Booze and bother: Saturday night, live
As the alcohol flows, the aggro grows. Nikki Macdonald and Tommy Livingston diary a typical Saturday night in central Wellington, through the eyes of those left to clean up the mess.
When Catherine Worsfold starts work at 4pm, her trusty rubber gloves stay firmly tucked away. Town is a delight. The dinner crowd is having pre-drinks in the sun, young drinkers are still at home or parties, filling the tank for their big night.
Employed by Wellington City Council as a safe city ambassador, Worsfold’s job is to help out as needed.
Up until 9pm or 10pm that means giving directions or gently asking people in the liquor ban zone to ditch their drinks.
Around 10pm, one of her team will head to Victoria University, where hostels are spitting out their alcohol-steeped residents. They wend into town, clutching bottles and trailing broken glass.
They’re loud, happy drunk – yelling out, pushing each other in jest, riding scooters. They’re having a laugh. And then they’re not.
‘‘That’s when a lot of vomit happens,’’ Worsfold says.
That’s also when the rubber gloves come out. For sheer volume of puke, one incident stands out. A body was draped over a park bench, marooned in a sea of sick.
‘‘It was just this huge puddle that everyone who had to deal with them had to wade through to get to them. That was quite massive.’’
By 11pm, the dinner party crew has gone home and a new crowd is arriving, often from pre-loading parties. Town begins to start pumping. The dancefloors are filling. And police brace for the drunken onslaught, says Inspector Wade Jennings.
‘‘These are the people you want to target early in the night and if they are already shockingly drunk you want to know who they are with, who their friends are and what their plans are.’’
On any given weekend, there are at least 10 police officers patrolling inner city streets – sometimes up to 17.
Rugby matches bring a different crowd. If the All Blacks lose, violence lurks.
Around midnight, the beer-soaked ground starts grabbing at your shoes. You can’t see down nightclub hub Blair St for the people. It’s so noisy you can’t have a conversation down Courtenay Place.
That’s also when drinkers go from vertical to horizontal, Worsfold says. The police take the main drag. Members of Worsfold’s team study quiet side streets – drunks like privacy to pass out.
They try to get them conscious, find out who they are, make a plan to get them home. Tapping on the collarbone is a handy wake-up trick. She’s also seen paramedics touch someone’s eyeball.
Mostly, they say they’re fine. They’re clearly not.
It can be men or women, coma-ed or confused. ‘‘There was a very entertaining young lady we helped at Burger King, who tried to call her friends on her car keys, and couldn’t understand why they weren’t picking up.’’
If the person is safe to go home, Worsfold might put them in a taxi. For young women, she often uses Sophie’s Angels, which provides emergency rides for those in trouble.
A taxi driver of 50 years reckons he picks up fewer wasted people from town than previously, due to liquor bans and tougher laws around bars serving drunk people. The old Wednesday cheap student drink night has also dropped off the calendar.
‘‘People don’t get as pissed as they used to in my day. I used to get people who were totally intoxicated and could not tell me where they wanted to go.’’
But while drunken central city pickups have decreased, the same can’t be said for suburban callouts.
‘‘Most of the intoxicated people you get are from private homes. They are having a session and go overboard.’’
There’s an art to dealing with drunk people, he says. For one – don’t make them angry.
‘‘If someone who is intoxicated, gets into the car and slams the door you don’t take it out on them. That will cause friction for the entire ride.
‘‘I can pick up the meanest, ugliest gang member and get on with them like a house on fire. They will always pay their fare and usually don’t want the change.’’
Around 2am, the first exodus begins. That’s usually younger people who are sobering up and running out of money. They’ve probably drunk hard out at home – draining cheap booze bought from the supermarket or off-licences – and stopped drinking once they hit town.
‘‘A lot of people tend to leave town more sober than when they came in,’’ Jennings says.
If Worsfold or Jennings find a drunk person they can’t wake up, or get home safely, they’ll call in the medical experts.
After midnight is prime time for ambulance crews. As town begins to clear, good samaritans rescue stupefied drinkers from pub toilets, from pavement lie-downs. Some come direct from drunken house parties. Wellington Free Ambulance paramedic Nicholas Ridley says assessing booze-addled patients can be tricky.
‘‘If someone is lying down on the sidewalk who has been drinking it can be difficult to assess if they are there because they want a rest or because they have a concussion.’’
Waiting for the ambulance at Wellington Hospital’s emergency department will be ED specialist Paul Quigley.
A bad booze night could see 10 out of 185 patients with alcohol-related problems. That’s enough to tie up one doctor and two nurses for two shifts.
‘‘The nurses suffer the biggest burden of this by a long way. They are the ones that have to continually watch the patients. They’re the ones that have to change the patients when they vomit on themselves or urinate on themselves. They’re also the ones that face the abuse and the threats of violence.’’
Maybe once a month someone is so drunk they’re unconscious. It’s not uncommon to see blood alcohol levels higher than 250mg/dL. That can be enough to kill a young person. It will take 10 hours of observation before they’re safe enough to go home.
Earlier in the night, patients tend to be young, inexperienced drinkers. Forty per cent of intoxicated patients are aged 17-19. They come in vomiting, crying, asking ‘Where’s my mummy?’. They’ve been drinking pre-mixed spirits or downing whisky. They’re just outright drunk, Quigley says.
The good news is, they’re almost never seen again. They messed up, they learnt from it and they don’t come back.
Quigley doesn’t think students are worse than any other young people when it comes to drinking. In fact, he worries more about tradies fresh out of school.
‘‘When it comes to people of concern, it’s the blue collar youth. If you’re a student and you leave school, and you go to university, you get this ongoing guidance, counselling and so on about the effects of alcohol... You’re also attached to a health centre.
‘‘But if you’re a young guy who’s decided to go off and do a trade instead, then you’re suddenly dropped into the world, often mixing now with a group of older men who already have some Friday post-work worksite drinks. And compared to students, you’ve actually got a disposable income. That’s a very real thing.’’
‘‘If someone is lying down on the sidewalk who has been drinking it can be difficult to assess if they are there because they want a rest or because they have a concussion.’’ Nicholas Ridley