Alcoholism Before Manapouri

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32253, 23 March 1970, Page 18

Alcoholism Before Manapouri

New Zealanders should get their priorities right and become concerned about the problem of alcoholism in New Zealand before becoming “concerned about saving the sandflies and scenery at Manapouri,” Mr R. Johnston, president of the National Society on Alcoholism, said on Saturday. Mr Johnston was speaking at the opening of a meeting on alcoholism for social workers and parent-teacher associations, organised by the society. “You don’t get classified as being with the ‘in’ group if you go round asking people to do something about alcoholism. Some people think you are in the ‘in’ group if you are concerned about saving the sandflies and the scenery at Manapouri,” he said. “We have to ask ourselves: ‘ls a submerged tree-stump or a hoard of sandflies deprived of their usual stinging ground

more important than a permanently damaged man, woman or child’,” he said. “Too Uncomfortable” “Let us get indignant about some of the things that really matter—things which we try like errant housewives to sweep under the carpet and treat as non-existent for they are too uncomfortable for us and our consciences,” said Mr Johnston. Alcoholism was one of these things, he said. “Let our doctors concerned with Manapouri have a real, not cursory, look at this real socio-medical problem; let our clergy concerned with Manapouri do some real Christian work in their own parishes: let us get our priorities right for a change,” he said. Mr Johnston said that the extent of alcoholism in New Zealand was considerable by any standards of epidemic proportions. He said the society conservatively estimated that there were 30,000 alcoholics in New Zealand. It was known that most alcoholics affected a complex of 10 persons and that alcoholism cost industry many

hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in lost production time and also through the affects on morale. It was also known that there were immeasurable human and social costs such as the affect of an alcoholic parent on children and on families, he said. Problem Drinkers Professor J. R. McCreary, of the department of social administration and sociology at Victoria University, and Miss J. Morton, a social research worker at the medical unit of Wellington Hospital, presented a paper to the meeting on some of the hypotheses they hoped to examine in a survey of problem drinkers they are carrying out. Included among the hypotheses were that problem drinkers were resistant to admitting that their drinking was a problem; that behaviour when the person had been

drinking was regarded as less reprehensible than the same behaviour when the person was sober; and that this view was shared by the person, the public and perhaps even by social workers. “We are led by our hypotheses to the view that if the evidence supports them, social work agencies may wish to sharpen their diagnostic tools in relation to problem drinking,” said Professor McCreary. Dr K. D. Zelas, a psychiatric medical officer, told the meeting that the child of an alcoholic had to cope with and try to reconcile many inconsistencies of emotional and physical response and was unable to develop consistent standards of behaviour because he had no consistent models. “The distorted roles in the alcoholic family may be permanently reflected in the personalities of the children. Sons may equate manliness with drunkeness, or they may reject their father and identify with their mother, resulting in difficulties in their sexual identification. Daughters may develop an aversion to drink and a distrust of men,” he said.