50 ways TO LEAVE YOUR LOVER

Declan Lynch’s tales of addiction

The HSE recently announced that the correct amount of alcohol to be consumed by pregnant women is zero. Over the years, it had been broadly assumed that the odd glass of wine here or there wouldn’t do much harm, and might even do some good — for the mother, at least. But now the HSE has officially stated that no amount of alcohol is safe for a baby during pregnancy.

And they are probably not wrong — but they are probably not right, either.

The purpose of any such large institution is usually to prevent harm, not least to itself. And as a result, they will always be inclined to put out information that is not wrong — but that is not right, either.

Indeed, on the subject of alcohol in general, I have, for many years, been reading ‘literature’ put out by perfectly well-meaning bodies such as the HSE, which tend to fall into this strange territory in which things are not wrong, but are not right, either.

I suppose you could say that they are issuing very broad guidelines here; that they are trying to deal in scientific certainty rather than emotional intelligence; that they need to cover themselves and all that.

But you could also say that the style of these official pronouncements is so dead, they are practically useless, and may even be doing harm — because if I have a drink problem and I am trying to find some wisdom on it through reading a leaflet from a health board, I may quickly decide that my problem can never be bad enough that it would take me down that road.

So it is indeed true to say that the ideal amount of alcohol to be consumed during pregnancy is zero. But it is also true to say that multitudes of women have departed from this ideal to some extent, and that has been fine, too. The HSE, like so many other like-minded institutions, is

“They put out information that is not wrong — but that is not right, either”

erring on the side of caution, without appearing to be erring.

For them, any erring that takes place would be at the other end of the proposition, where you provide a full picture and you invite people to draw their own conclusions. They can’t handle that kind of truth.

But then I have often despaired in my own journey through the forest of information and misinformation on this theme. Quite apart from the bureaucrats using boredom as a weapon, I have found that most organs of the media are incapable of providing a proper appraisal of the nature of drink — or the nature of those who drink it.

To take one example, of late they seem determined to tell us stories about people who obviously have drink problems, but who are under the impression that they are essentially suffering from depression — which they may well be, though they will almost certainly find that identifying their problem primarily as one of alcoholism, and giving up the drink, can only have a beneficial effect on any other underlying issues.

Of course they may not be right about that — but they may not be wrong, either.

So now the pregnant woman, or any woman who has been pregnant or who will be pregnant, has been given one more piece of information of this kind — not wrong/not right — as if there wasn’t enough of it already.

It presents us with this ancient conundrum, whereby the large organisations which should be best equipped to deal with problems relating to alcohol, are, by their nature, not really equipped at all — partly because alcohol tends to touch on the more indefinable parts of the human condition.

There are mysteries in there that no body, official or otherwise, can fathom. All we know for sure is that people are far more likely to be damaged by alcohol after they are born.