 Isten, Isten, hold my drink. Hi, this is our St. Patrick's Day episode, so we celebrate alcohol problems even though the patron saint of drunkards is actually St. Martin, we celebrate him in November, and the Irish, despite the vicious stereotypes, don't even make the top 10 in drinking problems. Because the most severely alcoholic nation in the whole wide world currently is drumroll, please. Hungry, rolling champion since, I think, 2017 or something? With over 21% of the adult population struggling with alcohol problems, my home country finally beat Belarus and even took Russia to it. So, look at that map. Ain't it just, well, depressing? Importantly, the global top 10 in alcoholism numbers are almost exclusively European countries, so it might be time we address this. The most problematic drinkers are men in most European societies, pretty much connected to different kinds of gender roles and stereotypes about how men and women should behave and, you know, alcohol is a social lubricant. That there is responsibility on the family's side, but there are varying responsibilities, right? I don't think it should be about blaming anyone. For those who are traumatized, the children and the grandchildren as well has higher sensitivity to stress. I'm grinding my teeth as you're speaking. Okay. The connectedness feeling, the attachment feeling, the emotional feeling is very similar as an alcoholic has with alcohol and with another person, so it can be a substitute of a missing human relation. Welcome to Standard Time, a Eurazine production. This is a talk show with guests from all over Europe and if there's anything you'd like to do in Europe, it's to drink like there's no tomorrow. I'm Reika Kingapop, editor-in-chief of Eurazine, the magazine presenting this show for Display Europe. Display is a new platform showcasing European content in 15 different languages. Check them out! Here on the show we talk with authors, editors, experts and artists about topics that affect and interest Europe. So whether you are taped to a beer tap or a tea totaler, join us as we explore why Europeans have such a hard time holding on to drink. And don't worry, this is an alcohol-free bitter that I just drank. Tastes identical, it kind of gives me the heebie-jeebies and the satisfaction of cultivating some deeply ingrained cultural traditions, yet it requires way less aspirin afterwards. The numbers are clear. According to the World Health Organization, Europe has the highest proportion of drinkers and the highest intake of alcohol in the world. In 2019, 8.4% of the EU's population, aged 15 or older, consumed alcohol every day. That's severe. There is a range of factors that lead certain people or even certain populations to have alcohol issues from biological and environmental to social and psychological. According to research conducted in 2011 at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, Europeans may be more genetically predisposed to eating fatty foods and consuming alcohol, and this is due to a quirk of what is called the galenin gene. When switched on too strongly, it allows certain areas of our brain to select for specific substances, leading to cravings for alcohol and, well, fatty foods. But of course, we can't just blame one genetic variation here. Substance abuse is coden in many of our cultures. It constitutes about a third of our body of humor here in the east of Europe. Have you heard of my personal favorite, the TikTok star, Balkan Dad? Tata, my throat hurts. Tata, my stomach hurts so bad. As much as we enjoy joking about how fun we Eastern Europeans are of our vodka, rakia, borovicca, palika, schnupps and the like, Germans are similarly defined by their beer. Southern Europeans and the French with their day-to-day wine. Yeah, you know, you get the gist. Social drinking habits across Europe carry a significant weight. But liquor is many things. It's part of our culture and often our identities. It's also an academic powerhouse and sometimes it's even currency. I should know, I spent my teenage years in the east of Hungary where the entire border region lived selling and buying Ukrainian vodka, cigarettes and petrol. Throughout the 90s and until Hungary joined the EU in 2003, people didn't even have to smuggle. Just the legal amount of drink you could bring into the country would sustain families with a couple of trips a month. The price differences were so staggering between the two countries and between regions. I used to bring Nyermirov and Stalyshnaya on the train from my hometown to my university mates in Budapest and sell it for a quadruple price which still counted as extremely cheap for them and it arguably helped me save some of my student loans. I'm not proud of it, but man, I was poor. And the same classmates were never quite as interested in the nice gems and pickles I had to offer them. One study interestingly argues that it is not per capita consumption that counts the most but rather the cultural beliefs surrounding it. Societies that hold positive beliefs around liquor mainly defined as wet and Mediterranean are less likely to face the same substance abuse problems as their so-called dry and Nordic counterparts. Owing to globalization and the homogenization of drinking cultures across Europe, this distinction seems less relevant over time though. The way we drink is changing and it's becoming noticeable with the new generation. And here comes some good news. Underage drinking has dropped significantly by 22% among youth in Europe and while these numbers are far from perfect, their implications are promising. Public policies redefine social norms and new found awareness of mental health are causing youth to stray further away from the drinking trend as 36% of Gen Z choose to go sober for psychological as well as financial reasons. Older Europeans, however, are less keen on switching over to tea and therapy. Even though EU prevention strategies are put forth to mitigate alcohol dependency and its social impacts, alcohol sales still sway our economic systems, affecting every aspect of our lives. Today we have three distinguished gentlemen and a lot of alcohol-free wine on the table to discuss this problem in greater depth. Peter Szeroschi is a human rights activist and drug policy expert. He is the founder and editor of the Drug Reporter Project created in 2004 to advocate for a drug policy reform in central and eastern Europe. Istvan Certe is an English-Hungarian general translator and PhD student in social psychology, researching in a field of cognitive neuroscience. He is also an assistant lecturer at the Karelí Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary. Dr. Mate Kopitáin Föving is a clinical psychologist with over 10 years of experience in the fields of therapeutic care and addiction research. He has written and published multiple books on addiction in the Hungarian language, including the Psychology of Alcoholism and A Thousand Faces of Addiction. We meet them in the Leather Workshop of Kurzbenz Studio in Budapest. Very welcome and thanks for taking the time to talk with me today about booze. Tell me about why you think alcoholism seems to be a bigger problem in Europe than the rest of the world. At least according to most statistics, is this a cultural thing? Is this an economical thing? We just happen to be losers who have a specific gene variation. What's going on? I would address two major questions here. First, the methodological part of it. So based on which study you have these estimates, do you have direct estimates or indirect estimates? The WHO has an international study which can allow for a cross-cultural comparison. It is called Verdmental Health Survey. And Australia, which is not part of Europe, is a very, very top country. The cultural embeddedness of alcohol use is much more inherent in Europe. Many European countries can be categorized as an over-permissive culture. They attach values, certain values, to drinking itself. For example, manliness, which is a potential motive for youngsters to drink more and more and more. If you studied relatively well, at least in my high school, you were like automatically uncool unless you could drink as hell. The stats we cite here are cited directly from the World Population Review, but there is, of course, a lot of contrasting stats. Pithet, how do you see Europe's relationship with alcohol as opposed to generally substance abuse? We have this weird relationship where some things are legal, some things are encouraged even by the state, for instance, in the Hungarian case, and some things are illegal, whereas the harm factor often can be questioned. As far as I know, alcohol use in general is in decline in Europe, so, for example, among young people, but at the same time, there are some very intense as well, so binge drinking, very short time, getting drunk, and that's very prevalent among especially young people. Even within Europe, there are big differences in what are the cultural attitudes to drugs. There is also a gender pattern in this, so if you compare, for example, alcohol consumption among men and women, you will see a big difference. The most problematic drinkers are men in most European societies, pretty much connected to different kinds of gender roles and stereotypes about how men and women should behave, and, you know, alcohol is a social lubricant. It's a kind of laughing matter for many people. We used to make jokes about people who are problematic alcohol drinkers, and at the same time, I also see a kind of demonization of illegal drug use, so all those substances which are on the list of controlled substances of the United Nations, which is alcohol, is, of course, is not on this list, they entered Europe much later than alcohol. Also like coffee or tobacco, which arrived later, but they are here for several centuries. If you look at the 20th century, there were these big Tobacco advertisements everywhere, and they said that, you know, doctors recommend you to smoke Tobacco, it's good for your health. After so many people died in the consequences of smoking, now societies become more restrictive to Tobacco use. As I see it, there are kind of convergence in the attitudes to illicit and illicit drug use in our societies, so that this gap in the perception is getting smaller and smaller. For what it's worth, Tobacco and coffee have a bit over 400 years of history in Europe. They're from different continents, of course, and have different trajectories, but that's quite a lot of time. However, you know, these are stimulants as opposed to alcohol, which is a depressant. A good portion of illicit drugs don't necessarily increase productivity, and we tend to have a weird relationship with productivity enhancements. I don't know how much that counts for in policy at this point, but maybe Istvan, you wanna tell about your experience. You teach a lot of young people. Do you sense this changing trend that we see in the statistics that young people tend to drink less? Yes, I think there's a general tendency. I volunteer at a big festival. People there usually do not drink much, so it's not fashionable. Of course, that's just one festival, and it's a subculture or festival, so it's very specific. Drinking is how to say, actually it has no culture, so it has a long past and a long tradition, but there are drug-using subcultures, as far as I can judge. I get your point that it's not that unified as a performance of drinking. I think it's less and less fashionable. I would add something that is related, but not closely, is that what Peter mentioned is binge drinking, so it's not necessarily the regularity of alcohol consumption that counts on a cultural level or a country level, but the pattern of use based on per capita alcohol consumption rates. Hungary, for instance, is not among the top-level countries, but alcohol use disorder rates of this country is quite high, meaning that we don't drink as much as a country, as other countries, for example, Latvia, Czech Republic, et cetera, but those who drink a lot or without culture. So I think we need to differentiate between regularity and pattern of use. Mediterranean countries usually have a high amount of per capita alcohol consumption. These are called wet countries versus those who are called dry countries, but dry countries, sometimes they have higher alcohol related problems than wet countries, so it also matters. What does this relate or result from? Is this a cultural pattern? It is a cultural pattern. It is something that is related to the culture of siesta, to the culture of drinking wine and not beer and especially not, for example, palinko. I would argue that if we had institutionalized siesta, all substance abuse problems would just go lower because that just improves your quality of life instantly. One factor is the different religious culture and tradition like this. Mediterranean country has a Catholic culture while those Nordic countries, they have a Protestant culture and they have a different kind of meaning for alcohol in everyday life. Max Weber wrote about this Protestant working ethics, you know, like this kind of a bit of Puritanic worldview that does not allow alcohol consumption, especially not in excess, but when people kind of get out from the watching ice of the authorities, then they get drunk very, very fast. While in the Mediterranean countries, you can just drink a glass of wine with the dinner or with the lunch and that's completely normal. So it's like the difference of social norms around alcohol consumption, I think. Protestant work ethic is related to the stigmatization of alcohol because of something you already mentioned, productivity. So if there is a substance that has an adverse consequence on productivity, the society tends to stigmatize it the most. For example, alcohol, for example, opioid use and this is related to Protestant work ethics and capitalism itself and so on. Just to add to that, I think it was Béla Boudin, Hungarian addictologist who said that there is the Nordic culture where people drink rarely, but a lot and then there are the Southern pattern where people tend to drink more frequently, but less and Hungary is the mixture of these two in the worst way. So it's like people tend to drink more frequently and more frequently. And now a word from today's sponsor, Tomás Pince, who provided us with a selection of non-alcoholic beverages. Bétero is an alcohol-free herbal bitter made from 21 different medicinal herbs and it is intended for those who do not want to consume alcohol for whatever reason. Honestly, we sought them out ourselves to be a sponsor of the show because I personally have been a fan of their product. You can learn more about what they have to offer under TomásPince.com and get your bidders under their web shop, MyLevendoll.de. Thank you to Tomás Pince and let's get back to talking those. Let's talk about how we react to alcohol problems. What would be sort of a quick first couple of steps for a completely lay person to understand about substance abuse? First, we need to destigmatize alcohol use disorder. That's the first and I think the most important step. That's one, you need to mystify therapy help, for example psychotherapy as well, in order to increase self-seeking behavior. You need to talk about the culture of drink, as you already mentioned. I think prevention is a key point here because alcohol use disorder is always a secondary problem. Alcohol use disorder is something like a reaction to your primary problem. It can be anxiety, can be depression, can be trauma, et cetera. So need to address these questions in order to reduce later alcohol problems. I think it's very important what Matisse said about destigmatization because in our society excessive drinking is sometimes idolized, but at the same time if you have problems with alcohol, so if you are labeled as an addict, that carries a lot of stigma with it. It is also stigmatized in general in Hungarian society to ask for help. This kind of stigmatization also is a barrier to access to treatment. There was an article in Hungarian media which said that one famous actor, Hungarian actor, he went to detox and he spent three months at detox. It's like a misconception that many people think that this is the kind of standard way how you can get rid of your alcohol problems. Take it out of you. Yeah, it's kind of exosomnia. Kind of medical exorcism. After this article, there was another article and they interviewed me and another social worker and they corrected this picture. Yeah, but also if you think about rehab as this completely isolated experience, the first thing that pops to mind is I can take three months out of life. I can't do that. So I'm just gonna keep on doing what I'm doing until I topple over in the street or something. So that doesn't really sound realistic for most people who might have a drinking problem, but also have pervasive obligations to just sustain themselves or family or something. So each time you said you volunteer at a festival and you meet people in various stages of life and intoxication. So what's your experience with them in a supportive situation? We cooperate with the ambulance and of course we don't pursue any medical practices. So we are there for them. For those who are on a bad trip or for those who just feel alone or need some liquid intake, water intake, minerals. So usually those festival visitors are quite well educated about the possible risks. So you're the, you substitute that one responsible friend that we all wish we had? Sometimes, yes. From what you're saying I take that your experience with these festival goers is that they might be better educated about what they're doing than our expectation would be. How should we imagine this culture of substance use? There's, I think there are local or different traditions, sub-cultural traditions I guess. So there are different kinds of festival goers. There are always newcomers. And so of course they are put at more, much more higher risk of some adverse consequences than those who have more experience. At this festival and the first one, the first or second day of every festival in each summer, someone comes to the site and distributes some kind of poison, some kind of designer drug. And there are many cases. So we are absolutely overloaded with cases and we need to act as nurses basically at the hospital. So we need, so they need a lot of help, physical help. But I think those who have more experience and know where to go for this and for that and what to avoid, I think they usually, they can avoid. What they are doing, it's called harm reduction. So like reducing the arms of substance use. This problem about drugs laced with different substances and this kind of problems actually can be addressed through a program which is called drug checking service which already operates in many Western European festivals. People can go there, they can provide a very small sample of their substance and then there is the equipment and they can tell you in a few minutes like what is in it exactly. With this you can avoid this kind of accidents or many of these kind of accidents. And unfortunately in Hungary, for example, these kind of interventions are not allowed. I guess because for that you would need to acknowledge some, if not the legitimacy, at least sort of the interests of the user. Exactly, and that's the, I think that's the number one problem, not only with illegal drugs, but also illegal drugs that we don't want to recover, we don't want to acknowledge that there is a problem. If you acknowledge the problem, then you have to do something about it. So if you are responsible for a institution, then you have to deal with it. Or whenever we try to go to, for example, prisons to do research, we are usually not allowed to do that because in the prison we don't have a problem. How do you define alcohol, problematic alcohol use? Our national statistical office defines it in a different way than how the WHO defines it. Let's talk about a situation in which you work with people who have already acknowledged that they have a problem and they're asking for help. And coming through the door I said, oh, we have all these nice non-alcoholic drinks on the table and you said, oh, I want to point out those don't help. Tell me about this, tell me about these triggers, the situation in which people ask for help. What are the first couple of steps to make sure that they have an environment where they can heal or process? So we are talking about alcohol and we have a table full of alcohol-like... Alcohol-looking things, none of them are alcoholic. My point is it can be a trigger. It can be a trigger for those who have alcohol-related problems. So I would say this kind of alcohol-free drinks is not a solution for the greater problem. The solution from an individual level, and yes, we treat alcohol as other patients as well, at our outpatient center, is to understand the individual, understand his or her motives to drink. And for example, when we talk about alcohol use motives, psychologists called Lynn Cooper categorized four different drinking motives. The first one is conformity motive, meaning I drink alcohol because I perceive a social norm. The second one is called social motive. For example, the ancient Greek term symposium or symposium means drinking together. Connectedness itself is the point here, not usually the alcohol. Alcohol is just the context. The third one is called enhancement motive, meaning I have a good feeling. For example, I go to the party, I have great feelings and I want to enhance these feelings. And the most problematic one is called coping, the coping motive, meaning I have inner problems and I use alcohol as a tool, as an instrument to reduce these problems. And usually this kind of coping motive leads to later alcohol use disorder problem. Also, you need to understand his or her background, the family background, his or her experiences, his expectations about alcohol itself. And most importantly, you need to assess the patient's social environment. Addicts and alcohol use disorder patients as well are usually very, very much isolated. So psychotherapy, by creating an attachment, a bridge between two person can itself help, but community, for example, self-support groups, et cetera, can also provide further support. Yeah, so I would think by the first looks of it, and I don't want to stick with these nice drinks that we put on the table, but this allows you to sort of substitute something. But you argue that substitution in and of itself is not a good solution for those who already have a problem, right? When we are talking about a safe environment or a trusting environment, what would be the primarily primary role of family and friends, and what would be more the responsibility of society and policy? As far as I know, when there is an alcoholic in the family, the families are usually very heavily and deeply involved in the problem itself. So it's not confined to the one person who has the disorder themselves, but their whole family is, so there is a more functioning family, which is either the cause and the consequence of the problem that leads to substance use disorder. Yeah, so the addict is not independently struggling with the problem. She's not independent, yeah, in this sense, yes. At least somehow they participate in the disorder, I think. So they are not solely victims of the abuser, but somehow they maintain the disorder itself. For example, they're ashamed about it. They feel ashamed because there is someone in the family who cannot control themselves. So then I think they participate in covering up. It's not just about alcohol, it's any kind of abuse, I guess. So I guess that there is a very, there is a very close-knit unity in this, in many cases. And I think that's, maybe the reason is very similar, why many abused women choose not to ask for help. Like this regime of shame going around. Oh yes, it's one dimension, I think, or one factor in this. Yeah, so often the family hides the person in need as very similarly than the person hides alcohol itself from the environment. So, and the shame itself, just as isolation, is a major feeling of all the addicts, all the addicts. And I would say all the addicts comes from a dysfunctional family and not necessarily from an alcoholic family, but some dysfunction is there. In family therapy we called the alcohol use disorder patient as a symptom carrier. He or she carries the symptom of a broader system, which is the family, which is the society, et cetera. So individual level approach is usually not enough. We need to combine it with family therapy, with community therapy, et cetera. So, which means I think that the disorder and the problem should be acknowledged by all those who are directly involved in the problem. There could be a distinction, that the families do participate in it, but we don't blame, say, children with alcoholic parents for their parents' problems. So we could maybe clarify this, that there is responsibility on the family's side, but there are varying responsibilities, right? I do think it should be about blaming anyone. In a country where it's a common joke that daddy drinks because you're crying, it might be worth pointing this part out, I don't know. I would say we can talk about two different things. The first one is the background of the alcohol use disorder patient. For example, from his own childhood memories. So it's like transgenerational repeatedness here. So what we call dysfunctional families, usually the childhood family, and not the family in which he or she acts like an abuser. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's important. And sometimes it's not even abuser, just the experience of having someone struggle with alcohol. They don't need to hit you, and it's, of course, also important to point out that not all people struggling with addiction hit anyone, and likewise, most abusers cannot be blamed on alcohol solely, but, Pete, that you have been waiting to come in for a long time. I just wanted to add that everybody remembers the petty prince, the little prince, and that is the planet of the alcoholic, and he asks him, like, why do you drink? Because I'm ashamed of myself, and why are you ashamed of yourself? Because I drink. So that's the kind of spiral, you know, spiral of shame and addiction. As Mati mentioned, many times these behavior patterns are transgenerationally inherited. Addiction is a very humane thing, actually. I think it's, of course, it's sometimes called a disease, but actually, if you really understand it, then you will understand that these are very human reactions. Viktor Frank also said that those who cannot find deep meaning in life will seek joy itself, or euphoria itself, and I think it's also true for all the addicts. I cannot find a deep meaning in my life, so that's why I self-stimulate myself and maintain a very self-stimulated phase in which I cannot, I don't have to think about anything else. It's not even only about humans, we are very social animals, but there is a very interesting experiment about fruit flies. They examine the fruit flies, alcoholic consumption among fruit flies, they made alcohol available for them, and those fruit flies, male fruit flies who were socially rejected by females, they drank exponentially more than... See, women aren't the reason for all of this. That's not the conclusion, and that's not the moral of the story, but the moral of the story is that social rejection and social isolation, it can very seriously influence your drug use patterns, whatever legal or illegal substance we are speaking about. And neurobiological studies confirmed that once you crave the other person, you are lonely, very similar neurobiological actions happen than when you crave a substance. So the connectedness feeling, the attachment feeling, the emotional feeling is very similar as an alcoholic has with alcohol and with another person, so it can be a substitute of a missing human relation. And now a word from today's host, Kusben Studio, here in Budapest. It is a community workshop, office and art space established in 2019, and since then it has hosted numerous exhibitions, concerts and workshops, and over the years has involved into an unconventional co-working space. Currently there are two leather ornament designers, a jeweler, an architect, a photographer, an animator, two graphic artists, a web designer, and even a web developer working here. And sometimes even I press a desk. You can also become a supporter of the show and you don't even have to get a jewelry. I mean, you can, of course, if you want to, but it may be a bit more straightforward if you pledge your support at patreon.com slash Eurazine. That is Eurazine, the magazine presenting this show. You can pledge as little as five euros a month or whatever you can afford, and I promise we won't buy leather clutches and earrings from it. Instead, you'll get access to bonus materials, invitations to the tapings of the show, and you even get to submit topics and questions. Now back to the program. There's a lot of talk, not often very clearly, about what is the legacy of the Eastern Bloc and Soviet experiment, communism, whatever you want to call it, when it comes to alcoholism. People would be putting jail directly for being drunkards. And on the other hand, it seems to have produced a lot of alcohol problems and Honkish argues that this was probably a result of rapid urbanization and industrial work being introduced and kind of communities falling apart. Does this argument stand its ground? Do you think? Is there merit there? It is not only Honkish theory, but also Ulrich Beck theory, who published his book titled, Reese Societies. And basically he wrote the same about industrialization, about the falling apart of communities of families of being this productive, fetish in those countries who suffer multiple trauma historically. And for example, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union countries, post-Soviet Union countries have multiple historical trauma. These cultures tend or are more prone to become over permissive of something like alcohol consumption, something like uncontrolled behavioral. So again, over permissive cultures have the highest alcohol use problems as well. I think it's not accidental that there is still a difference among societies which are equally highly industrialized. So I also believe that in Hungary, for example, this very high levels of problems related to alcohol compared to other countries, it also has something to do with our history. It also has something to do with how our society is built. We all know families where it was a taboo to speak about the grandfather's experiences in the war or the Holocaust or we was imprisoned in some regimes. Yeah, by the way, your grandfather was a prisoner or a war, but never told us a word about this. Addiction expert in Hungary, a doctor, László Leventel, and he said that in this socialist or state socialist society in Hungary, this unresolved trauma and lack of freedom in general and this culture of silence, it produced two reactions from society. One is that Hungarians tend to hate the other and the minorities and just hating each other. That's very much a reaction. And the other is the increase in alcohol use which was, I think, the worst in the 70s and the 80s in Hungary and also in the 90s and then it now is declining. So the worst period of alcohol use was back in the period between the 56th Revolution and the changes of the political changes, yes. Yeah, like if you just look on a historical scale, there's like two world wars and this incredibly traumatic, like rebuilding and then strengthening oppression within one generation. So the 50s in and of themselves weren't a piece of cake. So all of this compounded pretty much predisposes to have to look for coping mechanisms in a society that doesn't really offer them on a silver platter. It's very important to understand that the trauma is not the bad thing that happened, but how it changed the person and the communities and not to speak about the bad things that happened. That is really a traumatic and in itself, if there is something bad happening in a society but it is like resolved and discussed and we are open about it and we speak about it, whether we speak about one single family or the whole society, I think it does not necessarily become a historic trauma. And I think you also need to understand what trauma does to the person itself, not just on a society level, because trauma increase or create hypersensitivity to stress itself. And also trauma has epigenetic effect as well. So a transgenerational epigenetic effect, meaning that for example, those who are traumatized, the children and the grandchildren as well, has higher sensitivity to stress. I'm grinding my teeth as you're speaking. Okay, so, and if you have hypersensitivity to stress, you are more prone to addiction as well. And we try to compensate with what society offers you. And if society offers you porn, video game or alcohol, you will have this as a potential maladaptive tool. What you said about industrialization and globalization that if you look at any kind of drugs, they had some kind of traditional use. Like if you look at how tobacco was used in traditional Amazonian societies, this was like a midday middle, they quit out of it. Or if you look at opium, like in China for thousands of years, it was a medicine and it was very much embedded in the cultural norms and it didn't become a problem until the Portuguese came, they mixed opium with tobacco, they sold it in a pipe. What I believe is that our societies don't have a drug problem or alcohol problem. We have a general problem with consumption, how we are related to pleasure, how we seek pleasure, how we forgot how to find meaning in our lives. So that's the real problem and that's why I personally, I don't like this kind of fight against drugs or fight against alcohol or whatever kind of campaigns or policies because I don't think the problem is with the molecule, it's not the problem or the substance, what the problem is with us, with people, how we live. Also it doesn't have that these wars and drugs don't seem to work either. So even if it were just a fallacy and a conceptual level, they also don't perform. And of course it's also a question what we call drugs and how they evolved, all these kind of pure, highly potential versions of drugs, these are the products of our technical civilization. Cocaine, you know, like coca leaves, they were like chewed by Amazonian people for people in the Andes for a thousand years without much social and health problems. Across much of, you know, the Northern hemisphere, well not much, but a significant portion have started to legalize weed in some capacity or other formerly illegal drugs. Does this like circle of shame change? We know that many mental health professionals, medical professionals have been arguing for the controlled or supported use of certain substances, specifically as a therapeutic means. I feel like the stigma regarding certain substances is slightly reducing. So everybody's happier in Czechia? I would say that first of all, you need to differentiate again between legalization and decriminalization, which is two different things. If the outcome is the dissolve, the salvation of hidden use, I think it is a benefit. If the outcome is reducing stigma, it's a benefit. And there are some studies that confirm that. Decriminalizing substance make it more easier on a society level to talk about it. So when you talk about, for example, with youngsters about alcohol consumption, they need to know the exact level of alcohol intake that it is preferable to them. For example, yeah. Peter, you've been campaigning for people to know a bit more about drugs and maybe have a better informed policy for decades now. Yeah, I think legalization itself is a very loaded term, so it can mean many things to many people. So I rather use the term regulation, and I think the real question is how to regulate the substances. You can also do, you can make very bad and ineffective regulations, and you can make good regulations. So the how is now the real question of our age, how to regulate these substances. And I believe that the future is that the prohibition of, for example, cannabis will just seize in many, or it will be abolished in many countries. And as we see in North America or in Western Europe, there will be some kind of schemes how to make legal access, how to create legal access to these drugs. Don't make the same mistakes as we did with alcohol or tobacco in the 20th century or in some countries like Hungary even now. So we need to get somewhere in the middle and we have to maximize the public health benefits and minimize the arms. We should avoid the full commercialization of these products because we know from the case of tobacco, for example, that it can create a lot of public health harms. So if we create a legal industry, it will be a lobby force. Matt, is there something specifically regarding alcohol where you would argue that regulations should change? In case of alcohol, what we would need, I think, is environmental prevention, meaning you try to change the attitude of the society towards alcohol consumption, reduce the size of bottles or glasses in pubs, for example, form of like a harm reduction, but also an environmental prevention, a workforce in Europe called the European framework for action on alcohol that have this aim to reduce per capita alcohol consumption by 10% at the end of 2025, I think. And there are many, many approaches they offer there. For example, the availability, the minimum age restrictiveness of alcohol consumption, labeling bottles of alcohol, et cetera. And there is a very important point there, the community-based approaches, how to strengthen, empower communities to become as one, how to increase the solidarity level and so on, which is, I think, one of the key points. I think it's very, very important what Matt is saying about environmental prevention, because in the past, we tend to think about this, you know, like, we focus on the individual, always in the individual. In prevention, you have to convince the individual not to use drugs and then you have to deal with individuals in the treatment system and everything. And the new approach is an environmental approach. So you have to change the environments in which people make decisions about their health. When we speak about these drug policies, we should not only speak about laws and how we punish the individual or how we make, get the individual into the treatment system, but how we are redesigning our city's urban environments and how we get rid of this aggressive alcohol PR or propaganda or marketing, wherever you go in public. So it's like, there are a lot of things to change. So beyond this legalization prohibition debate, there are a lot of things to change in our culture and in our society. I think the solution is gonna be if you make it cool to, instead of having a drink, just chum down on some pickles, because I have a lot to sell. Thank you, gentlemen. This program is presented by Eurazine, an online magazine bringing you reads from more than a hundred partner publications and across dozens of European languages. This talk show is a display Europe production. Display is a content sharing platform which offers you content on politics, culture, community and so much more, and somehow miraculously, also doesn't abuse your user data. I know, it's a shocker. That's where you also find this show with 15 language versions and subtitles. Now, if you want us to have more of these cute animations that we like to run or just like what you see and wish to support our work, please go to patreon.com slash Eurazine. 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