Staying 'in the Zone' but Not Passing the 'Point of No Return': Embodiment, Gender and Drinking in Mid-Life

Abstract

Alcohol consumption and excessive drinking have received considerable research and public health attention. This chapter explores how men and women in mid-life represent their alcohol consumption as an embodied social practice. Embodiment is central to drinking practices as it allows the consideration of emotions, feelings and gender, highlights the complexities of drinking behaviour and emphasises the limitations of individual-level approaches to health practices. The Drinking Attitudes in Mid-life (DrAM) study aimed to explore experiences and understandings of alcohol consumption in mid-life adults. Adults in mid-life, drinking with others was about marking out temporary spaces from everyday life in which they could alter their way of being in the world. The findings foreground the relational and contextual nature of drinking practices and reinforce the need to critically interrogate the concept of alcohol consumption as a straight-forward health behaviour. Chapters