Alcoholism ‘intense’ at regional drinking hubs

updated 7:41 p.m. ET Sept. 6, 2007

NOME, Alaska - Villagers from far-flung Eskimo communities where alcohol is banned regularly pour into this old Gold Rush town and its many bars and liquor stores — not just to drink, but to get plastered.

Day and night, drunks can be seen staggering along Front Street, slumped against buildings, and passed out near the tourist shops or along the seawall on the Bering Sea. Police cart off the worst of them to dry out at the hospital, where the emergency room often reeks of alcohol with as many as eight drunks at a time vying for beds.

Some never make it out of Nome alive. They drink themselves to death or pass out in the below-zero cold, where they can count themselves lucky if they merely lose some fingers or a limb to frostbite. Many simply vanish, presumably swallowed by the icy waters of Norton Sound. Over the past two decades, dozens have died of exposure or drowned.

“The level of alcoholism is intense,” said Greg Smith, who runs the Norton Sound Health Corp.’s outpatient substance abuse program. “The most dangerous pattern of drinking is binge drinking and it is firmly entrenched here. It’s been built into the drinking culture.”

The U.S. has more than 500 dry communities, and it is not unusual for residents to flock to another town to do their drinking. But some of the worst binge drinking is associated with a few regional hubs like Nome that draw people from Native and American Indian communities across vast expanses of countryside.

Test yourself Do you have a drinking problem?

One big reason is this: Many Indian reservations and Eskimo villages are in extremely remote areas and ban not only the sale of alcohol, but possession, too. In other parts of the country, many dry communities allow alcohol possession, and a bar is usually just a short drive away.

These regional drinking hubs include:

• Whiteclay, Neb.: It has a population of 14, yet about 4 millions cans of beer are sold each year in four stores there, mostly to American Indians. It is just yards away from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where alcoholism is rampant despite a ban on the sale and possession of alcohol.
• Gallup, N.M.: It has long been branded Drunk Town, USA. It is surrounded by Navajo, Hopi and Zuni Pueblo lands where alcohol is prohibited. The town of 20,000 now bans Sunday alcohol sales and a county tax on liquor has been imposed.
• Flagstaff, Ariz.: It is 72 miles from Tuba City on the Navajo Reservation, and the closest place to get a legal drink. Wanda MacDonald, director of the Navajo outpatient treatment center in Tuba City, said on the stretch of highway between the town of 8,000 and Flagstaff, she once counted 149 white crosses marking the sites of fatal car accidents — most of them because of drinking.

Perpetuating ugly stereotypes
Experts and activists say the heavy drinking involves only a fraction of the nation’s Native population but perpetuates one of the oldest and ugliest stereotypes.

“The most common perception among the general population is the firewater myth, that Indians physically can’t hold alcohol. It’s just not true,” said Fred Beauvais, a researcher at Colorado State University at Fort Collins who has studied the issue for three decades. “A lot of genetic research has been done on that and there’s no evidence for a specific genetic factor for Native populations.”

Instead, experts link alcohol abuse among Natives to poverty, hopelessness, loss of culture and perhaps habits learned generations ago from hard-drinking settlers, trappers, traders and miners.

American Indians and Alaska Natives have a 550 percent higher rate of alcohol-related deaths than nonnative Americans, a disparity blamed in part on inadequate health care.

MORE FROM ADDICTIONS

Addictions Section Front

Expanded drug treatment: Will U.S. step up? Smoking bans do protect nonsmokers' hearts ‘Red watch’ friends don't let pals drink and die Vaccine for cocaine habit? May be coming soon Half of treated addicts kick habit after 6 months Prescriptions for narcotics up in Ky. Methadone deaths jump sharply in recent years Drug deaths outpace car crashes in more states Flavored cigarettes snuffed as ban takes effect Smoking bans cut heart attacks by a third Addictions Section Front   Add Addictions headlines to your news reader: