Sébastien Tutenges

Intoxicating stories: the characteristics, contexts and implications of drinking stories among Danish youth.

AIMS To study the characteristics, contexts and implications of drinking stories among young drinkers. METHODS Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted among Danish youth at a beach resort in Bulgaria. The fieldwork included three months of participant observation and 45 semi-structured interviews with a total of 104 tourists and 11 guides. The participants in the study were aged between 16 and 26 years. RESULTS The participants often shared drinking stories with each other. The stories they told involved alcohol consumption followed by one or several acts of transgression such as stripping, fighting or vomiting. They generally told the stories with amusement or pride. However, some stories were told in a critical tone and focused on negative experiences. The data suggest that for many participants, part of their reason for engaging in heavy drinking and drunken transgressions was that they wanted to build a repertoire of personal drinking stories. Their drinking behaviour was subtly motivated, inspired and guided by the drinking stories that they heard from others, as well as by the drinking stories that they themselves wanted to create. CONCLUSION There is an intimate interactional relationship between drinking behaviour and drinking stories. Drinking behaviours can generate stories, but the stories, in turn, influence behaviours and attitudes related to alcohol. Drinking stories are therefore key to understanding drinking among youth.

‘We got incredibly drunk … it was damned fun’: drinking stories among Danish youth

Drinking stories are immensely popular among contemporary Danish youth. The stories are shared with much enthusiasm in school, at parties, over the telephone and via the Internet. But why are the young so compelled by these seemingly vulgar stories? Applying the theories of, most importantly, Bakhtin (1968), Ricoeur (1991), and Jackson (2002), this paper examines a sample of drinking stories that were collected through two anthropological research projects on Danish youth. The stories were recorded through participant observation and qualitative interviews. Our analysis proposes that Danish youth employ drinking stories in order to (1) constitute narrative identity, (2) entertain, (3) cope with tragic events, and (4) explore taboos.

Patterns of Binge Drinking at An International Nightlife Resort

AIMS The aim of this study was to compare the patterns of substance use in young Danes while holidaying in the Bulgarian holiday resort of Sunny Beach (SB) to their patterns of substance use in Denmark. METHODS Data were collected from visitors to SB in 2007 (n = 1011). Information on alcohol and drug use was surveyed using a short questionnaire. FINDINGS Most individuals surveyed were regular drinkers in Denmark, and the use of most illicit drugs was rare. Patterns of substance use in SB revealed heavy drinking was common, both in adolescents and young adults. CONCLUSIONS International nightlife resorts provide a context for excess in drug use and alcohol use. Alcohol poses a potentially severe threat to the short- and long-term health of young tourists, but little attention has been paid to form interventions targeting binge drinking in nightlife resorts.

The use of tobacco and cannabis at an international music festival.

Background: Music festivals are known to attract a high proportion of drug users. Methods: Using a survey of 1,772 visitors at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, we assessed substance use at the festival, the incidence of use of substances among never-users and the incidence of use among lifetime users who had not used a substance in the past 12 months. Results: New onset of tobacco use was reported by 9.2% of never-smokers, and new onset of cannabis use was reported by 9.3% of never-smokers of cannabis. Resumption of tobacco use was reported by 24% of past year abstainers, and resumption of cannabis use was reported by 30% of past year abstainers. New onset of other types of substances was reported by less than 0.5% of subjects, but among past year abstainers, 5–10% reported resumption of amphetamine, ketamine, MDMA and cocaine use. New onset smokers of cannabis were significantly younger than never-smokers. Conclusion: Music festivals such as the Roskilde Festival may be important arenas for the prevention of onset of tobacco and cannabis use and for a return to substance use.

Nightlife tourism: a mixed methods study of young tourists at an international nightlife resort.

Drawing on data generated through quantitative and qualitative methods, this article explores the prevalence and experiences of substance use, casual sex, commercial sex, and health problems among young Danish tourists at an international nightlife resort in Bulgaria. The article argues that the risks the tourists take should not be interpreted as a symptom of nihilism, pathology, or escapist inclinations. Rather, the tourists intentionally engage in certain forms of risk in order to move far beyond the mundane and into states of drunken adventure and memorable excess.

Stirring up effervescence: an ethnographic study of youth at a nightlife resort

There is growing evidence that young tourists at nightlife resorts have a propensity for risk-taking. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at an international nightlife resort in Bulgaria, this article examines how guides help tourists lower their inhibitions and reach states of collective effervescence. Focus is on young guides and tourists from Denmark. The article argues that the guides use four basic techniques to stir up effervescence: body techniques, speech and sound effects, crowd effects and alcohol.

Drunken Environments: A Survey of Bartenders Working in Pubs, Bars and Nightclubs

There is evidence that bartenders play a key role in respect of the health and safety of patrons in nightlife environments. However, little is known of how bartenders themselves are affected by the environments in which they work, especially with regard to their exposure to violence, pressure to drink and stress. We used a cross-sectional survey to assess the experiences of bartenders (n = 424) working in pubs, bars and nightclubs in Denmark. 71% of the respondents reported drinking while working, 6% reported using other drugs than alcohol at work, and 33% reported drinking even when they did not feel like it because of pressure to drink at work. Verbal assaults and threats were common and associated with higher levels of perceived stress. Bartenders’ work environment poses a risk for the development of alcohol use disorders. The fact that many bartenders consume significant quantities of alcohol during their working hours may pose a risk not only to their own safety, but also to that of their colleagues and patrons.

Sexy substances and the substance of sex: Findings from an ethnographic study in Ibiza, Spain

Purpose This article offers an ethnographic account of substances and sex, and how they are interrelated, in the context of one holiday destination popular among British youth. We write this paper because current research on British youth abroad and their use of substances is based almost exclusively on survey methods. Similarly, the same research works do not explore in sufficient detail sexual relations outside those between British tourists. Design/Methodology We base this article on 38 focus groups, observations and informal conversations undertaken in San Antonio, Ibiza over the summers of 2009, 2010 and 2011. Findings Here we complement current knowledge on sex and substances abroad by discussing the role of Promotion Representatives (PRs), strippers and prostitutes and the use of both drugs and alcohol, emphasising how substances feature in the promotion of sex. We adopt Bakhtin’s concept of the ‘carnivalesque’ (1984) to understand these behaviours. Originality/Value As far as we can see, current research is almost exclusively based on sex between tourists and sexual encounters with other social players in holiday resorts has been largely neglected.

Risk and transgression on holiday: 'new experiences' and the pied piper of excessive consumption.

When British youth spend holiday abroad, they tend to engage in increased consumption of alcohol, drugs, violence and unprotected sex – collectively known as ‘risk’ behaviours. While numerous epidemiological studies have documented the extent of these risk behaviours in places like the Balearic Islands, few have taken a phenomenological approach with the participants who go there – to find out how they experience and attribute meaning to their transgressions on holiday. Our research reports on this matter and is based on ethnographic data collected in 2009, 2010 and 2011. We argue that individual and group holiday ambitions for a ‘blow out’ are actively complemented by aggressive commercial forces, which seek to capitalise on consumer spending, thus assisting in the production of risk. We show how this works by reporting from the resort of San Antonio, Ibiza.

Music and substance preferences among festival attendants

Purpose – This article aims to determine the prevalence of substance use among young festival‐goers and the associations between preferences for different types of music and recent use of different types of licit and illicit drugs.Design/methodology/approach – The article is based on a cross‐sectional survey of 1,787 young adults attending a music festival in Denmark. Associations between preferences for music and substances were estimated using ordinal regression.Findings – Prevalence of illicit drug use was higher in this festival going population than in the general population. Festival‐goers who favoured hip hop or electronic music were more likely to have used various classes of substances, while those who favoured pop music were less likely to have used all substances, except for alcohol.Research limitations/implications – The data were collected under less than ideal circumstances with many respondents suffering from acute hangovers and fatigue after several days of consecutive partying at the fest...