I have a great respect for true scholarship and an equally great respect for innate native wisdom. To truly know something and truly understand something I believe you have to combine the two. For the first true scholarship, I am going to draw upon Griffith Edwards, an Englishman who has been studying and writing about alcohol for more years than he would probably wish to admit. For the native wisdom I am going to draw upon my father, who drove a Lough Swilly bus around the beautiful and narrow roads of Donegal for nearly fifty years.

My father was born at the beginning of the last century and reared in a small hamlet on the side of a beautiful hill. What would have been described as a farm was a few rush-filled fields that probably would have sustained a few cows, some sheep and a decent clutch of hens. You would have been unlikely to starve but you would have been doing well to own a Sunday suit. Ireland had just become an independent state and work and money were at a premium. He was a well-built young man with broad shoulders and perhaps because of that he was often called upon to go out into the bog and carry men home to their wives and families. He described scenes of very drunk men sitting around and drinking the poitin as it dripped out of the still. He talked and told of men who were passed caring and who only lived for the next drink. He was a mighty supporter of the Catholic Church's decision to make poitin drinking a reserved sin that could only be forgiven by a bishop and not by an ordinary priest. He believed firmly that the piece of social control by the then most powerful and influential institution in the land helped to save the country. Strangely enough my father never became a teetotal, a pioneer, but he was the most moderate alcohol drinker I have ever met in my life.

Griffith Edwards in one of his latest books puts a scholar's mind to the same scenario and writes:

"So will the future see the tide of alcohol let rip, with this drug treated simply as one more deregulated market commodity? Will alcohol be delivered to everyone's doorstep and be sold in every corner store? Will it be consumed every day by everyone, all the time, with the world's average consumption cheered on rejoicingly to a level which will reproach present-day France for its abstemiousness? That could happen; the world really could become awash with drink.

That could happen, but it is not likely to happen. What history suggests is that, when a population's drinking goes beyond a certain level, the consequences become so evidently damaging and offensive that the population rises against drink. Thus Islam, and also the reaction to the British gin epidemic in the eighteenth century, and the temperance reaction to America's 'alcoholic republic' in the nineteenth century. The level of drinking needed to precipitate a backlash will vary according to the historical and cultural context but in a modern society, which has the capacity to estimate the cost of alcohol-related damage, few governments are likely to let alcohol rip absolutely".

Ireland has had a fair rip at the drink for a fair while now. We are now lying second in the European league table for alcohol consumption per capita. Every point we gain in this league has a consequence among some of the following: wife or husband battering, marriage break-up, road deaths, teenage pregnancy, sexual disease and alcoholism, all the things that go to damage and often destroy the family. In the midst of this tearing and ripping the ones who are most exposed, the most vulnerable and the most damaged are the children. Sometimes a small incident sticks in your head because its smallness and its delicacy capture the essence of what you know to be enormous. I remember a day when I was working in Northlands, a family came a great distance to seek treatment for a father who was drinking himself to death. He was a retired solicitor who drank only whiskey. His wife came and a young child, a late child. One of the staff gave the child some paper and pencils to pass the time while the mother and father were being interviewed. The mother was very insistent that she had protected the family from any real damage and the children would be unaware of the extent of their father's drinking. When the interview was complete the staff member went in to say goodbye to the child. Like any child of his age he had drawn a picture of a house and in the middle of the house he had drawn a very large whiskey bottle with the name of the whiskey that his father drank. I greatly welcome that this conference is entitled 'Alcohol and the Family'.

This conference is oversubscribed and it comes on the back of four major articles in one of our leading newspapers on alcohol and generally we are tripping over reporters who want to write on this subject. Have we reached the level as outlined by Edwards where the population rises against drink? Perhaps, but I wouldn't put too much money on it. There is certainly great unease and growing anxiety. One of the articles I have referred to speculated that our attention is on the personal rather than the communal disease. I think that is a very important point but it is also in danger of missing the point. How do we any longer achieve communality in order to act as a community? In my father's story it was the Church who applied the brakes. It had the influence and the power and the infrastructure to apply the sanctions and the counterbalance. That day no longer exists. Government is probably now the only mechanism that has the power to provide counterbalance and strategy. But Government has two weaknesses that the Church, in my father's day, would not have had. It is subject to economic pressure and it has influence but not presence in every parish in the country. If Government had the will to implement a radical and transforming strategy it would be resisted tooth and nail by the drinks industry. It will do so on the grounds of the free market, national economic well-being and the desirability of converting the extreme to the moderate drinker. The drinks industry will put money into programmes that try to raise awareness of the dangers of addiction but it will stay well clear of taking any responsibility for the outcome. It will disclaim the power of advertising and sponsorship and it will deposit most of the blame on the individual and little or none on the quantity of alcohol consumed and the age at which it is consumed.

Governments mostly want to do the right thing by their people but they are only too sensitive to the reality that economics either makes them or breaks them. World economics and Irish economics would indicate that the present Irish Government will not implement a radical and transforming alcohol policy. They are more likely to seek a compromise that addresses some of the fears about alcohol while not doing anything so drastic that it might upset or damage current economic needs. It might be foolish for people like us who are worried about the levels of alcohol consumption in this country to ignore that reality and beat our heads against a wall. It might be cleverer to achieve something now that can be further built upon in the future when the economics are more favourable. A suggestion: pressurise Government to put a surcharge on the drinks industry, a surcharge that is financially adequate to provide proper treatment facilities within every county in Ireland. That would have two major outcomes. It would inexorably link levels of alcohol consumption to levels of damage, thus forcing the industry to accept their responsibility and secondly it would provide an infrastructure of knowledge, care and direction, if not in every parish, at least in every county. I greatly welcome that the conference has included space for an update on the New National Action Plan and look forward to that presentation. Which brings me to the other spine of this conference - treatment of addiction.

My father was the first to drive a double-decker bus in this county. After a week it had to be removed because it kept catching on the telephone and electricity wires, which were too low for its height. Later in his driving career, for economic reasons, they gave him a bus that was so small that he claimed that when he stopped to pick up the passengers they would ask him did he know when the bus was coming? All the years I have been around treatment the argument about size has raged.

Sometimes residential treatment has been the darling and sometimes short, non-residential interventions have been more favoured. Sometimes A.A. / Al-Anon and its twelve-step programme have been seen as a sine qua non and sometimes it has been sneered at for its amateurism. Personally, I have always found these arguments to be boring and somewhat naïve. My father and now the latest and most extensive research, Project Match, concur that all kinds of transport will get you to your destination and getting to where you want to be is far more important than in what bus you travelled. But let me say something about the essence of treatment. Alcohol problems can cause huge, destructive problems in families but it should be acknowledged that family can also be a great motivator for recovery and a great support in recovery. Family is a natural process. Recovery from addiction for the individual is also a natural process. All that any therapist, counsellor, social worker or doctor can do is help release, motivate and encourage those natural processes. In the early days of Northlands Centre I used to say that there is a 'wee' woman who lives up on the side of a mountain who knows far more about the mystery of being human and consequently about the mystery of recovery than any of us will ever know. If being professional in any way removes us from being fully human, in our language, our attitude or our understanding of our own limitations then ultimately we will fail those who seek us out.

DENIS BRADLEY