Drink to Happier Holidays

By Shawn McKee
eDiets
Staff Writer

The holiday season is a time to be spent with family and friends, being thankful for times past and planning resolutions for the upcoming year. But it's also a time when holiday festivities, pressures and loneliness lead to a spike in drinking and driving. Don't spoil the spirit by winding up in jail -- or worse -- this winter.

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From Thanksgiving to New Year's Day of 2004, there were more than 3,500 traffic fatalities and 37.5 percent (1,316) were alcohol related, according to data reported by Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

According to reports from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), almost 1 in 3 Americans will be involved in an accident involving an impaired person at some point in there life.

Addiction expert and author of Alcoholism: Myths and Realities, Doug Thorburn, explains that all you have to do to see the increase in DUIs in the holiday party season is to check the court dockets at the beginning of each year. The numbers are staggering and the government has taken note of this disturbing trend.

The NHTSA's traditional message during the holiday season is Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk -- Designate a Sober Driver. However, in recent years, many states and local communities are increasing enforcement of impaired driving laws through sobriety checkpoints or saturation patrols, and are adopting the cautionary message: You Drink & Drive. You Lose.

Why do people drink more during the holidays?

A recent survey of 1,000 people around the country for New Seasons Behavioral Health Care Systems may reveal some answers.

Half of Americans agree that loneliness and depression play a part in the alcohol-holiday connection. More interestingly, 7 of 10 blame holiday parties, according to the survey.

The respondents were asked to select all of the reasons that may contribute to that kind of excessive behavior from the following list: "the prevalence of holiday parties, stress associated with spending, more encounters with family, the expectation that the holidays must be happy times, the heartache associated with holidays past, increased feelings of loneliness and isolation, or none of the above."

While the alco-holiday fiestas were far and away the No. 1 reason respondents believed people drank too much during the holidays, loneliness and isolation emerged as the second top reason, according to one-in-two of the Americans surveyed.

"The abundance of parties during the holiday season clearly presents more opportunities for overdrinking, but that's not the full story. The holiday season compounds issues of family tension, financial stress, feelings of isolation -- and problems arise when people stop regulating behaviors like drinking, eating and spending," according to Steven M. Orenstein, MA, LMFT, and CEO of New Seasons. "People like to wait and make recovery a New Year's resolution, but that's a mistake."

Often when drinking in excess common sense goes out the car window, so the National Commission Against Drunk Driving (NCADD) supplies a list of tips for staying safe when celebrating this holiday season.

"People have choices, to drink, to drink to impairment and whether or not to drive," says John Moulden, president of NCADD. "Drunk driving deaths, injuries and crashes are totally preventable if people make responsible choices."

Here are the NCADD's tips if you are going out to drink:

° Designate a driver ahead of time. A designated driver is a non-drinking driver.

° Take a cab or public transportation.

° Make a reservation and spend the night.

° Sip your drinks, consume food and alternate with non-alcoholic beverages.

° Ask your server about a ride home if you have been drinking to the point of impairment.

'Tis the season for giving, so give yourself and those around you the chance for another year of resolutions, family gatherings and fun by making sure you don't get behind the wheel if you've had too much to drink. Happy holidays.

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Shawn McKee graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a BA in Journalism and has written for The Broward and Miami New Times.