Problem of Alcohol Abuse Grows Rapidly in Australia

Jean Lennane sees the results of drugs every day and says the biggest threat is alcohol, particularly to the young.

Drinking is almost a way of life in Australia, where the pub is a favorite meeting place.

“It dates back to the foundation of the colony here 200 years ago when the currency for a while was rum,” said Lennane, director of drug and alcohol services at Sydney’s Rozelle Hospital since 1980.

“There was a temperance movement for a while, but since World War II, the amount of alcohol consumed in Australia has shot up,” she said.

“It’s much worse than in the United States. People are just killing themselves with it.”

Health officials estimate that 10% of Australians drink the equivalent of 1.4 ounces or more of pure alcohol a day, enough to lead eventually to brain damage, heart problems, cirrhosis of the liver and other maladies.

The Australian Medical Assn. recommended recently that taxes on alcohol be raised 40%, which it estimated would reduce consumption by 20%.

“Of people going into the hospital for treatment of some ailment, statistics show about 1 in 5 is alcohol-related,” Lennane said. “It’s about 2 in 5 for psychiatric hospitals.”

In a campaign against drunk driving, nearly all Australian states have lowered the blood-alcohol level at which people are considered intoxicated to 0.05%. That is half the 0.10% used by New York state.

Alcohol-related deaths involving only vehicles have decreased, but the number of pedestrians killed has risen. Dr. David Hill, director of the trauma unit at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, said 80% to 90% of injured pedestrians treated there were intoxicated.

More than 4,000 pedestrians were killed or injured last year in New South Wales state, of which Sydney is the capital.

Lennane is primarily concerned with two kinds of brain damage affected by long-term drinking.

One is caused by a combination of heavy drinking and poor diet that results in thiamine depletion and loss of short-term memory, among other problems.

“We have far more of this than any other country,” she said. “The difficulty with the Australian diet, as compared with that in the United States and the United Kingdom, is that we don’t add thiamine to our bread. . . . If that happens, I believe we will have less of this problem.”

The other problem is frontal-lobe damage, which affects the abilities to plan, organize, form concepts, structure information and learn from mistakes. This can result from heavy, regular drinking even with a good diet.

Rozelle Hospital has a 55-bed ward for patients with alcohol-related brain damage that treats about 250 people a year. Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney has a neuropsychology ward that treats 400 people a year for brain damage resulting from alcohol.

“Some of it gets better if they stay sober, especially if they’re young, but if you have people who’ve been drunk during most of their adolescence and haven’t done any maturing, then they can have a lot of emotional and social problems,” Lennane said. “We haven’t had much luck in rehabilitating them.

“One of the things that alarms me is the way the average age of our patients has started to decline since I started here in 1980. The youngest person being treated then was 38, and that was quite exceptional. Now we get people in their early 30s, even in their 20s.”