Family booze bill tops $4000 a year

Herald-Sun ^ | 24 January 2005 | Sandra O'Malley

[Aussie Dasher]

KNOCKING back a regular pint of beer or a glass of wine is costing an average family $80 a week, new research shows.

Over a year, a family of four spends about $4135 on alcohol, guzzling on average 44 slabs of beer, 14 bottles of spirits and 77 bottles of wine. The research, by drug rehabilitation centre Odyssey House Victoria, shows a family consisting of two parents and two teenagers would on average consume 37 litres of pure alcohol in a year.

The family's alcohol consumption would equate to 883 stubbies of medium and full strength beer, 77 bottles of wine, 311 bottles of pre-mix drinks, 8.4 casks of wine, 14 bottles of spirits and 171 stubbies of low alcohol beer.

Beer accounts for more than 45 per cent of the family's annual alcohol budget, while bottled wine consumes 22 per cent of spending.

Odyssey House is releasing the research to promote its On The Wagon Week campaign next month, which encourages people to give up alcohol for a week and donate the money instead.

Odyssey House chief executive David Crosbie said the average consumption figures were probably an underestimate because 15 per cent of Australians did not drink at all.

Despite the relatively large quantity of average alcohol consumption, Mr Crosbie said it would not be too much of a problem if it was being drunk in an appropriate way.

"The key question is how is it consumed," he said.

"If people are just having a couple of drinks every night, then across four people there is unlikely to be much harm being done.

"But, if as many Australians do, they don't drink much during the week and then drink most of it on the weekend, then there's a problem."

Mr Crosbie said some of the most notable changes in the way people drank alcohol was the growing consumption by women and the way alcohol had become a household staple.

"It's almost become a grocery product in a way, people shop for it in the same way they do their milk and bread," he said.

"The other trend is that young women have really caught up with men in their drinking."

[Choose Ye This Day]

I'd rather have -10 degrees than +100...I can always bundle up.

But I do envy you your sunlight. It's dark here until 7:15 in the morning, then again by 5:00 in the afternoon.

We went sledding yesterday, after we got our first real snowfally this year (only about six inches, but we haven't had ANYTHING so far all winter).

Only about three more months until Spring! (UGH)

[gringo_in_Akita]

"My friends and I will slam down about $4000 during the Patriots game tonight."

Good stuff, man, good stuff. Enjoy the game, and the booze. Go Pats!