Well I seriously doubt Harry is going to read these threads to be helped or hindered in his habits in any way. If I wanted to help Harry, I certainly wouldn't try to help him by posting opinions in this thread. But that having been said, he is a royal and royalty is what we discuss. I care about the monarchy but I don't have a strong feeling whether my worlds help or hurt Harry at all since he's probably not going to read what I wrote here anyway.
This latest discussion could well be titled 'What to do about Harry' and the question of whether to do anything about Harry. The first question I thought of was how rare or unusual is this condition. The more unusual or rare the condition is, the more serious it is and the harder to treat. Its incredibly common in my home city of New York to see young people plastered and stumbling out of nightclubs on a Friday or Saturday night and when I was in London I saw the same thing.
Getting noxiously drunk is common enough habit among 20-25 year olds, at least among New Yorkers and Londoners that its impossible to claim that Harry's drinking is from some rare character flaw that only he and a handful of people have. That doesn't mean every 20-25 year old in New York or London drinks himself silly but enough 20 year olds drink themselves silly so that Harry's behavior cannot be called strange or unusual or never heard of for a 20-something year old.
On the other hand, just because a lot of 20-somethings do it doesn't necessarily make it healthy but because so many young people do it, its hard to predict the longterm effects on Harry. Not everybody that drinks like Harry faces severe longlasting ill-effects from the behavior, for everyone who was screwed up for life, there's another person who went through his drinking phase, stopped it when they got tired of it, and is now doing fine. Its impossible to tell from what we read in the papers how much Harry's drinking is really damaging him in the long run.
What I do know is that young people today do take more risks in general and that goes for the regular population as well as royalty. That is more dangerous, not only for Harry but for many of his generation but the problem is still not limited to Harry. So if Harry faces increased risk because of his behavior, he is reflecting the general increase in risk-taking among young people today. This is a by-product of wanting the royals to be like us. When royals become more like us, they take on our bad traits as well as our good traits.
Generally though if the heavy drinking turns out to be highly damaging for a person, that person had other severe problems that lead them to drink (however unwisely) People who go through the heavy drinking phase who have not had any major personal problems before this can usually get out of this phase without too much danger to themselves. If Harry's drinking is a problem, its rather a symptom of another problem rather than being the source of all of Harry's problems itself. Because we are not privy to Harry's personal thoughts and every detail of his personal life, its hard to judge what other problems he may have.
We can guess. His parents suffered a traumatic and very public and nasty divorce. He and his brother were pulled between them. This could affect a young man. However, we know from Diana that William was the shy, sensitive one who was scared of photographers and the press. Harry, she described, as a young boy who never let anything get to him and bragged that bad things rolled off him like water off a duck's back. She often talked about William being her confidante and 'little man' when she was down and depressed which could have been a heavy burden on the young boy but she never mentioned Harry in this role. She referred to Harry as her little rascal and the son who made her laugh. I think its safe to say that William as the eldest son and the most sensitive child bore the brunt of the fallout of his parents breakup. From what Diana has told us about Harry, I think its safe to say that the ill effects he suffered from his parents breakup were small compared to William's.
Harry did suffer the untimely death of his mother and the dragging of her name in the mud after she died. That is a hard loss to take. However, from all accounts, between William and Harry, Harry has made better peace with both his mother's and his father's legacy. He was the first son to come out and say he wanted to continue some of Diana's work in Africa and he made the first public interview where he talked about all the tell-all books that were coming out and said he wanted to do something different and make a memory of what she had done to help people. On the other hand, just because he wants to honor his mother's memory doesn't mean you can disrespect his father in his presence with inpunity. He will very clearly set you right. My guess is that if Charles is defending Harry now, it is a bit because Harry was so vocal about defending Charles when people criticized him. Its taken William longer to come out and make a public statement about his mother and her work. The charity that he recently took on and this memorial concert are the first acknowledgements that he's made. That doesn't mean that William loves his mother any less but I think it means that William's issues with his parent's were deeper, more complex, and not as easy to overcome as Harry's relationship with his parents so that it was much harder for William to publicly speak about his mother until only recently. Harry just seems to have loved both of his parents without reservation which is probably most confusing to fans who can't imagine how one could love both Charles and Diana. But Harry manages to do it and manages to do it without showing the effects of being pulled one way or another. Harry just seems to have made peace at least with Diana's memory and with being Charles' son. So these are the big issues that could affect Harry but from the looks of it, I would say they are affecting William more than Harry. And William is not drinking like a fish.
There are smaller issues and I think these bear looking into. The article Jo quoted mentioned the 'spare' syndrome. Harry from birth was an active sporting lad. One of the few things his parents agreed on was his schooling and in that sense I think they both were wrong. Harry was always very physical, very risk-taking. I think he would have done well in the rough and tumble world of Charles' old school, Gordonstoun, but Charles had had a terrible time there being bullied and Diana was adamant that her sons not be put in an environment where they could be bullied. It was the right decision for William but I believe the wrong decision for Harry who seems to need that physically competitive environment to steer him right.
Compound that with the role of the spare. Remember, I said the rarer a problem, the harder it is to solve. Being the spare to the throne of a reigning monarchy is about as rare a problem as you can get. There aren't too many rulebooks on how to handle that one. Harry can't go to a support group for spares to the throne like he could for his drinking problem.
As many of you noted, royalty is expected to act differently, more responsible than the rest of us but the spare to the throne doesn't really have anything meaningful to do and if he tries to do too much, he's accused of overstepping his bounds. Without any real political power, royalty is expected to be a living symbol. However Harry has shown from his previous words and actions that he wants to be a man of action and he wants to make a difference. There is an inherent conflict between his desire to make a real difference and royalty's role as a non-political symbol. The big debate over whether Harry would serve in Iraq is a symptom of this; in previous times, there would not have been any discussion; he would have just gone.
The heir has the same problem to an extent but at least the Queen and Charles can expose him to more and more responsible duties in preparation for his role as sovereign. Harry has no such blueprint. With his temperament and the no-man's land of his position, it was pretty much a given that he would go to Sandhurst and fulfill a military tour of duty to satisfy both his physical competitive nature and the country's need to see him give something back to the nation.
So if he goes to Iraq, I think he will fulfill both his temperamental destiny and the destiny of his role but such a tour of duty has to end sometime. That's where the problem will lie for that is where Andrew's problems started.
All the while Andrew was a young recruit, he drank like a fish and went out with unsavoury girls with hardly a damage to himself. He had a focus outside of his wild behavior, he was a fighting man and a hero and the girls and the wild nights were just idle playthings. However, his military career played havoc with his marriage and he left the one career that he was ultimately suited for.
Since then Andrew has not found that sense of purpose that he had as a fighting man and he's seemed a little bit lost.
My own opinion of Harry's drinking is that I don't think it will be a problem when he is in Iraq; he will have a mission and a focus for as long as he has a useful and meaningful military duty. Where the problems for Harry may lie is when he has to leave the military and his position as a royal limits what else he can do with his life. That is where any character flaw will come to the fore and if he still is drinking immoderately, his drinking will bring him down.
But its too early to tell right now.
And of course, I am not without my moments of weakness.
To answer your question Roslyn, some officers stay in the army past the normal retirement age, which is after 35 years service or at age 60. Those that do stay past 60, as you can imagine, are senior admin or advisors. The problem that I see for Harry would be that he would become a 'desk jockey', not an active soldier.
