Bingeing

Early this morning I carried two young women around twenty years old, from Kings Cross to Rose Bay, in the Eastern Suburbs...

• First woman - "What time is it ?"
• Second woman - "Umm...two o’clock."
• FW - "What time did we get to the Sheaf ?"(Double Bay hotel)
• SW - "Umm...four o’clock."
• (Pause...)
• FW - "We drank for nine hours straight...I had a drink in my hand all that time."
• SW - "And a cigarette..."
• FW - "And a cigarette."

Yet here’s the rub: for all that drinking, these young women were seemingly sober, both in speech and walking from the cab.

Unlike my next passenger, a radio booking from a community club in Bondi to Bellevue Hill. This was an attractive and smartly dressed, middle-aged woman, so drunk the club organised and paid for her taxi home. "Usually I have to walk home," she slurred. "Why ?" "Because I have no money left for a taxi."

She admitted to regularly spending all her money on booze and poker machines. "Sometimes I don’t even make it home," she laughed, "and fall sleep on bus seats... sometimes on the medium strip."

Whilst this last detail was a little unbelievable, I had no doubt about her next remark. "The worst thing is the kids nagging me in the morning." "Why ?" I needlessly asked. "Cause I’m a pisspot !", she chortled in a throaty laugh, like an alcoholic way past caring how pathetic she sounded. Or sad, really.

Rather than being dropped outside her home, she chose to alight at the nearest corner. Thence stumbled against a fence attempting to light a cigarette, barely recovering her balance before staggering off. An incongruous sight outside the darkened, well-kept homes at 2.30am on a Monday morning.

Comments

[Darlene]

Gee, I wonder how old her kids are. Doesn't sound like she's interested in stopping.

Some young women can really drink these days. They obviously get a lot of practice.

[Juffy]

Darlene - there's a big difference between "having a drink in your hand" for 9 hours and "drinking" for 9 hours. I reckon the two young women might have had 5-6 drinks in those 9 hours, whereas the community club woman was obviously out to get completely trashed...

[AG Canberra]

Mrs Bondi - Bellevue Hill is one of those parents mentioned in press reports yesterday. The ones who abuse alcohol and other drugs meaning 1 in 8 kids are raised by addicted parents. What ever happened to a bit of self restraint?

[James]

Addiction has nothing to do with self restraint AG Canberra...
If only it was so easy as 'pulling ones socks up'..