DOING DRUGS WITH
PAUL DILLON

Although we are continuing to see more young people choosing not to drink alcohol, if your child lives with you for long enough (and evidence suggests many of you will still have them living in your house until they're in their mid 20s at least!), there's still a good chance that at some point they'll turn up at your door feeling a little worse for wear. They went out with friends, had a little bit too much to drink and you've got to end up looking after them … Now if they're 18 or over when this happens, you may not necessarily be happy about it but they're 'legal' - once they've recovered, you certainly have the right to tell them that they're living under your roof and have to follow your rules, but realistically most of us make a mistake at least once when it comes to drinking (that's how we learn about our limits) and most parents help clean their drunk son or daughter up, mop up the mess, make sure they're okay and move on. But ...

During the week I met a Mum and Dad who asked my advice on how they should deal with their 15-year-old son who had been honest about drinking alcohol at a party. Their question went something like this … We have made our rules about underage drinking pretty clear and our son knows that we do not want him to drink alcohol at this time in his life. He has been going to parties more frequently this year and we have always trusted him to do the 'right thing' - he is a great kid! A couple of weeks ago after we picked him up from one of these parties he turned around and told us that he wanted to be honest with us and said that he had had a couple of sips of one of his friend's beers during the night. Whether or not he had more than that we don't know - he certainly didn't appear to be intoxicated on the night. We then found ourselves in a really difficult situation - he had broken one of our basic rules about parties, i.e., he was not to drink alcohol. On the other h...

Not surprisingly, the death earlier this week of a 15-year-old Sydney girl from apparent alcohol poisoning attracted a great deal of media attention across the country. According to media reports she had been drinking alone and returned a blood alcohol reading of 0.4 with NSW Police stating that the girl "sourced an alcoholic drink recipe from an online site, then put the information to the test."  Although there has been a great deal of speculation about what actually happened, the police have made it clear that "the investigation is in its infancy" and we really won't know exactly what went down until the post mortem examination takes place sometime this week. A relative was quoted as saying that the young woman had consumed a bottle of vodka and early reports spoke about police seizing energy drinks, with lollies added to the apparent list of things that could possibly have been used in later stories.  Until we know what actually happened I think we ha...

At some point during their teens most young people, regardless of whether they drink themselves or not, will have to look after a drunk friend, family member or someone they have come across at a party or gathering. It is therefore incredibly important to make sure we arm them with good quality information about alcohol and its effects, as well as providing them with practical strategies that will enable them to do this effectively. Making sure the drunk person is safe - i.e., that they don't lose consciousness or choke on their own vomit - is incredibly important but it is also just important to make sure that the person providing the care is also safe. Looking after a drunk person, whether they are a friend or not, is potentially risky. Drunk people can be unpredictable and, of course, aggressive behaviour is a very real risk. So many things can go wrong and over the years I have seen some shocking injuries inflicted by drunk people on friends. Some of these include the foll...