rites of passage - teenage binge drinking

This article is written by Nicqui Yazdi, Mental health First Aid Instructor and local parent.

RITES OF PASSAGE - TEENAGE BINGE-DRINKING, A RIGHT OR A WRONG?

In Byron Bay we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of all of the cutting edge concepts creating conversation throughout the world. We have tried to foster a culture that recognizes the future needs of our planet and its people, long before others and especially the future needs of our children.  We espouse the philosophies of the hippies that founded our region on love, peace, happiness and harmony. Yet our beloved shores encompasses more alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual abuse, mental health problems, crime and chaos than most other areas in Australia.

I sadly arrived rather late in the day to our latest Harmony Festival, I would have loved to have been there throughout the day to share in the celebrations of our cultural diversity and the philosophies of our hippy foremothers. But instead I had chosen to spend the day with a few dozen others discussing and debating the issues of drugs and alcohol and our teenagers.  All that was left in Railway Park when I arrived was a table of clipboards imploring the plight of dugongs, our rainforests, the whales, even the orangoutangs in Borneo, no fewer than a dozen petitions were begging for signatures on that table, so many in fact, that I had to lift a few to enable me to read those underneath. But the one I was looking for wasn't there. It had been left at the Drug and Alcohol Youth Forum. In that moment I wished I could have been a bit more like our Green Mayor Jan Burham and been in two places at once for the day, with a clipboard and a petition for our kids (by the way, Jan had also spent the day passionately pursuing the needs of our kids). All those clipboards, all those signatures of all those people filled with Harmony and all our kids needing just as much help as the dugongs and no clipboard and no signatures for them! 

Don't get me wrong, I really would have loved to have been at the Harmony Festival, but as a mother of two and a mentor to many, I saw that the Drug and Alcohol Youth Forum was more important to me. A number of times throughout the day the saying "Think globally and act locally" was said. I think often in Byron Bay, being the forward thinking people we are, we take on causes that are of global importance ahead of smaller local issues, not because the local ones aren't important, but because we think that we can make a difference in the wider world. We fight for the rights of the whales and the rainforests, yet when it comes to our kids we are a bit complacent.

We seem to accept that kids have this rite of passage when it comes to drugs and alcohol, "we did it and survived" a lot of people say. But the truth is, if we knew then what we know now, most of us wouldn't have done it. Binge drinking is not a rite of passage, in fact the laws of our country state that it is illegal for our children to drink. Yet somehow they do. It is illegal for anyone under the age of 18 years to buy alcohol, yet somehow they get their hands on it. In other words, adults are buying it for them. In this shire we have kids as young as 10 with serious alcohol problems. We also have a big problem amongst the 13 year old girls who are not only putting their health at risk through excessive binge-drinking, but they are putting themselves in danger from the predators who are supplying them with the alcohol. This is a serious issue.

A number of times throughout the forum people asked the question "how do we protect the rights of our kids and their rite of passage to drink?". Our children have no rights when it comes to alcohol and drugs. We have chosen for this to become law. I have never seen a clipboard petitioning to lower the legal age of drinking in Australia! We should all find it unacceptable.

Living in Byron Bay our kids are particularly at risk. We live in a 24/7 party town. Our kids are exposed to this on a daily basis. We all know that what we show to our children becomes their norm. Unfortunately, in this town, their norm is drinking to excess, drug-taking and risky behavior.

One noted absence from the Forum was the alcohol industry. Not one representative! Considering the amount of alcohol that is sold and consumed in this region, it was like a slap in the face of our children that none of the alcohol pushers in this town bothered to turn up. 

There were however many other areas represented, there were parents and teachers, counsellors and councilors, psychologists and GPs, youth workers and health workers, a few teens and young adults, even a criminologist and a few people who just want to make a difference. We bantered and workshopped over the issues and finally found common ground in many areas. Late night transport was an issue, finishing repairs to the YAC, establishing other safe environments for our kids, funding for more support out on the streets at night , education for parents and earlier education for kids on the real dangers, to name just a few of the issues.  A few of us have committed to seeing these issues through. We will meet again in a few weeks to work on the ideas that we came up with and hopefully find solutions to deal with the problems of our youth. 

As concerned parents and community members, there are things we can do. We can educate ourselves, there are many courses available such as Mental Health First Aid and the P5 Parenting Courses, there are also support groups like I.M.P.A.C.T. (involved mentors and parents actively caring for teenagers) and Soul Parents, there are mentoring programs through the YAC and Byron Youth Services, or the Uncle and Aunty Projects, we also have Pathways who offer genuine rites of passage. Be pro-active, find out about what you can do.

Don't stop fighting for the rights of the whales or saving our rainforests, these are the sort of things that make the people of Byron Bay special. But at the same time fight for the rights of our kids to be kids, to have a safe childhood that they can look back upon and smile about. Our kids are being endangered by this binge-drinking rite of passage. It is not a right, it is dangerous and wrong.