While we are familiar with passive smoking, passive alcoholism is, on the contrary, rather unknown. Yet it is believed to affect 1 in 5 people and can have a dramatic impact.
A new study published in the scientific journal Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs reveals that one in five adults is affected by passive alcoholism. According to the researchers, this phenomenon is "a public health problem". “One thing to realize with the one in five figure is that it is limited to one year in time. So there are probably more people who have been affected by the consumption of alcoholic beverages than their entourage ", said Katherine Karriker-Jaffe, study author and senior scientist at theAlcohol Research Group at the Public Health Institute, at CNN.
What is passive alcoholism?
Passive alcoholism is simply the act of suffering from a disorder related to another person's drunkenness.
One in five people say they have been the victim of harm attributable to another person’s drinking in the past year, whether it be property damage or physical injury. "So this could be an underestimation of the negative effects of alcohol on people other than the drinker.", explained Katherine Karriker-Jaffe.
The different types of harm included harassment, feeling threatened or afraid, damaging or vandalizing property, being pushed, hit or assaulted, being physically injured, being in a traffic accident, being a passenger in a vehicle with a drunk driver, having family or marital problems and having financial problems.
The researchers found that 21% of women and 23% of men report having experienced at least one of these harms in the past year. According to the data, the most common harm is harassment. For women, we then find "family and marital problems or financial problems due to someone else's alcohol and […] driving injuries – thus driving with a drunk driver or having an accident caused by someone who had drank", said the study author. As for the men, they would rather be confronted with vandalism.
Young adults are said to be the most likely to experience passive alcoholism. "We now know that people between the ages of 18 and 25 have the highest rates of alcoholism"said Aesoon Park, associate professor of psychology at Syracuse University in New York City. “What's interesting about this study is that not only is it about alcohol use disorders, but also how the side effect of alcohol affects this same group of alcohol as well. age The second interesting part is gender inequality.", she explained, adding that men are more likely than women to drink excessively.