drunks all round

Thanks to Tom Elliott for hosting my 3AW Drive program on Friday while, as he put it, I had ‘a well deserved day off’.

Apart from disliking that expression (who says a day off is ‘well-deserved’?) I wasn’t having a Day Off. More of an off-day. I was in hospital on Friday.

I said some time ago when my serious health problems became public that I would not subject you to a blow by blow health update – unless the news was very good or very bad.

Well, two months ago a cancerous liver operation was postponed because of some encouraging signs and after more medical imaging on Friday at Cabrini the op. has been postponed for at least another two or three months. I’m not better. Just not getting any worse and that’s encouraging.

If I was a little tired at the weekend it was because of capricious weather in the Caribbean and some bizarre umpiring in the dying stages of the night-encroaching World Cup final. A lot of people would have been starved of sleep. But Australia managed one of the greatest sporting victory’s in history. They have won the last three World Cups to make it  four since it started in the 1970s.

With a world class captain in any era in Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist scored the highest World Cup innings ever and veteran Glenn McGrath retired after being named man of the tournament for his 26 wickets.

And they all went off to celebrate with one or fifty drinks – the ways Aussies do. And you don’t always need a reason or an excuse for massive drinking.

Which leads to two vastly different stories about alcohol consumption in Melbourne newspapers in the space of 24 hours.

The Sunday Age yesterday gave its imprimatur to public drunkenness  with the headline: When harmless horseplay on the streets after a few drinks can land you in jail, it’s time to change the law’.

Presumably the newspaper condoned the behaviour of AFL star Ben Cousins when he was found drunk and comatose outside Crown. And I suppose they’d call it ‘harmless horseplay’ when a young man gets his eye socket pierced with a metal chair leg outside a nightclub.

And listen to this rubbish: ‘As another Friday night turns into Saturday morning the punters might still be looking for a good time but they are not all going to find it. In fact, some risk ending the night in a police cell, charged with one of the oldest laws still on Victoria’s statutes – being drunk in a public place.’ Oh, those big bad nasty policemen.  Ignore the fact that a few hours in the cells can literally be a sobering experience. Maybe helps prevent a car accident, a rape, a brawl, whatever.

Then tucked away in the same newspaper’s Monday edition…. in the In Brief column is the news that Amy Bracks, 17-year-old daughter of Premier Steve Bracks, was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital on Saturday night after drinking too much alcohol.  The Herald Sun story said Daughter on Binge.

The Premier and his wife are facing the same problems that parents all over Melbourne are battling with. Teenage binge drinking. Only a few months ago Bracks’s son Nick was caught trying to smuggle alcohol into Telstra Dome.

Responsible drinking is not at issue here. And as a former heavy drinker I risk being called a hypocrite. But at least I know what a pattern of heavy drinking can set you up for later in life. I know it can kill you.

So what’s to be done? Pamphlets and shock tactics aren’t working? How are you handling the problem?

Monday, April 30, 2007

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2007