Drunk for a Penny, Blind Drunk for a Tuppence

Have you heard any of these stories or experienced any like them?

* A girl is mourning the death of six of her family members to alcohol related causes. Meanwhile, nearby alcohol shops take advantage of the weekly incomes of sometimes entire families.

* A young man on his first night out in Melbourne is bashed and kicked by a drunken 16 year old for no apparent reason. His face hits the asphalt on a bridge causing serious damage.

* Young boys on a fishing trip are given a slab of vodka alco-pops to drink as they please. One of the boys is seriously burned by falling into the campfire while intoxicated. At the time there hadn't been any laws broken even though the boys parents didn't know anything about it.

* A woman and her children cower as her drunken partner abuses and assaults them. The Woman comes to The Salvation Army to seek help.

* The Police Commissioner in Victoria describes our alcohol culture as 'out of control', and 'transforming' (changing or mutating) with a trend towards drinking specifically to get drunk.

A pretty bleak time in Victoria when we look closely...
In William Booth's time (the guy who started The Salvation Army) London was pretty bleak too, there was a saying that said, 'drunk for a penny, blind drunk for tuppence'. (A penny was one cent and tuppence was two cents). With true stories such as the ones above featuring regularly on the news I think William Booth would find 21st Australia very familiar. The Salvation Army has always existed not just to treat the results of unsociable cultures but to tackle, creatively, its causes.

The root-cause of the many problems that come with alcohol abuse that affects lives daily is the way we think, feel and behave towards alcohol. Therefore we need to change the culture. William Booth insisted that his troops (soldiers and officers) have as much information about the problems they are tackling as possible. This is why we are looking at this problem. If we can be as educated as possible about this issue which affects almost every single Australian then we can work towards changing the negative outcomes!
Do you want to be a part of that change?

(Information sourced for this post is sourced from The Salvation Army Alcohol Culture Initiative Learning Module)