Risk perception in young women’s collective alcohol consumption

Abstract

Purpose Heavy episodic drinking in young women has caused concern among many groups including public health professionals. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the experiences of young women’s alcohol consumption so as to facilitate better health education targeting. Design/methodology/approach This qualitative descriptive study examines the narratives of 16 young women’s experience of a “night out” framed as the Alcohol Consumption Journey. Findings The young women’s Alcohol Consumption Journey is a ritual perpetuated by the “experienced” and “anticipated” pleasure from social bonding and collective intoxication. The data showed three sequential phases; preloading, going out and recovery, which were repeated regularly. The young women perceived that going out was riskier than preloading or recovery and employed protective strategies to minimise risk and maximise pleasure. Alcohol was consumed collectively to enhance the experience of pleasure and facilitate enjoyment in the atmosphere of the night time economy. Implications for health interventions on collective alcohol consumption and perceived risk are presented. Originality/value The concept of socio-pleasure is valuable to explain the perpetuation of the young’s women ritualised Alcohol Consumption Journey. The binary concepts of mundane/celebration, individual/collective and insiders/outsiders are useful to illustrate the balancing of collective intoxication with group protective strategies in navigating the edge between risk and pleasure.

Friends drinking together: young adults’ evolving support practices

“…These concerns were gendered. The young women would not be in the NTE alone as they had concerns about threats for their physical and sexual safety (Armstrong et al, 2014;Dresler and Anderson, 2017). Many of the young women in this study had experienced being abandoned by a group when intoxicated, and there was a strong sentiment that leaving a friend, when out in the NTE, was never acceptable behaviour (Hutton and Wright, 2014).…”

“…For the young women, their support practices were seen as collective, to align with their collective perception of risk associated with alcohol use (Dresler and Anderson, 2017). For young men, the support practices were fluid, providing expressions of masculinity, rivalry, competitiveness, teasing, and protective comportments (Campbell, 2000;Leyshon et al, 2005;Peralta, 2007;Willott and Lyons, 2012).…”

“…Notably, drinking is a communal practice and its meanings are bounded temporally, contextually, and spatially, and negotiated in the shared communality (Measham, 2004;Lyons et al, 2014;Dresler and Anderson, 2017). Research indicated the importance of drinking in providing the social contexts (Guise and Gill, 2007) for forging friendship and belonging (Griffin et al, 2013) with alcohol as a legitimate social product for attaining "group bonding" and "feeling of closeness" in having fun together (Tutenges, 2012;Stepney, 2013;Lyons et al, 2014).…”

“…The primary objective of a "night out" was to have fun, being with a group of trustworthy friends was crucial when trouble arose from extreme drunkenness (Szmigin et al, 2008). This included friends looking out for each other ( Jayne et al, 2011), caring for drunk sick friends (Frederiksen et al, 2012), looking after friends when they lost consciousness (Griffin et al, 2009), rescuing friends from fights (Dresler and Anderson, 2017), helping friends to get home safely (MacNeela and Bredin, 2011) and supporting friends to transform a negative experience into a positive one (Fjaer, 2012).…”

“…However, it would be valuable to further examine the support practices in drinking groups to gain a stronger understanding of the social processes in encouraging, facilitating and perpetuating the alcohol consumption ritual. In a previous paper by the same research group, Dresler and Anderson (2017) described the Alcohol Consumption Journey ritual as consisting of three phases: preloading, going out and recovery providing structure to group drinking and drunkenness. This paper focuses on the young people's experience of a "night out", framed as the Alcohol Consumption Journey, to explore the evolving support practices within the different phases of the Alcohol Consumption Journey.…”