CONCLUSIONES Y RECOMENDACIONES.

Thurnell-Read suggests that rather than viewing the consumption of drugs and alcohol as an isolated, problematic behaviour of ‘disparate, possibly deviant, individuals’ it would be better analysed as a social and relational practice ‘constituted and (re)formed by and through friendships, groups and spontaneously formed acquaintances’ (2017: 339). For (some) students it seems that participation in university drinking cultures provides an opportunity to bond with friends and maintain friendships, but also allows them certain freedoms and an opportunity to enact a rite of passage emblematic of student social life. There are literatures which suggest that: peer settings (e.g. Overbeek et al, 2010; Seaman & Ikegwuonu, 2011), friendships (Fujimoto & Valente, 2012a), and ‘normative behaviours’ of others/peers (Fujimoto & Valente, 2012b; Katainen et al, 2014) can have influencing factors on drinking practices. Hackley et al, for example, suggest that for some young adults in the UK ‘drinking heavily amongst friends is not merely a transient rite of passage between youth and adulthood but […] is deeply implicated in young adults’ phenomenological experiences of social life and “going out”’ (2015: 2126). Sarah MacLean also argues that drinking is a friendship practice, stating that ‘drinking together seems to enable friends to affirm their relationships through generating a different sociality to that which is possible when sober’ (2016: 96). This is important for, as she asserts, ‘to sustain a friendship we must continually constitute it by engaging in friendship making practices’ (MacLean, 2016: 94). MacLean concludes by arguing ‘that ‘young adults’ drinking should be understood rather as part of a broader social process; the contemporary constitution of friendship, which occurs through the continuous enactment of culturally – and historically – specific friendship-making practices’ (2016: 102).

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Niland et al also found that drinking was ‘a collective practice rather than an individual experience’ (2013: 531) and that pleasures of drinking included fun, enjoyment, feeling good, relaxing, and being sociable, ‘pleasure is social’ (2013: 531). Their participants drew on a discourse of ‘friendship fun’ and caring ‘to construct their drinking as a pleasurable friendship practice and to justify their drinking and drunkenness as everyday pleasurable socialising for friends’ with being drunk interpreted as ‘normalised social fun’ (Niland et al, 2013: 532-533). They posit that this discourse privileges drinking to intoxication as friendship caring and protection, where friends have responsibilities to care for and protect each other which was ‘evident in a deliberate positioning of the “good friend” when negative experiences were encountered’ (Niland et al, 2013: 534). They found that ‘even “bad” experiences are constructed in retrospect as pleasurable: as friends caring and protecting each other and having fun’ (Niland et al, 2013: 534). As was discussed earlier in this chapter, friendship is a catalyst for drinking, it ‘cements’ social bonds and allows time and space to ‘practice’ friendship. Niland et al found that the pleasure of drinking is so bound to friendship practices and fun for young people that ‘traditional harm-reduction messages [which] target individual young adult drinkers to make the decision to reduce their alcohol consumption […] are effectively asking young adults to

break strong and highly valued friendship bonds’ (2013: 536). This is also why ‘looking after your mates’ has become a familiar part of more contemporary harm reduction and personal safety campaigns, including a ‘Look After Your Mate’ campaign and workshop focused on aspects of the mental health issues affecting university students (see Student Minds, 2017), and a recent Drinkaware campaign that encourages young people to ‘Stay with your pack’ (Drinkaware, 2017b). Niland et al suggest that it would therefore be valuable for alcohol-harm reduction strategies to ‘further explore young adults’ drinking as a shared social practice that is pleasurable and undertaken within friendships’ (2013: 530), and move beyond the idea of individual bodily harms to ‘shared meanings of “caring and protection” within the context of drinking as a friendship practice’ (Niland et al, 2013: 535).

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There is agreement that one of the pleasures of participating in drinking cultures is in the shared experiences and storytelling, and that this is one of the ways that young people make sense of drinking cultures (e.g. Bogren, 2014; Brown & Gregg, 2012; Fjaer, 2012; Fleetwood, 2014; Hackley et al, 2013; Hebden et al, 2015; Hutton et al, 2013; Katainen, 2014; Lyons & Willott, 2008; Sheehan & Ridge, 2001; Thurnell-Read, 2017; Tutenges & Sandberg, 2013). As was suggested above in relation to Niland et al (2013) negative experiences can be reframed as a ‘good’ story. As Griffin et al state ‘stories from the culture of intoxication are constructed as a route to inclusion within student social life, but also as providing material for that social life’ (2009: 463). Tutenges and Sandberg found that drinking stories ‘were used for a number of reasons, including for entertainment, to overcome distressing experiences, to put ethical dilemmas up for debate, to present “moral selves”, to explore taboos and to strengthen friendship ties’ (2013: 542). They also found that that some of their participants explicitly stated that part of their reasoning for heavy drinking was to ‘build a repertoire of personal drinking stories’ and that ‘there is much to suggest their alcohol consumption was subtly motivated, inspired and guided by the drinking stories prevailing in their social environment’ (Tutenges & Sandberg 2013: 543). Within my data this was typically constructed after the event, often during ‘day after’ deconstructions of the ‘night before’ and sometimes alongside photographs that were taken and that provide what I call ‘night-out nostalgia’. Fjaer suggests that hangovers, and getting together the ‘day after’, mean that young people gather around stories and around food which offer space to laugh about, forgive, and provide closure on transgressions of the night before and can therefore be construed as ‘a ritual transformation of negative emotions to positive ones’ (2012: 1002).

Another theme that has emerged within my data is the role of friends as caregivers within university drinking cultures, and this is also a theme within the literature on young people and alcohol (see e.g. Armstrong et al, 2014a; Armstrong et al, 2014b; Chrzan, 2013; Frederiksen et

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al, 2012; Laverty et l, 2015; Lyons & Willott, 2008; MacLean, 2016; Niland et al, 2013; Thurnell- Read, 2017; Vander ven, 2011). Returning to MacLean’s work, she found that devolving responsibility of their ‘intoxicated selves’ to friends allowed her participants to ‘constitute these relationships as real and protective’ (2016: 99). Chrzan also suggests that ‘caring for drunk and disorderly friends is a means to practice care of others, learn new life management skills, gain confidence to handle problems and reason through appropriate and inappropriate interpersonal actions’ (2013: 150). There are, however, gendered differences in regards to friends’ caregiving, and in my own data I found that, generally, the young women expressed or alluded to feeling more vulnerable (see Lyons & Willott, 2008) and had a number of management strategies or ‘risk rituals’ (Moore & Burgess, 2011) already in place such as plans to get home safely, keeping their friendship group together, employing one group member as ‘the mum’, and stopping a friend getting ‘too drunk’ etc. Armstrong et al list a number of their (female) participants’ strategies for managing risk as: safety in numbers, a ‘group-based culture of helping’, monitoring and modifying group members’ intoxication and behaviour, keeping in contact via mobile phone, monitoring the crowd for disturbances, and consuming food and water (2014b: 755-757). In comparison young men would encourage each other to drink more or ‘match pace’ with the heaviest drinker in their group but were also protective of their friends (see also Burgess et al, 2009; Chrzan, 2011; Frederiksen et al, 2012; Levine et al, 2012; MacLean, 2016; Thurnell-Read, 2013). However, I found that in mixed groups there were often unspoken friendship agreements to try to stay together, get home safely, and prevent anyone becoming ‘too drunk’ but also, amongst my participants, young men were often given the ‘responsibility’ of warding off unwanted male attention from their female friends with many of the young women asserting that they felt safer on a night out with a male friend (see also Lyons & Willott, 2008;1_{). Armstrong et al suggest that this may be ‘because men and women encounter different}

alcohol-related risks, use different protective strategies when drinking and belong to different alcohol cultures that influence their drinking experiences’ (2014b: 751). They also found that

1 _{For analysis of ‘GLBTIQ’ young adults’ experiences of unwanted sexual attention in pubs and clubs see}

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for women, a sense of safety was felt in the knowledge that ‘they would be taken care of by their friendship group’ (2014b: 755). However, caregiving is also shown to potentially put a strain on friendships if individuals get too drunk and whilst friends come to expect that they should care for each other the ‘provision of care must be managed carefully so not to intrude on the autonomy of either the friend who is cared for, or the friend who does the caring’ (MacLean, 2016: 100; see also Niland et al, 2013). My data shows that for individuals who are often tasked with taking care of their friendship group, or another individual, their role can dissuade them from participation and lead to a feeling of ‘growing tired’ of being ‘the responsible one’.