“Everything is telling you to drink”: understanding the functional significance of alcogenic environments for young adult drinkers

Abstract

Background: Dominant approaches to understanding alcohol consumption and preventing misuse focus on cognitive antecedents of drinking behaviour. However, these approaches are not only limited, but ignore wider contextual factors. Adopting an ecological approach, this paper considers the functional significance of alcogenic environments from the perspectives of individual drinkers, based on the availability of alcohol-related affordances.Method: Twelve undergraduate students aged 18-30, with a range of self-reported drinking behaviours virtually navigated a range of drinking environments during photoelicitation interviews. Participants individually described drinking contexts in terms of the form and function-based characteristics that they believed promoted and/or inhibited their alcohol consumption.Results: Interpretative phenomenological analysis revealed the meaning drinking environments had for drinkers, based on their experiences. For participants, alcohol consumption was related to accessibility, communicating with others, consuming food, grasping items, furniture availability, watching or listening to entertainment, advertisement placement, premise décor and alternative action opportunities.Conclusions: Focusing on the functional significance of drinking contexts may be more conducive to understanding contextual factors which may promote or prohibit alcohol 3 consumption. The extent that alcohol-related affordances are linked with excessive consumption and alcohol-related problems merits further study.

How Personal Perspectives Shape Health Professionals’ Perceptions of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and Risk

“…While many professionals are broadly aware that alcohol use and pregnancy can constitute health risks, most have received no formal or professional training on this topic [5,6,7]. Meanwhile, public discourses around alcohol in society are at times contradictory or counter-productive—for example, Hill et al identify the challenges faced by young adults in a world where “everything is telling you to drink” [8]. Where FASD is concerned, health, allied health and social service professionals often work in a climate of incomplete information [9,10], and this can result in the formation of professional views that are informed in part by personal experience or opinion.…”

The Sober Professor: Reflections on the Sober Paradox, Sober Phobia, and Disclosing an Alcohol Recovery Identity in Academia

“…Although most employed adults do not have a clinically diagnosed SUD, according to a Canadian survey, nearly 80% of people in recovery are employed (McQuaid, 2017). Considering that workplace stress and burnout are prominent among academics (Colacion-Quiros & Gemora, 2016), coupled with the strong drinking culture of campus life (Hill et al, 2018;Romo 2012), the prevalence of harmful alcohol use among academics may be higher than national Canadian estimates. While education and higher socioeconomic status may act as protection against SUDs, higher status and privilege may reinforce the stigma of being labeled as having a drinking problem, thus acting as barriers for academics to seek help (Boyd et al, 2011).…”

Affordances for drinking alcohol: A non‐participant observation study in licensed premises

“…For example, approaches such as The Theory of Reasoned Action and Planned Behaviour (Ajzen & Fishbein, ) often consider intentions as a primary mediator of behaviour. Unfortunately, not only are many of these social cognition models relatively poor predictors of actual behaviour (Gerrard, Gibbons, Houlihan, Stock, & Pomery, ; Vlaev & Dolan, ; Webb & Sheeran, ), they are not theoretically coherent regarding the role played by complex environmental or ecological factors (Hill, Foxcroft, & Pilling, ; Hill, Pilling, & Foxcroft, ). As both the individual and the environment are equally involved in producing behaviour, researchers should take a more relational approach to understanding and preventing alcohol misuse.…”