Almost every day now, writes John Waters, the newspapers carry stories on what is rapidly converging into a single theme: "Smoking ban linked to more home drinking"; "Binge-drinking on the increase among the over-85s"; "Minister concerned about vodka sachets".
Such reports represent a relatively new development. It is less than a decade since a Department of Health document on alcohol policy blithely declared that "there is evidence that the depiction of the Irish as a particularly alcohol-prone race is a myth". With a Minister for Health who openly talks about "the national alcohol problem" it is clear that we have travelled a long way in a short time in the perception of addiction in our midst.
But there is as yet a reluctance to make the broadest appropriate connections, or to extend the discussion to enable a proper understanding of the nature of what lies behind all such headlines: a growing propensity to addiction. A newer phenomenon is the theme of obesity - not as yet being linked to the alcohol problem. While there is a growing consciousness about a number of problematic aspects of our consumption of alcohol, drugs and food, there is as yet no movement towards the integration of these matters under their common heading.
Our collective concepts of addiction are way out of date: the unemployed drug-addict, the wino in the gutter with his bottle of plonk. Growing comprehension that food, for example, also has highly addictive properties, must surely shift our perceptions of the issue towards some understanding of an underlying condition.
We have tended, thus far, to see the relevant substance-of-choice as itself representing the problem. But this inverts the puzzle of addiction, which is best understood in terms of the void it has developed around. Alcohol and drugs are very effective at temporarily restoring missing bits of the human psychic mechanism. Ask any heroin addict and you'll be told that heroin does exactly what it says on the bag. But because they are also poisons, the positive effect of these substances is short lived and far outweighed by the negatives.
Experience tells us that addicts are not just hapless individuals who happen to develop a damaging fondness for a harmful substance - but, more importantly, damaged souls who achieve instant wholeness through their addiction. We need to understand this more clearly where these issues are considered in terms of their social implications.
A central aspect of the necessary discussion, too, would be openness to the concept of underlying societal condition. If there is some predisposition rendering an individual susceptible to addiction, isn't it possible that there is also a societal dimension to a national problem marked by comparison with other cultures? We also need urgently to begin seeking a comprehension of the societal conditions pushing young people towards addiction. The problem is not simply advertising, or the prevalence of money, or the easy availability of this or that drink or substance. We need to consider, too, in what ways our culture is failing to feed the spiritual life of the young. Above all, we need to end the diffusion that currently characterises these debates, bring together the relevant strands of experience, observation and wisdom that remain diffused in this society.
Such discussion remains stymied by, on the one hand, a degree of continuing denial and, on the other, by a necessary pragmatism in relation to the salvation of still-suffering addicts, which may have the effect of over-simplifying the discussion to the detriment of our understanding of the broader social issues.
There is here a paradox. Addiction is a complex phenomenon, reaching into every crevice of the human condition. The kind of discussion this society requires to enable it protect its future generations may not necessarily be the one best geared to the emergency of addiction in the present moment.
A major problem arises from the fact that where the awareness of these dangers is greatest - among those operating services dealing with the daily reality of addiction - a more immediate priority must rule. For entirely understandable reasons, those at this coalface tend to see any intellectualising of the discussion about drugs or alcohol as unhelpful, because they need to present a clean, uncomplicated message to the addict staggering in off the street. But at the societal level, any attempt to understand the broader picture - with a view to prevention as opposed to cure - needs to take the more complex context of addiction into account.
We fight increasingly sophisticated and pernicious foes for the lives of our children, and we need to start thinking a lot more cleverly. The most urgent need is to bring together the various forms of expertise - from the medical, socio-cultural and spiritual disciplines, with a view to answering a question broadly along the lines of: "Why have we come to fear living so much that we choose to kill ourselves slowly in the guise of enjoying ourselves?"