The young woman had one of those south Dublin accents which sound like a cross between Buffy the vampire slayer and Bob Geldof. She was a student working part-time in the bookshop. I knew that, and the whole shop knew that, because she was complaining very loudly to her friend about the cheek of the manager who had given out to her because of her attitude, writes Breda O'Brien
She concluded by saying triumphantly, "And I said to him that he must be mistaking me, like, for someone who gives a s- -t, which I don't. I'm only here for my drinking money."
There was a kind of collective wince from the adults browsing through books in the shop, but she was oblivious to their reaction. I thought about her, and all the young people like her, while chairing a panel discussion during the Rutland Centre's addiction awareness week a few days ago.
There may be growing disquiet over the level of alcohol and substance abuse among young people but perhaps the youths involved are just reflecting our ambivalence and hypocrisy as a society, particularly with regard to alcohol. We shake our heads in disbelief at statistics which show that 28 per cent of boys and 21 per cent of girls have been drunk at the age of 13 or younger, but conveniently ignore the fact that we have celebrated every important occasion in their lives, from birth onwards, with alcohol. An astonishing 28 per cent of those admitted to general hospitals have a significant problem with alcohol abuse.
As pointed out in a recent series in this newspaper, one in two admissions to accident and emergency departments after midnight are directly related to alcohol.
We are not safe on our roads, there is a significant increase in sexually transmitted diseases, which some medical people attribute to increased alcohol consumption, and we lose thousands of work-days a year due to alcohol. Yet, as a society, we are not ready to begin to seriously question our attitudes to it.
The theme of the evening organised by the Rutland Centre was "Ireland - a nation in denial". Interestingly, this particular lecture provided a kind of parable of denial in itself.
The previous night, the hall had been packed to hear Anne Wilson Shaef. If you know that name, chances are that either you or someone close to you has been badly affected by addiction, or you are a person seeking answers to spiritual and psychological dilemmas. In short, you are someone already thinking fairly deeply about these kind of issues on a personal level.
The night I was there, the lecture was intended to address the problem at a different level, that of our responsibility as a society.
The fact that the hall was half-empty for a talk entitled "Ireland - a nation in denial" was an irony not lost on those who turned up. We are still not ready to tackle this problem at the communal level.
Speaking at the seminar, Gerry McAleenan, director of the Soilse project that works with addicts, likened the crisis to the Lost Lives book which chronicled all those who died during the Troubles.
He reckons that more lives have been lost or damaged through alcohol and drug abuse but that we have not yet begun to acknowledge the haemorrhage in the way we acknowledge what has happened in the North.
There is a lost quality to many people's lives today, an emptiness which people strive to fill with alcohol. My colleague, John Waters, attributes this to a loss of belief in God. There is empirical evidence to substantiate his assertion.
Earlier this year the National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in the US released a major study which showed that, among many other findings, teens who do not consider religious beliefs important are almost three times more likely to drink, binge-drink and smoke, almost four times more likely to use marijuana, and seven times likelier to use illicit drugs than teens who think religion is important.
However, there is little evidence that Irish people have lost belief in God.
Even the latest surveys conducted on behalf of the Power to Change group show that there are still strong levels of belief here on the personal level. But as the attendance at two of the Rutland Centre seminars may indicate, perhaps our attention is overly focused on the personal while neglecting the communal. The loss of credible religious structures is a serious difficulty and it is here that I believe the root of the problem lies.
The Columbia study also shows that teens who never attend religious services are twice as likely to drink, more than twice as likely to smoke, more than three times likelier to use marijuana and binge-drink, and almost four times likelier to use illicit drugs than teens who attend religious services at least weekly.
There is a moral vacuum caused by the loss of authority on the part of the Irish churches, accompanied by a diminishing sense of community, as people drift away from rituals which once sustained collective identity and solidarity.
While there is much that is authentic about contemporary individual spirituality, there is also a danger of sliding into a "me and my God" religion, a personal comfort zone which does not challenge - and, in some cases, may drift as far as "me and my needs as God."
Maybe one of the reasons we are not ready to deal with our problem with alcohol is that we are not ready to deal with the poverty of what we have handed on to our children in terms of a moral code and belief system.
Tolerance and non-judgmentalism do not go far to tackle the problem of young people and adults drinking till they vomit and pass out.
Stephen Rowan, director of the Rutland Centre, had some intelligent and practical suggestions, including a complete ban on alcohol advertising.
But I believe that the real solution may lie in addressing what he called the "hole in the soul" problem.
Until we tackle that, the reaction of the young people who are most likely to abuse substances will be to fix us with one of their killer stares and ask us contemptuously whether they look like people who give a s--t.