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Since 1996 IREFREA has been dedicated to the study of recreational nightlife and its relation to alcohol and drug use as one of its core research areas. Through a broad perspective that covers a preventive, cultural and professional point of view, IREFREA has produced valuable data showing that youngsters recreational behaviours (implication, motivation and environment) are key determinants in the use of substances and potentially more relevant than classic intrapersonal risk factors, such as personality, or interpersonal risk factors like family, school or friends.
This research has been giving form to IREFREAs concept of Hegemonic Recreational Nightlife Model (HRNM) used to describe the most popular way in which European youngsters have fun, a style popularly known as clubbing. Recreational Nightlife is a expanding setting in terms of time (hours spent), space (excluding other forms of entertainment or activities) and number of young people involved in it, that promotes fast-pleasure search and incorporates expensive activities designed by an industry, with great economic interests, that has given a new meaning to entertainment by converting it into a merchandise in which alcohol and drugs become the necessary facilitators of the whole experience.
In addition, IREFREAs studies have contributed to point out that with the availability of low-cost travel young people are now able to spend more of their recreational time abroad. Nightlife has thus become a major factor in destination choice and many are specifically marketed at young travellers whose principal reasons for travelling are clubbing and other nightlife pastimes. These studies have shown that such locations can contribute to recruitment of new individuals into the use of new recreational drugs and increase consumption among those already using them.
IREFREA is collaborating at this point and time with over 35 partner institutions working towards prevention for a safer and healthier recreational nightlife. Also, through its network, it has been one of the driving forces in the constitution of the CLUB HEALTH network, an organization with an international dimension, seeking the promotion of international standards.
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