Safety and security

This theme focuses upon the concerns that the respondents expressed about their personal safety when drinking and reflects the strategies that participants used to stay safe or feel secure when drinking alcohol, usually when they went to external venues. It concentrates on the different elements that provide drinkers with a feeling of security

3.3.5.1 Safety in groups

Safety in groups was a key sub-theme, especially with the female students. The women tended to emphasise the need to keep together when drinking away from home, to make sure that no-one was left on their own as „you need to stick together if you‟re all girls‟. They tended to go out together and tried to make sure that they went home together, even to the extent of challenging those friends who attempted to leave with someone else. Groups of friends reported that they would take steps to contact the others if they did go home alone - they would use their mobiles to update their friends. There was a clear expectation that friends would be looking out for each other and would miss them if they went off. Most were quite positive about the cohesiveness of the group and were confident that their friends would look after them if they did have too much to drink. However, the reality was sometimes different and the following extract conveys the distress felt when the system failed

„..my friend left me and I had to get home on my own and I was gutted, I wasn‟t even drunk which made it worse because then I was scared‟.

Going out together to the student nights in the clubs was also viewed as a way of minimising harm, but they also took a more relaxed view at these times, so whilst many would ensure that they normally went to the toilets together when in nightclubs, they were less likely to do so on a student night. On student nights they felt safer because they thought that there would always be someone that they would know, so even if they got separated from their immediate friends they would be alright - the view was expressed well by the respondent who reported ‘so you definitely feel safer when you know it‟s students‟.

The women also reported travelling in cabs or relying on a non-drinking friend to take them out and return them home in their car. Sometimes the friends reported that they found the excuse of driving their group to the venue a useful way of justifying abstaining from alcohol when they were there.

3.3.5.2 The importance of home

Home was seen as a safe haven. Students felt that under certain circumstances they needed to get home where they would be alright. Thus if feeling ill, or recognising that they’d had too much to drink, they would attempt to get home as for this participant „I‟d got to that stage

where I thought “I need to get home, I need to be home” and I .. just walked out of the pub and went home‟. Sometimes this involved them in walking home, at other times it involved

them in taking lifts or taxis, and whilst the intention was to increase their safety the independent actions they took might often have increased the dangers.

3.3.5.3 Controlling consumption

Here the students showed their awareness of the effects of alcohol on their physical and cognitive abilities and the importance of not going beyond a certain point or limit that threatened their competence. They often referred negatively to others who got drunk or paralytic, and asserted that they would never do that. Such respondents talked of only drinking alcohol to the stage at which they could still make appropriate decisions and then stopping, or stopping once they had got to the stage when they knew that if they had any more there would be repercussions the following day. ‘I don‟t‟ ever get so drunk that I can‟t be in

control of my own actions‟ or „I‟ve never been paralytic‟ were sentiments that were frequently

they’d had enough as the following extract shows „I knew in my head that where I‟d be like

“no, I‟ll get the water now”‟. However, some students did recognise that whilst they might

think that they were in control they had drunk too much and actually were not, and that then left them very vulnerable. The emphasis on controlling their drinking and keeping within their known limits was the strategy for ensuring that that didn’t happen, but again some acknowledged that there were times when they knew that they should stop drinking but didn’t.

3.3.5.2 The importance of experience

One aspect that many students across the groups talked about was the role of experience in building up their understanding of their limits and also the type of dangers that they could encounter when drinking alcohol. Here, recognising that drinking was becoming a problem evidenced by, for example, being sick, or the world spinning around or looking back on their behaviour and thinking ‘oh my god, did I really do that‟, could lead them into reflecting on what they were doing to themselves and think ‘I should cut down‟. The importance of pre- empting dangers by understanding the situation was expressed clearly by one male respondent who said ‘you‟ve got to be clued up to your surroundings and try to, you know, stay ahead of

things, always think ahead, what could happen and knowing when to walk away‟. Others

referred to sometimes learning by their mistakes „knowing who to look at and who not to‟ and the need to determine their own levels of tolerance. A particular issue in staying safe was the need to recognise those situations which could become violent, where a small incident like bumping into someone by accident could turn nasty when the other person responded aggressively. They expressed the need to be aware of the potential for aggression in these types of situations and to exercise caution and try to avoid them. However, experience had also shown them that sometimes the issue of safety meant getting engaged in aggression in order to protect a friend from violence that had developed in this way. Here protecting the safety of one person involved others in a potentially harmful situation; judging the most appropriate response in such circumstances was something which they had had to learn.

3.3.5.1 Vulnerability of first year students

Many of the students also expressed the view that those new to university life were more vulnerable and they needed to develop appropriate experience to maintain their safety. Whilst recognising that many had already had some experience of drinking before going to university, they commented that drinking as a youngster was often very different to drinking alcohol at university and that those who perhaps had done more drinking when they were younger „in the parks and so on‟, were probably not the ones to go to university anyway. Thus they considered that there was a need for first year students to learn the cues and to find ways of keeping themselves safe. First years were viewed as particularly susceptible because of the new freedoms of living away from home for the first time, their recent ability to purchase alcoholic drinks legally, having large sums of money at their disposal and not knowing their limits. The students drew on their own experiences in the first year, referring to incidences in which they had got lost, or been injured, or seen others injured, as a consequence of being unable to control themselves through alcohol. They made the comparison with later years where ‘nothing as bad‟ had happened „because you learn to

control yourself when you drink as well‟. Learning to drink and handle alcohol was viewed

as an integral part of the first year experience. The role of clubs and alcohol promotions which encouraged drinking were also seen as threats to the safety of students, and student nights with their free entry and „really cheap drinks‟ were criticised by some for encouraging

more drinking by students. First years in particular were seen as less able to withstand such pressures to drink.

3.3.5.1 Determining ‘safe’ drinking levels

One issue that many of the students wrestled with was that of units of alcohol and its implications for the amount they drank. Some recognised a problem when they realised what the guidelines meant in terms of their own consumption „it is scary though when we had that

talk about how many units you do have and it is like you‟re meant to have something like three is it? … oh yes - it‟s fourteen a week and we were consuming that in like one night and more, and it was something ridiculous like - when someone worked it out for us I was like whoa!‟ Many were aware of the recommended guidelines concerning ‘safe’ drinking levels

but had problems in determining how many units they were consuming. For some, this meant that they chose never to drink alcohol and drive because they couldn’t be sure whether they would be within the appropriate margins. Others expressed the view that just counting units did not take account of peoples’ different responses, arguing, for example, that how much they had eaten influenced the speed with which alcohol affected them and so they needed to consider the context as well as the amount of alcohol they had drunk „like if you don‟t eat a

full dinner or you haven‟t eaten a lot that day, like a quick glass of wine can go straight to your head‟. Often the complexity of calculating the units meant that they just gave up ‘so by the time you try and work it out you„re just thinking - what‟s the point?’ and relied on other

indicators, such as their physical state, to determine whether they were drinking safely. Other participants simply misinterpreted the guidelines „I think, yeah, it‟s like you should average

out fourteen but I always take that as I can have fourteen in one night and still be healthy‟ in

a way that supported their ability or wish to drink excessively on one occasion.

In conclusion we can see that students showed an appreciation of the risks inherent in alcohol, especially in excessive alcohol consumption. Awareness did not necessarily lead to changes in drinking but many attempted to take steps to reduce the harm that could be associated with alcohol use and spoke in terms of ways they could monitor their behaviour, learn from experience and work with others to achieve a safer experience.