Malene Petersen breaks the cycle of alcohol dependence

Malene Petersen overcame alcohol dependence after growing up in a home affected by drinking. She told DR that people in Greenland need to speak more openly about alcohol and their problems.

It has been 15 years since Petersen last drank. “I don’t want to drink,” she said. “And I have never regretted stopping.”

Today, she has a home, a car and a boat, has completed an education and has a good job. For years, however, almost all her money went on alcohol, and she was struggling with severe depression.

Petersen grew up in a home where people drank, creating an unsettled childhood in which the adults could not always be relied on. As a child, she had decided she would not become an alcoholic. But a series of suicides in her hometown of Paamiut plunged her into deep depression in 2003.

“I slept only two or three hours a night for a long period. They just gave me sleeping pills without otherwise giving me help,” she said. She soon began using alcohol to dull the depression.

Greenlandic experts and a research project by the University of Greenland and Aarhus University published last year have found that people struggling with alcohol dependence often grew up in families with alcohol problems. Petersen began receiving help in 2007. In 2011, as the mother of a young child, she found the strength to stop drinking for good.

Alcohol has been widely debated in Greenlandic media following a violent killing in southern Greenland that was linked to drinking. The municipality in southern Greenland responded by stopping all alcohol sales and serving. The emergency measure is permitted under the government’s alcohol policy, and the case has prompted calls for tougher rules.

Petersen is unsure that stricter regulations are the right approach. “I don’t think the government should interfere. When we face adversity, we start thinking for ourselves, ‘I don’t want to live this way.’ I believe we are responsible for our own lives,” she said.

Greenland’s health council has reported that, although alcohol consumption has fallen significantly in recent years, more than 40 per cent of the population may have an alcohol problem, according to its report.

In 2025, average consumption was 8.3 litres of pure alcohol per person aged over 14 in Greenland, compared with 8.8 litres per person aged over 18 in Denmark. Among people aged over 15 in Greenland, 34 per cent said they drank five or more alcoholic drinks on one occasion at least once a month. In Denmark, the figure was 25 per cent among people aged over 16. The figures cited by the article come from Statistics Denmark, Statistics Greenland, a 2018 population survey and the National Institute of Public Health.

Petersen has recently moved into a larger apartment to make room for her grandchild. She says it is important that the child grows up in a healthy family, and that she is proud to have broken a cycle that could have continued into the next generation.