Baseball and beer. Street fairs and beer. Beer gardens and — even if you put away a few last night, you’d better be able to guess — beer.
Teetotaling–or even moderation–can be tricky in a season when “sober” sounds like a slur in certain youthful circles of Chicago.
“Summer in the city is harder,” said Christopher Frederick, 36, who chose to stop drinking almost two years ago, not because of a DUI disaster or other rock-bottom catastrophe but for his general health and wealth.
His might seem like an eccentric decision in an era of arrested adolescence and sustained singledom for many people in their 20s and 30s.
But Frederick isn’t the only one who, to the cheers of researchers, has broken a social drinking habit that sometimes looks or feels a little too serious. Studies increasingly show that early intervention can prevent habits such as binge drinking–having five or more drinks per occasion for men and four or more for women–from ballooning into dependence.
“I wasn’t an alcoholic, I just was drinking too much,” said Frederick, who owns a contracting business in Chicago and has started a residential development company in Ft. Lauderdale. “Once I got into my 30s, I was cognizant of having difficulty remembering things like phone numbers.
Alcohol was making my allergies 50 percent worse. And the weight gain. I felt like I was aging too quickly. I’m gambling my life’s investments in Florida–I have to be on my sharpest game.”
In the last 18 months, Frederick has had a single glass of Bordeaux wine with red meat on rare occasions, and his fiance cut back too.
“My friends gave me [flak] for a couple days,” Frederick said. “Then they see your spirit and they respect it. If you’re 20 and in Lincoln Park it would be different.”
Indeed, alcohol problems are highest among adults ages 18 to 29, and more men than women are alcohol dependent or have alcohol problems, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
The emergence of private screening from outlets such as Drinker’s Check-up (drinkerscheckup.com), developed through an NIAAA grant, has provided a sobering yet encouraging reality check.
Research published last year in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment showed that after undergoing Drinker’s Check-up, 61 heavy imbibers reduced their consumption by half during the next 12 months.
“The dichotomy exists among many people that either you’ve got serious [drinking] problems or no problem,” said Reid Hester, director of research for Behavior Therapy Associates LLP, which created Drinker’s Check-up. “That’s not the case.”
Compared with alcoholics, Hester said, there are three to four times as many people with alcohol problems that are less severe. Until recently, they were largely overlooked.
“The more severely addicted people really do need to stop their drinking,” Hester said, “but they’re a relatively small piece of the pie.”
A 2004 NIAAA report showed a decline in alcoholism, characterized by impaired control over drinking, compulsive drinking, preoccupation with drinking, tolerance to alcohol and/or withdrawal symptoms. But the same study showed an increase in the population of alcohol abuse, characterized by failure to fulfill life’s obligations, social and legal problems and/or drinking in hazardous situations.
Research shows there may be a biological basis even for drinking problems that fall short of alcoholism, said Andrea King, an associate psychiatry professor at the University of Chicago and director of the Clinical Addictions Research Lab. She is directing the Chicago Social Drinking Project, which is recruiting a range of social drinkers in their 20s and early 30s to be studied for a period of two years and longer.
“We found that heavier binge drinkers release less cortisol, a stress hormone, during alcohol drinking than lighter drinkers,” King said.
One earlier study indicated about 46 percent of alcohol abusers matured out of the habit with time, King said, while 24 percent remained regular abusers. About 30 percent went on to become alcoholic.
“The prevailing theory for the last 20 to 30 years is that those at most risk are so because they have less of the sluggish responses to alcohol, and therefore can drink more alcohol and over a longer period of time,” she said.
“Our theory–we are testing it–is that, in addition to feeling less tired from alcohol, people who are at highest risk may show greater levels of feeling the positive stimulant-like effects of alcohol too.”
But that high is nothing compared to the health benefits of not drinking, Frederick said. Frederick appreciates the financial benefits and increased focus on his work. But he counts the health ones as the most significant. (It doesn’t hurt that some non-alcoholic beers pack half the calories.)
“I’ve never been this fit in my life,” Frederick said. “Well, when I was 18, maybe I was like this.
Not completely.
“When I think about the old school of drinking and hangovers,” he said, “I don’t want to go back.”
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He’s watching the bottom line
Non-alcoholic is the only category of beer that bartender Charles “Chip” Bradley, 35, has served himself for the last three years. Bradley, who works at Charlie’s on Webster, a Chicago restaurant/bar/beer garden, said alcohol was draining his screenwriting ambitions, as well as his wallet.
“I was in that mode of going out every night and tipping like a rock star. I’d walk out of work with a couple hundred dollars, and wake up with $50 the next morning,” he said. “Now, I go home earlier and it saves a lot of money.”
–Wendy Donahue
The thrill had faded away
Sheila Flynn, 42, a marketing executive who lives in Lincoln Park, shed any party-girl ways about three years ago.
“There’s no big story, I just realized as I got older I wasn’t enjoying [drinking] as much,” she said. “I was feeling too awful and unproductive the next day.”
She occasionally sips wine at a special event, such as the White House Correspondents Association dinner that she attended in Washington, D.C., this spring.
“I had half a glass of Champagne. Then the usual Perrier for the rest of the night.”
At barbecues, she might drink a non-alcoholic beer (a slight misnomer because it contains up to 0.5 percent alcohol and is not recommended for those recovering from addiction).
Sometimes, she does so to make drinkers feel at ease.
“I like the taste, and you feel like you’re part of the whole thing–most of my friends drink.”
–W.D.
Lessons from his family tree
Ralph Darden, a 32-year-old deejay and musician in the band Jai-Alai Savant in Chicago, got “tipsy” once, he said, when he was 22 and in New Orleans with his band.
That was enough.
“I come from three generations of musicians and my dad is an alcoholic–a homeless alcoholic man–and his father was an alcoholic as well,” Darden said. “They were brilliant but wrecked their lives drinking. I’m not going to do that. I have too many things I want to achieve.”
Darden, who lives in Humboldt Park, regularly drinks cranberry juice mixed with club soda, and a glass of wine maybe twice a year. But spending four or five nights a week in a bar or club, Darden witnesses alcohol’s potency.
“My band could be the most amazing band ever, but if we were to be at the [bar] Empty Bottle and there was no alcohol on a Friday night, no one would show up,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with alcohol, but I don’t think drinking is an activity. It should be a pleasurable sociable accompaniment, not something you `do.'”
Sobriety can make Darden’s bar time “a bit alienating sometimes.”
“When I talk to a woman, I wonder, `Is she going to remember me? Is this really who she is?'”
But sobriety is also character-building.
“I have to overcome anything that I need to overcome just by being Ralph,” he said.
–W.D.
Think everybody’s doing it?
About 29 percent of U.S. adults are “risky drinkers,” women who regularly or occasionally exceed three drinks a day and seven drinks a week or men who regularly or occasionally exceed four drinks a day and 14 drinks a week, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
Some resources for early identification/ intervention:
– Drinkerscheckup.com: Offers a free mini-screening. For $25, a 90-minute online private survey will kick out quantitative analysis such as “You drink more than 90 percent of men in America” and give tips on how to cut back or quit. With a 48-hour money-back guarantee if you don’t find it helpful. (Only 2 percent of users have sought money back.) About 1,000 people have taken it since March.
– Moderation.org: The site of Moderation Management, a self-help group devoted to helping people cut back on their drinking through steps such as charting their consumption or a 30-day abstinence.
– e-CHUG.com: Contracts with colleges, including Illinois Wesleyan and Western Illinois Universities, to offer students a 15-minute online drinking intervention designed to reduce harmful levels of consumption. At no charge, students can do check-ups to track changes in use.
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q@tribune.com.
On the radio
Do you know someone who should switch to non-alcoholic beer? Join the conversation with Kathy and Judy between 9 a.m. and noon Monday. Tune in WGN-AM 720.
