What are you drinking? Chateaux cordial

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GLASS HALF-FULL: Sitting on one drink can be tricky.

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Non-drinkers are going to extreme lengths to make it look like they are consuming alcohol, as they face increasing social pressure because of what some have called our "sick" drinking culture.

Even a senior doctor in Christchurch has admitted to becoming "tired" of trying to explain why he is not drinking in social situations, and so instead hides the fact by making soft drinks look like alcohol.

Doug Sellman, director of the National Addiction Centre at the University of Otago (Christchurch), said New Zealand had an ingrained heavy drinking culture "where almost the worst thing you could possibly be is a wowser".

Gerard Vaughan, chief executive of the Alcohol Advisory Council (ALAC) said: "The accepted norm is to drink. It is seen as unusual for someone to opt out unless they have a specific reason to justify not drinking, such as they are driving or they are pregnant".

Chris Raine, the founder of Hello Sunday Morning, an Australian-based website which encourages people to take a 12-week break from alcohol, asked his readers if they had tried to disguise the fact they were not drinking alcohol and many said they had.

Tactics included:

Mixing drinks in private and drinking cola.

Drinking lemonade but saying it's vodka and lemonade.

Drinking apple juice in a wine glass.

Water in a beer bottle. Elderflower cordial, sparkling water and wedges of lime.

Ginger beer in a stubby holder.

One commenter on Hello Sunday Morning's Facebook page said: "What the hell is wrong with society when people feel they need to hide the fact they are not drinking?"

Sellman said: "I've found it fascinating to hear people speaking about alcohol over the past three years – doctors, other health professionals and community leaders – who feel the need to begin their presentation with something like `I'd like to start by pointing out that I'm not a wowser'."

The senior Christchurch doctor, who did not want to be named, said it became tiring explaining why he was not drinking alcohol.

"Just ask a vegetarian who has to discuss his food choices at every meal."

He said those who did not believe him should try and decline a beer at a barbecue, or a wine at dinner. "It is an impressive study of social pressures."

The doctor said he would sometimes have three formal receptions a day and "you wouldn't wish to have two glasses of wine at each function".

He said: "It is all about the glass.

"As long as you hold a white wine glass correctly, fill it appropriately and sip on it casually nobody will be able to tell whether you sip apple juice or even water.

"Sparkling soda water has always gone thoroughly as bubbly in my experience. At formal functions soda water is virtually always offered, just fill it into a champagne glass."

He would also drink flat coke in a red wine glass, but "often it is the easiest to gracefully accept a glass of bubbly or wine at the beginning of the night, thank the host, participate in the toast and then forget it somewhere".

He said party hosts should spend as much "time, attention and money" on non-alcoholic drinks as on alcohol.

Sellman said our heavy drinking culture was nothing new but "it certainly has expanded and deepened to involve women and young people, which may have increased the stigma of being a non-drinker in social settings where drinking is a major feature."

He said there needed to be better recognition of alcohol as a Class B-equivalent drug and stigmatisation of heavy drinking.

Vaughan said: "What we would like to see is that not drinking, or being an occasional non-drinker, is a valid choice."

- © Fairfax NZ News