Alcohol

Amy Winehouse - Murdered by alcohol

What is your relationship with alcohol? Has it changed? I have just returned from the local pub where I consumed four pints of foaming Tetley's bitter and now I am sitting at the computer keyboard with a bottle of Marston's "Double Drop" before I stagger up to bed. Hell, it's Saturday night - surely I'm allowed to go as wild as that! 

Alcohol can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Sometimes both. Years ago, my relationship with alcohol was not as comfortable and controlled as it is today. I hesitate to recount in detail my worst memories of booze. But there was blood, fighting, the police, sex, vandalism and twice I slept in prison cells. I am not proud of those times. Another me often surfaced when I was fuelled by alcohol. Many's the morning when I opened my eyes and remembered with horror the night before. 

I was thinking about our lovely daughter. She is so level-headed, living a busy life which is usually guided by her innate intelligence. And yet she has been enchanted by Bacchus. Alcohol has made her fall asleep with a pan of pasta burning away, fall asleep with a pizza in the oven, walk in front of a taxi, fall off her high heels and end up bruised like a prizefighter. Quite simply, alcohol could have already killed her.

In supermarkets there are aisles filled with wines from across the world, whiskies and whiskeys, beers and lagers. Our high streets and suburbs welcome licensed restaurants, public houses and wine bars. Alcohol is all around us.

The majority of  alcohol tragedies are never touched  upon by the media. And then of course there are the related health issues - obesity, liver problems, renal failures, diabetes, depression, falling over. We seem to turn a blind eye to it all.

How many instances of football hooliganism have involved alcohol? How many robberies? How many rapes? How many acts of vandalism? How many fatal car accidents? How many street fights? How many deaths through jumping into rivers? How many divorces? How many beatings? How many friendships broken because of angry words pumped up by alcohol? These statistics have not been recorded.

So I ask you again - What is your relationship with alcohol? The good and the bad. Come. Spill the beans.