A note to Leo Varadkar: 'Upping the price of booze won't stop alcoholics in their gallop'.
Increasing the price of alcohol won't make any difference to those living with a drink problem, writes a recovering alcoholic.
I wonder if Health Minister Leo Varadkar has ever been to an open meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous? I doubt it, because if he had he could never think that putting up the price of alcohol would make a blind bit of difference to the nation's drink problem.
The idea of putting health warnings and calorie counts on alcohol labels is a pretty cool one, too, but it sounds rather feeble to me - a recovering alcoholic who knows other women who have gulped back mouthwash just to get a hit.
The problem with alcohol dependence is that few people understand the blind compulsion to drink. It goes well beyond reason, beyond health warnings - and certainly beyond the price of a bottle of wine.
When I drank, I drank against my will.
It's hard to get your head around that. As soon as I took that first sip, something happened that is hard to describe. Other alcoholics describe their addiction as a physical yearning coupled with a mental obsession. That gets part of it.
However, it doesn't address the pervasive - and enduring - attitude to alcohol in this country.
Source: Irish Independent, 07/02/2015
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