SWIMMING WITH CROCODILES International Center for Alcohol Policies Series on Alcohol in Society Grant and Litvak ...............Drinking Patterns and Their Consequences Grant .................................Alcohol and Emerging Markets: Patterns, Problems, and Responses Peele and Grant .................Alcohol and Pleasure: A Health Perspective Heath .................................Drinking Occasions: Comparative Perspectives on Alcohol and Culture Houghton and Roche .........Learning about Drinking Haworth and Simpson .......Moonshine Markets: Issues in Unrecorded Alcohol Beverage Production and Consumption Martinic and Leigh ..........Reasonable Risk: Alcohol in Perspective Grant and O’Connor ..........Corporate Social Responsibility and Alcohol: The Need and Potential for Partnership Martinic and Measham .....Swimming with Crocodiles: The Culture of Extreme Drinking SWIMMING WITH CROCODILES The Culture of Extreme Drinking Marjana Martinic and Fiona Measham New York London Routledge Routledge Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue 2 Park Square New York, NY 10016 Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN © 2008 by International Center for Alcohol Policies Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-415-95548-5 (Hardcover) Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, trans- mitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Swimming with crocodiles : the culture of extreme drinking / edited by Marjana Martinic and Fiona Measham. p. ; cm. -- (ICAP series on alcohol in society) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-415-95548-5 (hardbound : alk. paper) 1. Youth--Alcohol use--Cross-cultural studies. 2. Drinking of alcoholic beverages--Social aspects. 3. Drinking of alcoholic beverages--Cross-cultural studies. 4. Drinking customs--Cross-cultural studies. 5. Alcoholism--Cross-cultural studies. I. Martinic, Marjana. II. Measham, Fiona, 1963- III. Series: Series on alcohol in society. [DNLM: 1. Alcohol-Related Disorders--Case Reports. 2. Adolescent. 3. Cross-Cultural Comparison--Case Reports. WM 274 S977 2008] HV5135.S95 2008 362.2920835--dc22 2007049821 Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com and the Routledge Web site at http://www.routledge.com “When I get drunk, I go swimming…. This is a stupid thing to do because there are crocodiles and hippos in the river, but you feel like you are invincible when you are drunk, so you do it. I do it.” (Male participant, ICAP Focus Group, South Africa) Contents Editors ix Contributors xi Disclaimer xiii CHAPTER 1 Extreme Drinking 1 Marjana Martinic and Fiona Measham CHAPTER 2 A History of Intoxication: Changing Attitudes to Drunkenness and Excess in the United Kingdom 13 Fiona Measham CHAPTER 3 Beyond Boundaries: Youth and the Dream of the Extreme 37 Véronique Nahoum-Grappe Case Study: Young People’s Drinking in France 39 Marie Choquet CHAPTER 4 What Motivates Extreme Drinking? 53 Barbara Leigh and Christine Lee Case Study: Drinking among Young People in the United Kingdom 67 Fiona Measham CHAPTER 5 Focus Group Results 79 Brazil 84 Mônica Gorgulho and Vera Da Ros China 95 Ian Newman vii viii CONTENTS Italy 111 Enrico Tempesta Nigeria 120 Olabisi Odejide, Olayinka Omigbodun, Ademola Ajuwon, Victor Makanjuola, Afolabi Bamgboye, and Frederick Oshiname Russia 132 Eugenia A. Koshkina South Africa 141 Chan Makan Scotland, United Kingdom 148 Steve March CHAPTER 6 Stakeholders and Their Roles 161 Mark Leverton and Keith Evans CHAPTER 7 Extreme Drinking, Young People, and Feasible Policy 183 Marjana Martinic and Barton Alexander Case Study: Botellón in Spain 193 Andrés Bascones Pérez-Fragero CHAPTER 8 Feasible Interventions: Tackling Extreme Drinking in Young People 219 Mônica Gorgulho and Daniya Tamendarova Case Study: Drinking among Sorority and Fraternity Students in the United States 228 Jason Kilmer and Mary Larimer Afterword 261 Marjana Martinic and Fiona Measham ANNEX 1 Procedures for Focus Groups on Extreme Drinking 263 ANNEX 2 Guiding Questions for Focus Groups 265 Index 269 Editors Dr. Marjana Martinic is Vice President for Public Health at the International Center for Alcohol Policies (ICAP). Her work focuses on the nexus between the scientifi c evidence base and international alcohol policy development. Prior to joining ICAP in 1996, she worked in developmental neuroscience research at the University of Virginia Medical School and at the National Institutes of Health in the United States. She has published extensively in the fi elds of neuroscience and alcohol policy. Her previous book (co-authored with Barbara Leigh), Reasonable Risk: Alcohol in Perspective (2004), is volume 7 in the ICAP book series, Alcohol in Society. Dr. Fiona Measham was appointed to Lancaster University in 2000 and is now Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the Department of Applied Social Science. Dr. Measham is a nationally renowned researcher with 20 years of experience in the fi elds of drug and alcohol use, gender, licensed leisure, and cultural criminology. She is co-author of Illegal Leisure (1998) and Dancing on Drugs (2001), based on two large-scale studies of young people’s drug and alcohol use, for both of which she was lead researcher. Her theoretical interests span cultural criminology, gender studies, and the sociology of intoxication, with a particular interest in the boundaries of transgression, the criminal- ization of leisure, and the problematic-recreational interface in leisure-time consumption. ix