“If the chemical formula for alcohol had never been invented, and someone came up with the idea to put this stuff on the market today, believe me no government health authority would ever agree to manufacture any alcoholic drinks. The formula would immediately be recognised as a highly powerful chemical, dangerous for human consumption, causing blackouts, damage to the central nervous system and vital organs.”
Andreas (local pharmacist)
“An Englishman man, who must now be in his late fifties has for the past three years been one of my best customers. Three times a week he comes in, sits down and over a period of six hours usually orders 80 separate shots of alcohol. His highest bill one day was for 110 single drinks. He doesn’t seem worried about his drinking, but he also mixes his drinks with some tablets he got from the doctor for high blood pressure. God knows what state his liver is in, but he always looks okay, never any bother. He manages to keep walking and talking and then he gets a taxi home to sleep it off, until the next time.
“The biggest worry I’ve got in my job, is when under age drinkers, English kids of 13 or 14, come to the bar and ask for a beer. We refuse to serve them alcohol, but their grandparents will come up, and order beers for them. I can’t do much about it really, but it’s common here for older people to just sit and drink all day. Maybe they haven’t anything else to do with their days, and just need the company of a drink and people around them .”
Christos. (Bar Owner)
“I’d say almost one quarter of my foreign patients in the 50-70 age bracket show clear signs of heavy drinking. This manifests itself either as severe indigestion, chronic diarrhea, uncontrollable diabetes, and uncontrollable blood pressure and those are just a few of the complaints presented by patients. The damage to organs and related problems is a very long list. Many deny they drink to excess, and say they only do it to be sociable.”
Cypriot doctor (based at private clinic in Paphos)
You see them hunched at a bar at 11am, desperately trying to convince themselves they are not alcoholics, that Andreas the barman really is their friend, and that it’s only 11 hours till bedtime.
Welcome to the twisted love affair the British have with drinking. In Cyprus, holiday binge-drinking among teenagers looks like the glorious affirmation of youth, when compared to the constant daily deadening effects sought by some resident ex-pats who cling constantly to the wine box.
Visit any bar in Paphos and you will find residents consuming a steady level of mixed beverages. Peak into the supermarket trolley, and one wonders if every one is set upon hosting a booze-filled party come sun up.
Lager louts still throw up in the town centre on Saturday nights, but we also have clutches of ‘Saga louts’, who either quietly drink to excess in the privacy of their own home, or hit the town’s ever-welcoming bars and pubs where they get swiftly plastered on a regular basis. Even more frightening they will get behind the wheel of their car and drive home to sleep it off.
Some men and women talked to blamed their drinking habit on growing up in the swinging sixties. It was a time when growing up the pub culture was the only social life one had, other than dance halls or coffee bars. These baby boomers are now in their late sixties and seventies and seem determined to now keep swinging but only with a full glass to hand.
Jane, 49, is concerned about those who abstain from imbibing the Devil’s milk. She knows from experience. As a non drinker she is akin to “someone eating pigs’ trotters at a kosher feast. I am not joking, you cannot live here and have a good social life if you don’t drink. Alcohol is the key surrounding most activities, and admitting you don’t like alcohol is a quick form of social suicide. They don’t trust you, and there’s an immediate stigma attached to you. I’ve heard them. They say: ‘Oh! Here’s Jane and by the way she doesn’t drink’.
“It’s really sad, I am now defined by something I don’t like doing as it makes me sick. I admit I do sometimes lie and say I am on antibiotics or something, so I don’t have to deal with the pressure. God knows what a recovering alcoholic is doing living here in Cyprus they haven’t got a chance in hell of going cold turkey.”
Ronald, 57, usually greets the day with a drink at around 10.30am.
After three or four pints of beer he moves on to wine with lunch, drinking throughout the afternoon until he has a nap at 5pm. Then, he starts on local brandy until about midnight when he goes to bed.
His wife June also drinks heavily. Meeting them at 11am at a bar in the old market, June was already well into her third vodka and orange. When asked if this was a normal Saturday morning spent drinking, neither thought they had a problem with alcohol. “We don’t drink any more than other expats. It’s now a way of life for us, drinking and socialising with friends. There isn’t a lot to do here after you retire here. The price of booze is so cheap, and all of us Brits come from a drinking culture, so you could say we are keeping that culture going here as well.”
When asked tentatively, if she thinks she may have a teeny bit of a drink problem, June gets upset, orders another V&T then accuses me of “snooping around ordinary folk, who just want to have a good time and be left in peace to drink when they bloody well want to, as they do no harm.”
When I pointed out that they might just do some serious harm if they drove their car home after their drinking session, their response was somewhat typical. “No one ever breathalyses during the day and anyway, we always drive slowly and we have never had an accident here.”
“I have two big fears in my life,” confides John, a 60-year-old retired supermarket manager. “The fear of not sleeping and the fear of running out of alcohol.”
John admits to drinking on average 12 pints a day topped up with whisky and wine come the evening. Since he retired here his weight has ballooned by three stone, and he also suffers from jaundice.
“I never really drank a lot when I was working, perhaps a Friday night down the pub with mates, but here I drink every day. I could easily stop if I wanted to, it’s just that I don’t want to. It makes me feel better than I would if I was stone cold sober.
Margaret, 69, used to be a drinker of some note until she joined Alcoholics Anonymous and climbed aboard the teetotal wagon.
“I joined AA and learned that if I stopped drinking the illness stops where it is, and I could get my life back again. It wasn’t easy giving up. Alcohol is a master seducer but also a professional killer, and when you join AA you are signing up for a free life membership, and it’s one that has kept me alive.”
Since she’s been sober, Margaret has found it terrifying the way older British people drink.
“This isn’t just about socialising. This is like using alcohol as an anesthetic. They self-medicate to block out the fear of ageing, losing one’s looks, poverty, loneliness, ill health, death, or whatever. When I used to drink these were the only subjects talked about within my circle.
“I also think the British are so uptight as a race, they certainly do need a few shots to help make them seem less tight arsed and more approachable. You wouldn’t believe some of the people I knew who were initially painfully shy, but after a few drinks they then turned into a right embarrassment.
Donald is now over 80. He was an alcoholic for most of his life until seven years ago he admitted his addiction and joined AA he has not touched a drop since, and now acts as one of the team of volunteers on the AA national helpline.
“It’s not alcoholic’s surroundings that are the problem,” he said. “It’s the alcoholic him or herself that’s the problem. When one talks about alcoholics, it’s always noticeable that it’s not the differences in each person’s story but the similarities. We can have people who stay off the bottle for 3-4 months then slip back and start drinking again.”
He said there more men and women above the age of 45 seeking help from the AA. “That could be looked at as them deciding they really do want to change their life, something the young don’t always consider until they are older, believing they will live for ever.”
A spokesman from the AA confirmed they really were anonymous even in a small community like Cyprus. None would divulge any details of their members, and neither would they go into specifics of cases relating to elderly alcoholics. One thing however that is important to know is the basic requirement needed to join any AA group, its the genuine need by the person to want to give up drinking.
One spokesperson for AA explained: “Alcoholics invariably encounter feelings of loneliness, fear, defeat and shame, but that’s all part of the intrinsic art of being alcoholic. If people feel coming to attend an open AA meeting isn’t for them, then we can always arrange for an AA member to make a personal visit to their home.”
