Drinking in the Algarve

As expected, the plot thickens regarding the couple in the Algarve whose children were taken into protective custody. Today's story seems to say that the wife was ill but the husband was fine, that they arranged for the hotel to look after their children while she was taken to hospital and that the father was 'conscious, orientated and helpful with staff' at the hospital.

The discussion on Alpha Mummy has kicked up some theories about British drinking habits, mostly that we are all lushes. Get your two cents in here.

Comments

[j]

Annamac, I can empathise with how hard it is to stop protecting someone who is truly vulnerable. You are right that we all need to recognise how dangerous our best-friend-alcohol is and how easily we can normalise it.

[mumoftwo]

Annammac, yours is a very sad story for you and your daughter, thanks for telling us about it. Thinking about leaving people who are alcoholics, I don't tend to think about it in terms of not enabling them, so much as just protecting yourself from someone who is on the path to self-destruction. I liken it to getting out of the way of a lorry running down a hill; you won't stop the lorry going down a hill if you stand in the way and you will do yourself a lot of damage; better step aside and let it thunder past. It may stop of its own accord, it may crash into a wall, but only a crazy person would step in the way to stop it. So hard to live though and witness.

[Annamac]

If it does turn out that this couple in Portugal were incapacited through no fault of their own, it is highly unfortunate that the case was reported in the way that it was. However, if it stops other tourists from drinking unwisely, then at least something good has come of it.

J, I value your compassionate responses to my posts on the subject of my ex's alcoholism. It is actually not something I enjoy writing about or thinking about, but I feel that the more people talk about the realities of alcoholism the better. Because this problem is far more widespread than anyone likes to think. Look at how many posters on these 2 related threads have said that they have alcoholics in their family.

Our family holiday this year will be taken in a part of the UK which is doubtless pleasant enough, but we probably wouldn't be going there except for the fact that I need to take my 9 year old daughter there to visit her father's grave for the first time. Can't say I'm looking forward to it, but she needs to do it.

Despite everything, choosing to divorce him after 10 years of marriage was hard. After all, if you believe that alcoholism is a sickness (and many do), how can you abandon a sick person? And then people (read: counsellors, psychiatrists, psychologists, oh believe me, we tried everything) tell you that you have no choice but to leave the alcoholic, because otherwise you are just an "enabler". And that then the drinker will either get better - or they will completely fall apart.

OK, enough on my pet subject. I'll shut up now.

[Lucy]

Re. 'two or three very large glasses', a lot of people don't seem to realise that three large pub measures = 1 bottle of wine. I often buy those dinky bottles, because partner doesn't drink, or to cook with, and people tend to be amazed when you demonstrate that one 250ml bottle pours nicely into a large glass, and that three lots of 250ml = 75cl = 1 bottle of wine. Kind of simple, but I bet lots of people who talk about abstemiously stopping after one or two glasses don't realise that they've probably drunk around half a bottle. Actually, I get the impression that nice middle class people my parents age see it as slightly alcholic-looking, or even chavvy, to be aware of the conversion from glasses to bottles.

[mumoftwo]

I agree, it is often too much, however, I have seen it many many times, home-based measures are usually pretty generous and get 'topped up' a lot until the end of the bottle is reached (or perhaps if there are two of you, you open another bottle). Few are as disciplined as you, J about their measures and I've seen several people(such as my father and my husband's father) slide down the slope from after work drinking to alcoholism almost imperceptibly through having just a bit more over a long time period til they are basically drinking large amounts on a daily basis. Having said that, in my father's case, realising he was totally depending on drinking every night, he was able to go back up the slope and now drinks very occasionally, if at all.

[j]

Annamac agree,- one or two bottles of wine a night- I cant imagine getting through all that. I'd be dead on my feet the next day- if I could get my head off the pillow.

I've been very touched by your stories of living with a man addicted to alcohol. It must be so terribly frustrating to see someone you have loved self-destruct and destroy so much else at the same time.

[Annamac]

Mumoftwo, I would say that "2 or 3 very large glasses of wine per night" is a staggering (ha) amount of alcohol - and anyone who is drinking that much has a problem. Would they even notice if there was a medical emergency in their house during the night, let alone be able to deal with it sensibly? At a little over 2, my son once managed to inhale some of his supper - completely silently and so that even he didn't seem to notice at the time - so neither did we. However, at about 1.30am, whatever it was slipped further down and blocked his windpipe. Cue blue flashing light etc. Am glad that I hadn't drunk the best part of a bottle of wine that evening...

[Jane2]

I would tend to agree with Gypsy, actually.
Have only been to Portugal once, in circumstances dire, (phone call to come and rescue d.1 who had been rushed to hospital).
I was suffering from lack of sleep, panic-induced diarrhoea, disorientation and total fear of what I would find.
The hotel staff were all so kind and helpful, not like here in UK where they can't bear to even look at you unless you tip them.
Maids washed out poo-filled and sick-stained clothes, and duty manageress translated the notes on the presciption medecine for me and then hand-wrote a message to the hospital consultant explaining that d.1 was reacting badly to over-prescribed medecine.
No-one at the public hospital spoke English, I had to communicate in French or via other patients' relatives.
In the circumstances, I think it not unreasonable to leave the children at the hotel.
I think I would have done so. Admittedly, my reaction to the whole experience was first "I am never going to go on holiday abroad again", mellowing slightly later to "I am never going on holiday again to a place where I don't speak the language". A medical emergence in such a case is very frightening.
I so feel for the McCanns.. Whatever they did wrong, they went through hell. At least I came home with my daughter, I can never forget that picture of Kate in tears on the plane, having to leave hers behind.

[j]

It does seem very possible that her drink was spiked. It reminds me all too much of Goa and that child who was murdered there recently.

There is such a temptation for crime in these resorts, it really puts me off going to places where the local economy relies on tourism, as I no longer believe that things are reported truthfully when they happen.

[mumoftwo]

I read that research and thought of my friends and agreed! Almost every one of my mummy friends relaxes with an alcoholic drink nearly every night, ranging from one or two G & T's, a 'tumbler' of port or two or three very large glasses of wine. Although I agree it is important to educate teenagers and students about wise drinking (or not drinking, as they prefer), if we don't like the booze culture in our society, it's up to all of us to stop making alcohol such an integral part of relaxing. It's so much easier to point the finger at 'binge-drinking' students or girls on a night out than to think through whether actually one or two bottles of wine a night is a little too much (and probably pretty equivalent in units to what the students are drinking, they tend to binge on cheap booze on weekends as they can't afford wine every night).

[Debbie]

We were back in the UK for 6 weeks over Xmas and were just amazed by how much everyone drank who we saw and spent time with. By the end of the holiday we needed to detox and spent a totally alcohol free month to recover. It was mostly social drinking at home but just large amounts of it.

We had a "discussion" about it in my family, and were really surprised that one of my sisters and brother in law seemed to think drinking 50+ units of alcohol a week, week in week out would not harm their health in the long term. Interestingly enough their kids, who are in their teens, DID think it would hurt them and was not good for them.

A classic case of the phenomenom written about last year that the heaviest drinkers are not the binge drinkers in Liverpool, but middle and upper classes who drink at home in Surrey. It is interesting whether they pass this on to their kids, or whether their kids think it is unacceptable and change their behaviour.

[Gipsy]

Tired grisly kids, possibly dead on their feet, maybe even asleep on their feet, partner very ill with goodness only knows what, your brain is befuddled with jet lag, lack of sleep, a bit too much sun and maybe a couple of beers, you're going to have to try and navigate a medical system you know nothing about where everything is in a language that you don't understand. And here's a couple of lovely, sympathetic, capable girls from the hotel reception - you'll only be gone a few hours, you're not necessarily in a state to make the best judgements but you do the best you can, and your brain is saying - the kids desperately need to sleep, you need to get your wife to a hospital, here are two responsible adults.

On the scale of horrible things that parents could do this is pretty much far down the list. If the only thing we can 'condemn' these parents for is that they didn't leave their kids with fully vetted and police checked child carers or with people that they've known for a long time (and lets not forget here that the vast majority of abuse against children is from people they know not strangers) then frankly, I think we need to get a little more compassion in our lives.

[Lazy Mummy]

No, I don't think many of us would leave our children elsewhere in that situation - not unless we were on holiday with close friends or family. Whether this case was about alcohol or illness, it suggests something of a lack of judgement (and of course, many people have impaired judgement when faced with a crisis, whether drunk or stone cold sober).

[supermother]

Without doubt a lot of the British cannot handle their drink abroad. I doubt any of us will ever know the truth about this case but if the family do get the hospital reports they have requested that might help to prove their side of the story or not as the case may be.

BUT would any of us abroad with strangers and 2 small children if our spouse were taken ill go to hospital without the children? Surely we'd take them with us. I cannot envisage a situation in which I would leave them unless it were in a proper open well run creche or with a fellow holiday maker I had got to know, even if my other half (if I had one) were dying.

On drink yes the British drink far too much. That poor barrister who was shot the other day apparently drank. It's a dreadful addiction and so hard to cure.