Are All West Indians Alcoholics?

I like wine. White is better than red and rosé is better than them both. I also like cocktails that taste like juice but hit like a brick wall. I suppose, since I don’t care for straight hard liquor, this makes me the stereotypical female drinker. Now that the Christmas and New Year festivities have rounded off, and everyone around the region is now begrudgingly back at work, there’s something that I feel needs to be discussed – we drink entirely too much. I wish I could have been talking about water.

It’s easy to make jokes about drinking and quote your own personal statistics and records for the number of drinks it took until you were totally belligerent or inconsolable. One of the most popular statements in the Caribbean (which tourists haven’t gotten on to yet) is that we’re not drinking again, or till our birthdays, or Friday after work. It’s amusing. There is an ingrained party culture in the region which makes it impossible to avoid drinks, even if you attempt to convince Twitter that you’re going to take a break. Whether it’s Carnival, Christmas, Jounen Kweyol or the ever popular First Communion party, rum will be had.

It cannot be factually said if young people ever drank so much as they seem to do now. At one point, alcohol seemed to be the vice of middle-aged men who needed an escape after the work week and would be drunk from Friday to Sunday. The uprising of social media brings much more to the forefront than ever before. However, I certainly know that bar owners and event promoters are no longer constantly warned against serving alcohol to minors. I am older than many of the neighbourhood boys that drink cold Heinekens like water.

Herein lies the next issue: my generation seems almost alcohol dependent. It hardly makes sense to go out without drinking something. Where’s the fun in it? It’s now become a competition around Caribbean islands to see which people can drink more, and which island’s locally made rum has the highest alcohol content. It’s all very concerning.

It has come to the concern of many people, both frequent drinkers and teetotalers alike, that alcohol has become a go-to coping method for both young and older people in the Caribbean. It begs the question whether this is all tied to some deeper mental health issues. Are our people being seen and cared for? Is this why they turn to bottles and (to use this tired phrase) drown their sorrows?  When we speak of addictions, we usually think of pills and powdered drugs, but never alcohol. What needs to be realized is that when so many people turn to liquor as a form of self-care – an unhealthy and invalid one at that – there is a real issue at hand.

Admittedly, this isn’t entirely the fault of young people – or anyone who heavily drinks as a matter of fact. There is hardly any dialogue used to sensitize the public on the short and long-term effects of alcohol on the mind and body. I can only speak for St. Lucia, but something tells me that it might be the same across the region. In the same breath, hardly anything is done to ensure that minors don’t have such easy access to alcohol. I found it funny once when a cashier asked my friend for ID when she tried to buy a Shandy at the supermarket, but I see the moral of it.

This is more than just an issue of alcohol dependency among the region’s youth. This is more than having drinks at the parties that everyone frequents, and carrying coolers when it’s just a short hike. We have developed a deeply rooted rum culture that makes it almost impossible to do group – and even worse – solo activities, without bottles and plastic cups. The truth is, the Caribbean’s health care networks just aren’t strong enough to deal with the future onslaught of cirrhosis of the liver and stomach ulcers.

This is an important conversation which needs to take place from one end of the region to the other. I am not against alcohol. To be totally honest, I had a drink while writing this. The point is that everything really does need to be in moderation and too much of anything can indeed go horribly wrong.