People with learning disabilities: alcohol and ordinary lives

This chapter looks at the role of alcohol in the lives of people with learning disabilities, in an age when the consumption of alcohol almost represents a badge of citizenship. Such citizenship and the very notion of adult status has long been denied to many people with learning disabilities. Consuming alcohol is a risk, in the true sense of the word, meaning that it is composed of possible benefits and dangers (see Alaszewski and Manthorpe 1991) and people with learning disabilities have been ‘protected’ from socially undesirable risks by a variety of policies and care practices. Community care, and the closure of long-stay mental handicap hospitals in particular, challenge this protective, paternalist environment.