Jan Ravens: Confessions of a female boozer

Sunday 26 September 2004 00:00 BST
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When I was 15 years old, and Gary Lewis broke my heart for the first time, my mother attempted to assuage my grief with a glass of Scotch and a Player's No 6. When I was 17, and he did it for a second time, my parents were on holiday, so I purloined a bottle of gin from what I believe we called the "cocktail cabinet" (pretentious, nous?), and drank myself unconscious.

When I was at college, I remember several times when we spent the whole night drinking. On one of these occasions, I waited outside Thresher's at nine in morning, eager to augment our supplies. As I recall, I was accompanied by sallow-faced BBC media correspondent, Nick Higham. Perhaps he is still suffering from the hangover.

I am confessing to you in a national newspaper today for two reasons: 1) My mum is on holiday in Bulgaria with the bridge club, so won't get to read it and 2) the Daily Mail is trying to frighten women again, this time about the rise in female alcohol consumption. This is an important issue but the Mail is close to inuring us to this kind of warning because of the hysterical tone in which it is expressed.

If you ever see the Mail, you will know the kind of thing. Women! You are BAD! You are doing everything WRONG! So you thought you could HAVE IT ALL! NO! Women who have careers will lead to the END OF CIVILISATION AS WE KNOW IT! Girls who drink are sitting on a HEALTH TIMEBOMB! If girls just want to have fun, or any kind of fulfilling life at all really, the Daily Mail is here to tell you that it can only lead to misery, illness, divorce and death.

If the world of daily newspapers were an episode of Up Pompeii!, The Sun would be Frankie Howerd, and the Daily Mail would be the Cassandra-type figure who goes around wailing, "Woe, woe and thrice, woe!"

OK, so let's look at the figures. Statistics do not seem to be available for teenage drinking in the Seventies, but it was by no means unheard of. Most of us get older and wiser. Nowadays, I tend to favour quality over quantity. And (lest she be reading, and get the wrong idea) my Carol Vorderperson Detox regime recommends total abstinence for 28 days, so as we speak, it's ginger tea.

Young British women are apparently now drinking an average of 270 bottles of wine a year - 1,620 alcohol units - compared to the allowed 728 (14 per week). Why?

Sure, more women are working, having children later, earning larger disposable incomes and going for a drink with the lads after work. Though judging by some of those high-flying businesswomen's stories of the throwback, witless sexist nerds they work with, you'd have thought they'd be glad to get away at 5.30. Maybe they drink to forget.

The pressure of a high-flying job might make us drink more, as indeed might the tedium and demoralisation of a low-flying one. And I'm sure women at home with the kids will be familiar with the struggle of waiting until the babes are tucked up in bed before that first glass of cold white wine. Hands up if you too have cracked before bathtime.

Women are also being targeted much more aggressively now. The drinks manufacturers have even become aware that lots of women lay off the booze when they are trying to lose weight, so they are bringing out diet versions of your favourite tipple.

Now you can get pissed and stay thin. Hurrah!

However, help is at hand. Waitrose is going to put labels on alcoholic drinks showing the number of units they contain. But numbers mean nothing. They need to follow the example of those labels on cigarette packs that really frighten you, such as "Smoking kills".

However, to really scare us feckless females off the booze they will have to say things like: "Drinking gives you a strawberry nose like Leo McKern", "Drinking can make you throw up on the way home", "Drinking may cause your pores to seep alcohol at your son's class assembly tomorrow morning".

Finally, if you seriously want a reason to stay sober, police say alcohol is the most commonly used date-rape drug. So think on, girls.

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