskey" (McCourt 21 ). McDermott does not make a moral judgment about suchbehavior patterns, but the exposure of such behavior is persuasive andappears to function as a proxy for critique of the dominance of alcohol inIrish American culture. But one suspects that Billy might havedescended into alcoholism even if Dennis told him the truth about Eva.This is because the entire social experience of Billy and his family andfriends seems to be lubricated by alcohol and patterns of either leavingunsaid certain emotional truths or deliberately concealing unpleasanttruths. To be sure, the culture of alcohol in Ireland appears to havedeveloped a life of its own since the 17th century. No one thought this particularly worthy of note (Cockburn 753- 4). There is evidence that alcohol plays a destructive role in thematuration experience of children among ethnic Irish working classfamilies. Shepromises to return. Devastated,Billy never recovers. MacManus develops the argument that England's documented andexploitative economic policies are at least partly responsible for shapingan Irish society in which alcohol assumed a significant role, a role thatit maintains to the present day. . Just after World War II Billyfalls in love with Eva, who came to America to work as an au pair and whois scheduled to return to Ireland at the time she and Billy meet. Another view of drinking in Ireland is that it is simply a part of theculture and indeed lends distinctive character to Irish life. The bookwas originally copyrighted in 1921--one year before the Irish Rebellionthat eventuated in the partitioning of Ireland between the [Catholic]Republic of Ireland and the province of [Protestant/British] NorthernIreland. Although the association between Irish Catholicexperience and alcohol has been noted, religion does not appear to haveexplanatory power for this study since students at both Catholic andProtestant schools were surveyed. Works CitedCockburn, Alexander. Scientific evidence exists concerning the consequences of alcohol useand abuse among the Irish, including among subpopulations that are known tobe at risk for using alcohol. The researchers followed themothers through the last three months of pregnancy and the first few daysof their infants' life. Swanwick and Clare report thatbetween 197 and 1979 the percentage of total consumer spending onalcoholic beverages in Ireland rose from 1 .79% to 12.3% but that sincethat time the "personal expenditure on alcohol has decreased slightly andlevelled off" (Swanwich and Clare). This direction of spending, they say,does not support an increase in "anomie" or alienation that could beattributed to alcoholism. . But Cockburn goes on tosuggest that alcohol is culpable in a whole range of difficulties, withreference to his own experience as a youth in Ireland's and England'sliterary set. "Suicide in Ireland 1945-1992: Social Correlates" Irish Medical Journal 9 (May/April 1997): Retrieved from World Wide Web at http://www.imj.ie/. "The Effects of Maternal Alcohol Consumption and Cigarette Smoking During Pregnancy on Acoustic Cry Analysis." Child Development 67 (August 1996): 18 6-15.Orenstein, A., Davis, R. Only in the 197 s, Cockburn says, did the patternbegin to change, as alcoholism was labeled a disease rather than a moralfailing. About 25% werenondrinkers, and the rest were found to be moderate drinkers. The whole matter is further complicated by the fact that thevast majority of the indigenous Irish population was Catholic, whileIreland's British masters were Protestant. It is relevant toMacManus's analysis that it occurs in a highly charged contest. Of those who reported ever being intoxicated,English girls did so at 75.6% to 82.6%, while girls in Northern Ireland didso at 55.6% to 68.8%. On the third day of infant life, the researchersmeasured the newborns' crying for pitch, tone, and modulation. That image can be interpreted as a symbol of the power of alcohol totransfigure Billy's life, as the narrative makes clear. The moral weight of Godfrey's argument, however, emerges when hediscusses what he sees as a social disconnect among Irish Americans who seealcohol and drug use among minority communities as a moral and socialproblem with which they should have no sympathy. The foregoing will seem to many readers a good English joke. I remember going to some donkey races at Fort William in Ireland with Conor Cruise O'Brien, Paul Johnson, my father and also Perry Anderson, who grew up forty miles from me in Waterford. Those who admitted to more than nine drinkingoccasions in the previous month were at the rate of 1 % to 13.2% in Englandand % to 5.5% in Northern Ireland. "Demon Drink." The Nation 19 December 1994: 753.Godfrey, A.W. Among these wasCockburn's father's best friend, the playwright Patrick Hamilton, author ofAngel Street and "poet of the shabby bed-sit and frowzy saloon bar," whodescended into "terminal alcoholism" in the 195 s and died in 1962.Cockburn continues: The word "alcoholic" was reserved for people shackled to their hospital beds, screaming at the pink mice nibbling on their toes.
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