Learning to become an alcohol user: Adolescents taking risks and parents living with uncertainty

Abstract

This article investigates how adolescents learn to become alcohol users in a country like Denmark, characterised by extensive drunkenness among young people and a low number of abstainers among adults. Inspired by Howard Becker's study (1953) on marijuana use, the article reveals that just as a road to ‘becoming a marijuana user’ exists, so does a road to becoming an alcohol user. Integrating Becker's three learning steps with modern socio-cultural theories of risk and the notion of ‘controlled loss of control’ leads to findings that crucial for becoming an alcohol user is the demystification of the risk experience associated with alcohol intoxication and the learning to find pleasure in losing control. Both the adolescents and the parents of adolescents share this perception although for different reasons. The analyses are based on quantitative and qualitative material: A survey of 2000 adolescents aged 15–16 years, 28 focus group interviews with adolescents, and 8 focus group interviews with parents.

• Adolescents
• alcohol
• learning theory
• risk
• survey
• focus group interview

Notes

Notes

1. A more comprehensive analysis of the influence of the social setting can be found elsewhere (Demant and Østergaard 2007).

2. The term ‘demystify’ is used deliberately instead of ‘normalisation’ (Peretti-Watel 2003b; Parker 2005), as alcohol is a ‘normal’ aspect of everyday adult life (Eurobarometer 2007).

3. Learning how to use alcohol is the focus of this article because no other drug is so widely used among Danish adolescents aged 14–16 (Hibell et al. 2004). For instance, in the PUNA survey (see description that follows) only 12% of the ninth grade students considered themselves regular cigarette smokers, and less than 1% were regular marijuana users. The use of poly drugs, and therefore the application of ‘gateway theory’ (Kandel 1975) (i.e. that certain drugs – usually legal – serve as gateways to other, often illegal drugs) is limited, because at age 14–16 very few Danish adolescents use any legal or illegal substances beyond alcohol. Furthermore, because of its implicit assumption of causality, ‘gateway theory’ is more suitable for longitudinal data (Kandel 2004).

4. In Outsiders (1963:52) Becker adds the concept ‘connoisseurs’, perhaps to underscore a hierarchy, with different social positions ascribed to novices and regular users. This argument was, however, also present in Becker's article from 1953: ‘Many new users are ashamed to admit ignorance and pretending to know already’ (Becker 1953:237). The data used for this present article, as analysed elsewhere, demonstrate how regular alcohol users – the connoisseurs – have a different, more powerful position in the focus group interviews than the inexperienced alcohol users (Demant and Järvinen 2006; Järvinen and Gundelach 2007).

5. Binge-drinking adolescents, however, would most likely not define themselves as regular users as this term has strong connotations of addiction. They would more likely see themselves as experimental users, in line with Becker's use of ‘regular user’. Nevertheless, defining binge drinking adolescents as regular users corresponds to the way in which that consuming large amounts of alcohol is now socially acceptable in many western industrialised countries (Sheehan and Ridge 2001).

6. Among the regular users 29% experienced their first intoxication at the age of 13 or younger, whereas only 13% of the occasional users did (γ = 0,3 p < 0.001).

7. Measham and Brain (2005:272) likewise use a Likert-type scale to measure young adolescents desired state of intoxication and equally find that young adolescents do not desire unbridled excess, as they estimate their level of intoxication (by the end of the evening) to be 3.8 on a five-point scale.

8. As this question presupposes that the adolescents have experienced being drunk at one point or another, only occasional and regular users answered it.

9. The abstainers were not asked about alcohol-related negative experiences.

10. As the data is cross-sectional, whether the regular alcohol users were less fearful in the initial phase of their alcohol career for other reasons and whether these reasons contributed to their beginning to drink alcohol at an earlier age is difficult to assess.

11. According to this survey of Danish adolescents aged 16–20, 77% of the boys and 72% of the girls have been binge drinking (5+ units) at least once within the last 30 days.