Louisa Simmonds

No Alcoholics / Kein Alkohol Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As the weekend looms enticingly ahead, negotiations have already begun in our household.

Over which of us can drink and which of us has to drive on Saturday night.

It’s got to the point where I almost hate getting invitations beyond a reliable bus route.

That might make me an alcoholic – I’m in denial (So I must be?).

My friends would probably disagree, but it’s not like I want to get outrageously sh*tfaced,  I just want to be able to have more than one glass.

It’s the weekend FFS.

Drink driving laws really do spoil your fun. I know why we have them, don’t get me wrong, and I would never advocate drinking and driving, but going out is absolutely no fun at all on one measly glass of wine – I’d prefer to sit at home on the sofa and get trollied. And the laws don’t just affect your capacity to get embarrassingly and often humiliatingly drunk.

They also affect your marriage.

It’s not like we haven’t got enough to argue about.

If the government had actually taken the alcoholics into consideration when designing the transport system infrastructure in Sydney, they might have saved themselves (and made themselves) a lot more money. Imagine the savings if they didn’t have to shell out on RBTs on every street corner and police walking the streets, looking for trouble. Imagine how much more tax they could reap in from the absolute excess of alcohol consumption if there was a reliable and safe alternative to getting home.

If we had a decent public transport system or reliable taxi service to all suburbs, people might not be tempted to risk drinking and driving. So, in theory, the rate of accidents would decrease.

The divorce rate might fall too.

Our negotiations about who is going to drive at the weekend begin on the Wednesday. There is a ‘let the games commence’ mentality, as we negotiate hard, using money, tv time, time away from the kids and sexual treats as negotiating tools.

If we’re seeing my friends, the old man apparently needs to drink for confidence; when we’re seeing his friends, he needs to be able to drink to fully enjoy his mates company.

I’ve actually put my foot down on this issue – I mean, we’re both alcoholics, so I’m not really sure why he gets to get shitfaced more often than me.

Doesn’t that smack of inequality?

Of course we consider every transport option available, because the ideal scenario is that we can both drink and remain immune to the fact that we’re boring the tits off all the other guests with our personal jokes and penchant for laughing at them.

By Friday night we’re both desperately working out way through every transport App on our phones to find the quickest and cheapest route to the ‘middle of nowhere’ via public transport.

But the issue is, that buses don’t turn up, taxis in the suburbs as about as impossible to get hold of as photos of baby George, and to be honest, sharing buses with puking teenagers catching the last bus home is a little demeaning, even for us.

Needless to say, the old man refuses to pay for a cab.

The sensible and responsible thing for us to do, of course, would be to curb our drinking like some of our other middle-aged friends.

To grow up! Surely not.

So inevitably, it comes down to who cracks first and volunteers, and it’s usually me because the old man sober, in the company of people he doesn’t really know, is a very dull old man.

#Alcoholism #Alcoholintoxication #middleage #Sydney #Drink #Humor #alcohol