Stop blaming alcohol.

I'm sick today. My glands are swollen and my voice is gone, also my ears are entirely blocked. It's probably nothing major, but I am drugged up to the eyeballs because I'm away at the end of the week to go running with Chumley Finn and I need to be not sick, or at the very least, upright.
I freely admit I was on the batter for the weekend, catching up with various chumlies and busy with work related things. Having been off the hooch for the best part of two months I am really feeling the effects due to a culmination of nights out.
But you know what? That's fine. I had terrific fun, I enjoyed those few days of hoochy-filled high jinks. It was a delight to meet chumlies over the weekend and head off to the pub for natters and tee-heeing.
But I'm sitting here this morning- Puddy killing the circulation to my legs-listening to the radio and listening to people wax on about the monster power of alcohol.
And I'm getting fed up.
Alcohol you see is the big evil.( Cocaine was last month) It is the -apparently- the indirect cause of the deaths of the two Polish men, who were stabbed by a gang of little shits in Drimnagh last week, it is the ruination of families, it is an uncontrollable, implacable destroyer of society, it is the reason our A&E sections in the hospitals are filled to bursting. It is so evil and all powerful we-the public- need to be reminded of its trickiness at every turn, we are told 'Drink Sensibly' asked 'have you had enough' subjected to po-faced actors looking up from under their brows to the camera at every turn.
Oh we've all had enough. Or at any rate I have. But not of hooch, oh no. I've had enough of awareness campaigns, I've had enough of crocodile tears, I've a pain in my ring with 'The Party's over'. I'm bored witless with it all.
Alcohol might be the trigger for all sorts of bad behaviour, certainly having a skinful makes you louder and more rambunctious, but for a very large number of us it doesn't make us kick people to death and it DOESN'T make us stab people with screwdrivers. I have never taken up a seat or a trolley in a hospital due to licking rum out of the bottom of my glass. Neither have I driven the wrong way down a motor-way, locked out of my mind.
Incidents of anti social behaviour are nothing new. Murder is nothing new. Blaming a substance is nothing new. Pontificating on solving society's ills is nothing new either.
We molly coddle our youth, make excuses left right and centre, we defend poor behaviour in very small children, we turn a blind eye to obnoxious carry-on in adults. We don't instill civil respect. We have parents who neither look up or down at their children and couldn't care less what they were doing as long as they're not hanging around the hosue. We have a court system that leans heavily in favour of 'understanding' the perpetrators of crime and why they committed whatever it was they committed and on and on the show goes.
And then when it blows up in our faces, why, we blame alcohol.
At the risk of sounding too much like a Daily Mail reader, isn't it time we stopped dribbling on about blame and started looking at responsibility? Responsibility for personal actions? Don't just hand wring and look to some far reaching factor, be it age or background or what you did or didn't drink that night. Let's just look at what you DID. Let's just deal with that. Maybe if there were less 'awareness campaigns' about drink and more 'If you cause harm you will play for it you little shit' Irish Society might be better off.

Ireland, my Ireland.

'FIRE FIRE! Look Look, that house is on fire!'
'Don't worry, I'll call a priest?'
'A priest?
'Sure.'
'Dont' be stupid, call a fire brigade. Look, it's hasn't fully caught yet, a fire brigade might be able to put it out.'
'No no, I'll just call the Parish Priest, he'll know what to do.'
'But he's not a fireman.'
'He's as good as one.'
'You're not making any sense and the house is burning to the ground!'
'Hold yer horses now, it will be all right.'
'But the flames are reaching the upper levels!'
'Hold on will ya! Hello father? HOwya doin'? Could you come out and have a look at something for me, I think there's a house on fire out here, burning to the ground by the looks of it. When? Next monday. Grand father, see you then.'
'He's not coming?'
'Not until Monday.'
'But it will be too late then.'
'Sure what can you do, lets go for a pint.'

That's how we do it here, old school. It's the best way.