Czech Youngsters Getting Head Start on Alcoholism

Igor is thirsty, but not for soda. He’s after suds -- beer suds -- even though he’s 16, two years under the legal drinking age.

“I never had a problem to get a drink in Prague. I was never asked how old I am,” said Igor, a student in a small northern Czech town who declined to give his last name. Getting served is easy, he said. “We know where to go to get what we want.”

Drinking is a national pastime in this beer-loving country, and health experts worry that they have trouble on their hands: A growing number of underage youths, some as young as 10, are hitting the bottle regularly.

Young people routinely are served alcohol in cafes, pubs and restaurants across Europe, but Czech officials are raising alarm over the scope of the problem here, where children increasingly require the kind of medical treatment sought by older alcoholics.

“We are swamped,” said Darina Stancikova, a psychiatrist who a year ago opened the nation’s first detox center for children, at Prague’s Sisters of Mercy of St. Karel Boromejsky Hospital. Children “start drinking earlier than ever before -- and they drink much more than ever,” Stancikova said.

Since the center opened, more than 160 adolescents have been hospitalized. The youngest, 10, had drunk himself unconscious and was treated in the intensive care unit. Dozens of others have received treatment on an outpatient basis. Those who check into the center typically undergo three weeks of individual and group therapy designed to teach them how to turn down a drink -- not easy for some people in the Czech Republic, which boasts the world’s highest per capita beer consumption, at nearly 42 gallons a year.

That readiness trickles down to children, said Dr. Marian Koranda, who helped Stancikova found the center. Parents “don’t explain to children how dangerous drinking is,” he said, citing the example of a 15-year-old youth male patient who was drinking up to 15 beers a day.

“His mother told us she never noticed he was drunk,” Koranda said.

Although many bartenders don’t hesitate to serve underage patrons, young Czechs say the few who do are easily foiled.

“I always go to pubs with older friends so I have somebody else to buy me a drink,” said Anna de Abreu e Lima, 16, a high school student in Prague.

In a 2002 study of underage drinking in 35 countries, 21% of 13-year-old Czech boys interviewed said they drank beer at least once a week, putting this country at the top of the list. Czech girls the same age ranked third, behind Russia and Italy.

A recently released study of students ages 15-16 found that 68% of young Czechs admitted being drunk at least once during the preceding year.

“The data are horrific,” said Dr. Karel Nespor, head of the addiction treatment department at Prague’s Bohunice Hospital.

“It’s crucial that the politicians do something about the problem of youth drinking,” said Nespor, who fears unchecked underage drinking will lower the country’s birth rate and undermine the quality of its work force.

Czech lawmakers don’t seem to be in a rush. Legislation to toughen fines for selling alcohol to minors and strip violators of liquor licenses has been debated for nearly three years in parliament, with a vote nowhere in sight.

Beer is cheap in the Czech Republic. A pint costs the equivalent of 45 to 55 cents in many pubs, and half that in supermarkets.

Josef Janecek, a lawmaker and physician, recently pushed a ban on tobacco advertising through parliament but sees no hope of similar restrictions on booze. “The alcohol producers’ lobby is extremely powerful. It’s a big business,” he said.

Meanwhile, therapists like Stancikova are fighting the problem one young drinker at a time.

“It’s absolutely necessary to have a positive attitude to our clients and rejoice in every positive step they take,” she said. “At least we hope to divert them from the road to addiction.”