25 September, 2003

Letters

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Suidice: A mother writes

A Chairde,

I just thought I would put pen to paper in order to thank you for your article on suicide. I am a brokenhearted mother who lost my son to suicide just over a year ago.

I would like to say to the parents interviewed in last week's edition, please get some help. I myself went to a group shortly after my son died and if it wasn't for that group I wouldn't be writing this letter today. I would have been with my son. My group gave me a lot of support and the friends I have made, I am grateful for.

I can say what I want or need in my group and I can say what I feel without anyone telling me what to do or how I should feel. We are all people who feel the same pain and we can identify with one another.

My group also helped me to cope with other members of my family and my younger children. I feel that if I am strong then, in turn, it helps them to cope. My faith has also helped me a lot and I have many good friends outside my group, including my priest and doctor, who have been really helpful.

For many weeks I didn't leave the house because of the stigma attached to suicide but I believe we now have to forget about such a stigma and get it out in the open if we want to save our young people.

I would appeal to any young person out there, if they are feeling down or depressed, to please, please seek help.

Talk to someone, anyone, and please to everyone reading this, please try to be as good a listener as possible.

I didn't get any indication of my son's death; he was so full of life and loved by everyone who knew him.

On the occasion when I did leave the house, I saw and heard young people pointing at me and saying 'that's her whose son hung himself'. It hurt me a lot. I already had this big hole in my heart and some people didn't make it any easier. I would advise anyone against pointing the finger at anyone, because I never thought it would knock on my door. Like all parents who have lost a child, it doesn't matter which way we lost them and as the saying goes, 'mothers hold their children's hands for a little while but they hold their hearts forever'.

Thank you for reading this and I hope it gives someone, somewhere a little bit of hope.

A heartbroken mother but a grateful one for the memories my son has left me

Alcohol use in Ireland, and anywhere

A Chairde,

I visited Ireland for my first time this past May. I love the place and the people, and I will be back as soon as I can. But I was really overwhelmed by the number and degree of drunkenness of the young people pouring out of the bars at closing time. It was not just on Friday or Saturday night either

I feel a very strong need to respond to Paul O'Connor's article on alcohol use in Ireland. While it is one thing to defend one's right to drink, it quite another to defend drunkenness as a matter of social right, using the spectre of ethnic prejudice as a defence of drunks, as Paul has done. There are some physical and social consequences of alcohol use that need to be discussed to give judgements about alcohol use a more inclusive perspective.

First off, if alcohol were introduced as a new drug today in the US with the criteria currently used to assess a drug's physiological impacts as a mind altering, dependency inducing substance, alcohol would be a Class III narcotic, along with cocaine and methamphetamine. Alcohol is a very powerful drug, and it is one of the few drugs that western societies accept socially. It has cumulative dependency, meaning the more you drink in frequency, the more you will have to drink in quantity to reach the same level of intoxication.

Paul is quite right about the tolerance level varying greatly between individuals. The quiet person at the bar with a load of pints on board, compared to the young person with little drinking experience creating a scene on a pint or two, is related to a body's experience with alcohol and how the body's metabolism of alcohol changes with time and consumption. It is common to see a chronic alcoholic functioning with a blood alcohol of .03%, a level that would literally be fatal to a young inexperienced drinker.

The legal limit for safe operation of a motor vehicle in most countries is .008% blood alcohol. A fixed standard for the operation of a motor vehicle at the lowest level of tolerance is necessary for public safety. The level for public intoxication is necessarily much more subjective, and dependent on a police officer's experience in interpreting the effects of intoxication on the individual.

Criteria for an alcohol-related arrest are based on an individual's ability to be responsible for his/her personal safety and actions. The idea that the use of alcohol can be defended in the name of an individual's civil liberties, by arguing that a person who is drinking is only a threat to himself, is faulty at best. Many of us seek risky behaviour as part of our life pursuits, but such choices need to be made when mentally unimpaired. Believing that the impacts of bad choices made while impaired only impacts on the one making the choices is extremely naïve. Experiencing, even once, having to inform a loved one that their spouse/child/father/mother/sister/brother is fighting for their life in hospital or will never be coming home again, because of being drunk, or encountering a drunk, should be enough to end that argument.

Police officers may have do this injury/death notification many times over during their careers. Combined with the suffering and property destruction associated with excess alcohol use, empathy for drunks is not easy to find amongst those who have to deal with them. The only person who thinks a drunk funny or witty is another drunk. Alcohol is the mother of all gateway drugs; almost always the first drug used, and very often is being used when other drugs are tried for the first time.

The real cost of alcohol abuse to a society in monetary and emotional loss is very high and needs acknowledgement by An Phoblacht. I have come to expect defence of justice, civil liberties, and social responsibility from An Phoblacht - linking alcohol use with these subjects is out of character.

It is probably obvious from the nature of my comments that I fall into more than one of the categories Paul laments as middle aged and out of touch, and I am an ex-cop to boot. To make it even worse, I am a health food and fitness advocate. But I won't be dismissed as a middle-aged commentator "who probably hasn't had a night out on the town since the Pope came to Ireland". My perspective needs representation because it is shared by many, not all middle aged, and isn't as dismissive of Paul and his generation as he might be of us.

Sean Sheehan

Cody,

Wyoming,

USA

New York's smoking ban

A Chairde,

I enjoy reading your publication online from the States, where I live (my late grandfather was a republican from Listowel who emmigrated here around 1925).

I'm writing now regarding Joanne Corcoran's recent article on smoking (An Phoblacht, 4 September). I am a performing musician in New York and I lost my regular gig due to the recent smoking ban. At first I welcomed the ban, not being a smoker, but the local bar owners here are suffering and as a result have cut back on their entertainment budgets. Hopefully, the culture here will accept the change, but so far the promised flood of new customers who (supposedly) have been staying home all these years "because of the smoke" have yet to arrive.

Also, as our economy continues to slide, I am finding it very easy to arrive at restaurants without having reserved a table. I mention this last because the recent Cornell study the article mentioned vis-a-vis increasing revenues is generally regarded here as a big fat lie (as in lies, damn lies, and statistics). How can they be claiming gains in revenue when EVERY other report shows the hotel and restaurant industry is losing money because of the a) lack of tourists and b) loss of jobs that has followed the destruction of the World Trade Center two years ago.

I find it amusing that in the same issue you printed a letter from Brendan Hogan that advocates a more liberal stance towards illegal drugs!

Sure, shoot up, but PUT OUT THAT FAG!

Thank you for a great online newspaper and resource.

Terence Granville Woods

Long Beach, NY

USA

Seanad Reform

A Chairde,

At the moment an Oireachtas Sub-Committee is discussing the issue of Seanad reform. However, this process will be meaningless if the outcome, which will ultimately be decided upon by the main establishment parties, is to continue to deny the vast majority of Irish citizens the right to decide who is elected to sit in this chamber.

At the moment, the Seanad is an Irish version of the House of Lords - a very expensive retirement home and talking shop for failed politicians and 'want to be' TDs looking to heighten their profile at taxpayers' expense. It is elitist and undemocratic, is totally unrepresentative of the public and has no place in a democratic society.

Considering the colossal amount of taxpayers' money that is squandered on maintaining this institution and paying enormous salaries and expenses to Senators, there are only two options open to the government if they are serious about Seanad reform. They can either abolish it and operate like a lot of other countries do, with just one House of Parliament, or they can democratise it.

This means ending the system by which the Taoiseach (or anyone else) appoints Senators. It means giving every Irish citizen, North and South as well as our emigrants who were forced to leave our shores by the economic mismanagement of successive Governments, an equal vote in PR elections for the Seanad.

The current system of only allowing a small section of our society to vote is insulting, suggesting that the vast majority of us are not intelligent enough to elect the 'right' people to the Seanad. Every citizen's vote should be equal. The days of some people being 'more equal than others' (to borrow a phrase from Orwell's Animal Farm) should be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Cllr Arthur Gibbons

Sligo Borough Council

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