Sex and drugs and getting old

“DON’T look like trash, don’t get drunk, don’t be sick down your front,” Joanna Lumley, an actress, once advised the young. They seemed to “behave badly” nowadays, she thought, probably due to “something in our society”. Recent statistics suggest Ms Lumley made a more accurate social comment in “Absolutely Fabulous”, a sitcom, with her character Patsy, an ageing alcoholic. Over the past five years, as the number of youngsters entering alcohol rehab dropped by a quarter, the number of female pensioners starting treatment for alcoholism increased by 65% (although from a low base of 1,436). A 2012 survey by the Health and Social Care Information Centre found that “high-risk drinking” was most common among 55- to 64-year-old men.

Retirement can exacerbate the bad habits kept in check by working life; about a third of pensioners with drinking problems developed them when they retired. Old age also introduces stresses that can lead to alcohol abuse: bereavement, loneliness and ill health. But the current crop of retirees—the baby boomers—are particularly at risk. They are heavier drinkers than their predecessors, partly because online shopping makes it easier to conceal drinking habits, partly because they came of age just as taboos about excessive drinking were lifted (but before they were re-introduced by today’s strait-laced young).

Tearaway pensioners don’t stop at drinking. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction estimates that the number of over-65s in drug rehabilitation in Europe will double between 2001 and 2020. Better treatments alone do not explain this. A study at King’s College London found a striking rise in older people’s drug use: cannabis use, for example, rose ten-fold among 50-64 year-olds between 1993 and 2007. These are not necessarily new users, but frequently curators of old habits picked up in the 1960s and 1970s, who just did not die before they got old.

They get around, too. Sexually transmitted diseases among pensioners have increased dramatically: the number of genital herpes sufferers who are over 65 increased by 50% in the past five years among men and doubled among women.

Herpes aside, a wild retirement can be fun. But it also raises some worries. The elderly are more sensitive to the effects of drugs and alcohol, as old livers are less efficient. Side effects can be severe, too, when losing one’s balance means breaking a hip. Sexual diseases take a toll on ageing immune systems. All this will cost the NHS. But at least their children are likely to be better behaved upon retirement. Youth is wasted on the young.