Sex and drugs and getting old

“DON’T look like trash, don’t get drunk, don’t be sick down your front,” Joanna Lumley, an actress, once advised the young. They seemed to “behave badly” nowadays, she thought, probably due to “something in our society”. Recent statistics suggest Ms Lumley made a more accurate social comment in “Absolutely Fabulous”, a sitcom, with her character Patsy, an ageing alcoholic. Over the past five years, as the number of youngsters entering alcohol rehab dropped by a quarter, the number of female pensioners starting treatment for alcoholism increased by 65% (although from a low base of 1,436). A 2012 survey by the Health and Social Care Information Centre found that “high-risk drinking” was most common among 55- to 64-year-old men.

Retirement can exacerbate the bad habits kept in check by working life; about a third of pensioners with drinking problems developed them when they retired. Old age also introduces stresses that can lead to alcohol abuse: bereavement, loneliness and ill health. But the current crop of retirees—the baby boomers—are particularly at risk. They are heavier drinkers than their predecessors, partly because online shopping makes it easier to conceal drinking habits, partly because they came of age just as taboos about excessive drinking were lifted (but before they were re-introduced by today’s strait-laced young).