Is Australian Culture overly Reliant on the "Beer Drinking Ocker" image?

Previous favourites of The Rambling Couch Sitter. Image from www.beer-pages.com

The Australian psyche is still geared around a fascination around alcohol. Thankfully the message around drinking and driving appears to be hitting the mark as there do appear to be less fatal accidents involving alcohol than 10 years ago.

But what of the issue around it being a social requirement to consume alcohol and in a worrying trend for the under 30’s to consume copious amounts of alcohol with friends on a night out. Admittedly until a year ago the Rambling Couch Sitter had fallen into this category and would find that the hangovers would take longer to recover from as the years passed.

But over the last 12 months yours truly has abstained from alcohol completely and while there are some very personal reasons for this a few observations have emerged over this time.

One, every now and then I went to the local pub and watched sport on FOX (actually, I still do to get out of the house sometimes!!) so with beer in hand it was amazing how many people would come up and start chatting about the sport being shown. This is now a rare event which I attribute to the choice of drink in the hand.

In fact if you are by yourself in a pub, starting a conversation with a non-alcoholic drink is actually quite difficult. More often than not the other person is well on the way to being drunk, so usually incoherent. (or just dribbling shit, whereas before I may have dribbled just as much crap) But once the conversation has started it can be difficult to keep the conversation going as you usually have to repeat yourself or shout etc, etc.

Two, being a single man I have noticed a barrier emerging when chatting to the ladies. They are a little hesitant to chat to someone who is not as drunk as others. This could be because they are afraid of being taken advantage of (which is a fair concern) or a myriad of other things which I cannot even think to imagine given that I am no expert.

Three, and possibly most worrying, is that some people have questioned my sexuality because I am not consuming alcohol. It is as though in a portion of Australian Culture, alcohol is linked to sexuality (i.e. you are heterosexual if you drink alcohol). In a society that is meant to be “advanced” I find this truly amazing. Especially as now we are more multicultural and more accepting of people’s choices in other aspects of life. This attitude is more 1950’s than 21^st Century and probably needs to change for Australia to progress as a society.

Four, you have “mates” that feel it’s their responsibility to convince you to start drinking again. Once again, this is about not respecting the choice I have made. There are a few people that know all of the reasons behind my choice and in the main they respect them. However the remainder know the main driver for the change, yet see it as their mission (should they choose to accept it) to get me back off the wagon.

It will be interesting to see whether attitudes change while I maintain my abstinence from alcohol. However I am not holding my breath waiting for it to happen.