We pay for the scourge of alcohol abuse

I saw this on Channel 9’s 60 Minutes last night; this sort of thing really gets me riled up. I cannot understand this culture of alcohol abuse that’s undermining our society, why do we need to jump on the booze at every opportunity we get. Are we simply incapable of having fun or a good time without being completely drunk out of our minds?

Sixty Minutes | Video here - TARA BROWN: Joey’s story with alcohol started out fairly typically — a weekend binge drinker like so many other Australian women. In the last decade, the number of women drinking at dangerous levels has doubled. Here in Brisbane, Jo, Kim, Emily, Nicole and Belinda meet up once a week where most have on average 15 drinks and some nights it can be as many as 30. Do you think more women are drinking now, than ever before?
NICOLE: Oh, definitely — yep, yep.
TARA BROWN: And why do you think that is?
JO: Because we’ve got money.
KIM: And it’s also to do with equality as well.
TARA BROWN: Equality?
JO: Women have got their own dispensable income now. Women are working, woman can account for all the money that they’re making now, so we can go out and have a good time. We don’t need the boys there.
NICOLE: And if the blokes can do it, why can’t we, really?

Well, thank you feminism. We’re all supposed to be equal ey, I’m sorry, but women simply cannot handle as much alcohol as men and it also does a lot more damage to a woman, not that it’s alright for the blokes or something. And that damage that no one seems to care about, that’s permanent, once done, you can’t fix it.

TARA BROWN: Jackie Keppel is proof of how devastating alcohol can be. She’s just 38 years old and what started out as binge drinking became a full-blown addiction. She staggers and slurs, not because she’s drunk but because the grog has now severely and permanently damaged her brain.

The above can only describe her to a certain extent, you should have seen her in the program, it’s like she is permanently drunk, it’s a pitiful existence to live the rest of your life as a drunk. Picture yourself turning up at work and attending a meeting slurring your speech, stumbling around, that’s her permanently. The next bit got me really mad, the program switched back to that group of binge-drinking women in Brisbane. It’s one thing for morons to just drink and drink being ignorant of the consequences.

TARA BROWN: Do you guys reckon you might be doing yourselves damage by drinking like this?
JO: Yep, for sure, yeah.

It’s quite another for them to go ahead anyway knowing the consequences, the woman who said this just laughed it all off. I don’t care if people want to drink their lives away but what really pisses me off is that my taxes have to pay for their sorry asses when the damage is done. Now if some old timer who worked all his life, paid his taxes and kept his nose clean turns up at the hospital with cancer or something, he’ll get the same treatment as the bludger who drank his/her way into the hospital, that is just not fair. I don’t mind paying for that old timer or the kids who get cancer or that sort of thing, but these people should be made to fend for themselves.