Alcohol doesn’t care about your degree, your job or where your kids go to school

White wine is the new cocaine in the trendy Northern Beaches and Eastern Suburbs of Sydney.

It’s the happening thing, the new go to drug and the most problematic drug.

It’s seductive.

It’s romantic.

It’s legal.

But it can be lethal.

And the main offenders?

The biggest abusers?

Middle class, educated, professional women in the 35 to 59 age bracket.

New South Wales data points towards an increasing number of women aged 35-59 being hospitalized after drinking excessively.

Statistics from Sydney mental health clinics, rehabs and recovery circles also shows the rate of middle aged women seeking help and support has almost doubled in the last ten to fifteen years.

Why?

Alcohol abuse.

And the preferred drug of choice?

White wine.

And my point?

Well two points….

Substance abuse doesn’t discriminate. It crosses all demographics, suburb boundaries, gender and income bands.

Alcohol doesn’t care about your degree, your job, the size of your house, your view, your car, where your kids go to school, the dog on your couch, your chosen eatery or where your grapes are grown.

Alcohol is a drug which corrodes people’s lives with a subtlety and cunning more persuasive than its infamous cousins called ice, heroin and cocaine.

Yes, ice is the loud cousin, heroin is the desperate cousin and cocaine is the sleazy cousin but alcohol is the cunning cousin.

Yet, they are all from the same family and they don’t give a fuck how nice and respectable you think you are.

Drink driving, pissing your pants and neglecting your children are all the same outcomes, no matter what substance you blame.

And abusing wine to cope with a job, two kids, an absent husband and a mortgage is the same behaviour as a heroin addict shooting up to forget an abusive child hood, or a teenage ice addict ‘piping up’ to avoid boredom and an empty bank account.

No matter how you decorate the Christmas tree, a tree is a tree.

I had this crazy belief that because I drank beer in trendy Paddington pubs and snorted expensive cocaine I wasn’t a drug addict, and that belief nearly killed me.

Alcohol in measured amounts is an absolute pleasure. It’s a joy. It is the great social lubricator of human society, but alcohol can quickly become a medicine.

And what makes us well can eventually make us sick.

So, women who have relied on white wine to get them through the evening after a hard days work and an afternoon of kid pick ups, homework and dinner, are the new addicts of a successful society.

And our system targets those when they are at their most vulnerable.

Germaine Greer in her biting, brilliant book The Female Eunuch summed up the plight of the modern woman back in 1970:

“Because she is the emblem of spending ability and the chief spender, she is also the most effective seller of this world’s goods.”

I believe The Female Eunuch is the greatest text written by an Australian and Greer is our premier, living intellect, but that argument is for another day. For me, Greer’s greatest challenge to Australia is her genius and emotional honesty. Many Aussies cannot cope with Greer because she is bloody right – men and feminists alike need to bow to her altar.

But back to her quote above.

The alcohol industry targets women, and the alcohol industry is mainly owned and controlled by greedy men and multi national corporations.

So why do these greedy booze sellers target women?

Australian women purchase 70% of our white wine.

Women hold the purchasing power.

So, like any commodity or product, the biggest purchasers are the biggest abusers, and the biggest source of revenue and profit for the elite.

Once again in a subtle, cunning way, patriarchy seems to be manipulating women.

Need to read more?

One Day, One Life: P. 6-7. One Day One Life