Teenage binge-drinking has been a problem in Ireland for many years. It's an issue that has made the news again this week, as concerns were raised about two teenagers who could have died due to their level of intoxication at a disco in Bandon.
Dr. Jason van der Velde is a pre-hospital emergency medicine consultant, and he says that unfortunately such incidents are not unusual.
"It brings home the scale of the problem and what happens in towns and cities around Ireland most weekend nights."
Jason has lived in Ireland for ten years and hasn't seen a binge-drinking culture like this anywhere else.
"The normality of it shocks me. On the continent, normality is not binge-drinking or drinking to become inebriated, it's having a quiet glass of wine and that's about as far as it goes."
Psychotherapist and author Stella O'Malley says teenage binge-drinking is "a learned behaviour from our culture."
"How you drink is very much dependent on who the people are around you. You're shaped by how they drink. We've influenced our children so that they think a great night out means getting absolutely paralytic."
"We are messed up with our attitude to alcohol, and we really need to change it."
