Drinking and smoking are one of the most popular and yet harmful for the human body habits that you can adopt. Almost every twelfth Bulgarian is an alcoholic, more than 37% of the adult population of Bulgaria smokes and yet
people let themselves to be tricked into trying it which can lead to addiction. Whether if it is out of curiosity, because someone thinks it’s cool or peer pressure people still let themselves adopt these dangerous habits, eve though everyone talks about how harmful to your body it is.
What we did in order to track how things have changed over the past few decades was to ask a number of people in two different age groups (parents/grandparents and kids at an age between 14-17) a series of questions about what their unhealthy habits in the past and about them now. The kids were asked the same questions. What we got back were 45 responses from the adults (half of which are parents and the other half- grandparents) and 50 form our peers. We asked each of them a total of 11 identical questions 6 of which were about drinking and the other 5- about smoking.
DRINKING
At what age did you start drinking?
Here it can clearly be seen that most of the adults started drinking at the between the age of 15 and 20 and they think that people today still start around the same time. Most of the students said that they started drinking in secondary school which basically is the equivalent of high schools in bulgaria. So the tendency is that people start drinking somewhen between 15 and 20 years old.
How often do you drink?
According to the three pie charts here, 50% of the adults used to drink often and the other half- rarely. Now most of them drink rarely. As it goes for our peers- most of them rarely drink. That shows that Things haven’t really changed a lot. However it is worth noting that more than 60% of the adults rarely drink in present days.
How much do you drink
Here the variety of answers really is noticeable. What is worth noting is that it seems like while becoming adults people have realised the danger of drinking and a lot of them stopped drinking. The youngsters’ pie chart however is separated in 4 almost identical parts, the biggest one of which says that kids today usually drink about 25 grams of alcohol. The same goes for when grown- ups were our age.
Where do people usually drink?
When looking at these charts it is safe to say that you people now and in the past drink and used to drink mostly at parties. On the other hand the majority of adults today tend to drink at their home. Which shows that as people got older they probably stopped going out so much and started enjoying alcohol on their own or with their family at home.
What is\ was the most popular drink?
What these graphs clearly show is that ,the traditional for Bulgaria, rakja was and still is one of the most popular drinks amongst the elderly however nowadays wine is the most popular drink. When it comes to our peers, the majority drinks spirits and a good amount of people don’t drink. Wine is popular amongst youngsters too.
What were the main social problems that made people drink?
Here it is worth noting that peer pressure has always been one of the leading reasons for people to start drinking. However the leading reason according to the kids is that they do it “because it is cool”, which wasn’t a thing in the past.
SMOKING
Do you smoke?
When looking at these three pie charts we can clearly see that smoking is and has not really been a thing that a lot of people do/ did. All of the charts show that around 80% of people do/ did not smoke.
At what age did you start smoking?
We can clearly see that people in the past and now start/ started drinking at about the same age (15-20/ high school). That shows that youngsters still manage to get their hands on cigarettes with ease and this pie chart shows how easy it is.
How many cigarettes do you smoke a day?
Here the results keep showing that the majority of people do/ did not smoke. However if we focus on the smoking part of people it is safe to say that the older people smoke more cigarettes than youngsters do.
Who smokes more- men/women?
When it comes to who smokes more- the elderly think that in the past men smoked now, however more than 50% think that women smoke more nowadays. On the other hand more than 80% of kids think that women smoke more nowadays.
When did people smoke more- then/now?
Here it can clearly be seen that the the majority of the elderly do not think that people smoke more in the past. As it goes for our peers, most of them think that people today smoke more than they used to.
FUTURE
An Erasmus blog post by: Boryana Simeonova
Alexander Terziev